Chapter 21 #2
Hudson grimaced and looked away from his brother for a moment, feeling a flush of embarrassment and shame all in one.
He was just glad that they were alone, for it was still relatively early in the day and the gentleman’s club they had met at had yet to fill out properly.
Even so, they sat in the corner, as requested by Hudson, as he was determined for this conversation not be overheard.
The very fact that he had sought his brother out to discuss what had happened between himself and Florentia was as strange an action as he had ever taken. He was not one to talk about his personal life. He was not one to seek advice, either. Such were the times.
His brother watched him closely, and Hudson felt his face turning bright red.
His mind went back to that kiss, even as he tried to keep it from there.
The feel of his wife’s lips...the taste of her on his mouth.
..the way that his heart had soared in his chest..
..and how happy he had been at that moment.
For days now he had sat with those feelings, trying to eviscerate them from memory. Trying to diffuse the guilt he felt, the shame that followed him, and the knowledge that he had made a terrible mistake but was too stubborn to do anything to change it.
“She did,” he sighed. Before him was a tankard of beer, and he had himself a large mouthful. “She kissed me back.”
“Ha!” Elias clapped his hands together. “So, this is good news then!” He chuckled. “Congratulations, I believe are in order.”
“For someone as socially savvy as you are brother, you are failing miserably to read the room. This is not a matter to be celebrated.”
“Oh, I can see that you are beside yourself with shame,” Elias continued jovially. “And I have no doubt that for whatever reason, you think this a bad thing. But I prefer to see the upside, as I am sure you will soon enough.”
“Of course it is a bad thing!” Hudson snapped. “I was not meant to kiss her! And she was certainly not meant to kiss me back!!
“But she did. And did you, brother.”
“For but a second,” Hudson pleaded. He wished that he had been stronger. That he stopped himself before the action had taken him. If he had done, this entire situation may well have been avoided. “Believe me, I was quick to push her away once I got better control of myself.”
“Oh no...” Elias’s face dropped.
“At which point I was sure to tell her that she was misreading the situation entirely. I was firm with her, Elias. But not cruel.” That is a lie. “My hope being that she would understand that what I had done was an accident and nothing more. Not to be misread.”
“Oh, dear...”
“And then I suggested that we spend a few days apart, for no other reason than to realign our feelings—which do not exist,” he pressed, more as a means to convince himself than his brother.
“Yes, we have grown close, but that does not mean what she thinks. I told her from the beginning what this was!”
The words sounded wrong on the ear and tasted like poison on the tongue. For days now, Hudson had tried to convince himself that he was in the right. Florentia had overreacted. She had gone against her word. All Hudson was doing was what he had promised from the beginning!
Needless to say, even he wasn’t buying whatever the heck he was trying to sell. How could he?
“And what did she say?” Elias asked carefully, leaning back as if bracing himself for the worst. “When you...” He winced. “When you pushed her away. Did she say anything? Or did she just leave?”
Hudson bowed his head, for this was the worst part. “She told me that she loved me.”
“Oh no...” Elias sighed. “Hudson, that is... perhaps another drink?”
“You told him that you love him?” Albina’s mouth hung open.
“I did...”
“And?” she pressed. “What did he say back?”
Florentia’s head dropped. She was no longer crying, but that did not mean the pain was still not there. “He did not tell me that he loved me back. That is all which matters.”
“Oh, Florentia...” Albina rose from her seat, walked around her best friend, and then wrapped her arms about her from behind. “I am so sorry.”
“It is my fault.”
“Do not do that,” Albina said. “Do not blame yourself. If anyone is to blame, it is His Grace.”
“No.”
“Yes,” she insisted. “I saw you both together—we all did! You had every right to say what you said. And to think he would feel the same. Every right!”
“No...” She sniffed and shook her head. “He is right. He told me on the first day what our marriage was, what was expected of him. I am the one who—”
“Things change!”
“Apparently not.”
“And I know you, Florentia. As well as anyone. I know that you would not say such words if you did not believe them. You are not one to flout your feelings like some love-struck maiden. And it is not as if you were trying to fall for him or make him fall for you. He knows this!”
That was what made it so hard. And so real.
Florentia had never meant to fall in love with Hudson.
The truth was, she’d never wanted to. All she had wanted was a companionable marriage that might see her and her husband have a child together.
Love, she had thought, might blossom one day, but it was never the goal. Never sought after or chased!
“It does not matter what he knows. What matters is what I said...” She sniffed again, wiping at her nose as she ignored the horrid pain that wrecked her body. “I have ruined everything.”
“Surely, it is not as bad as you think?”
“It is worse, Albina...” She shook her head. “If I had just kept my mouth shut. My thoughts to myself. If I had just remembered who it was that I was dealing with, I might have avoided this travesty altogether! But now...” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “Now he wants nothing to do with me.”
Albina sighed, releasing her arms from around Florentia as she took her seat again. “The words you spoke. They are true?” She looked sadly at her friend; her expression one of deep sympathy. “You love him?”
Florentia nodded. “Even now, after all that has happened. Yes, I do.”
“Then you did the right thing,” Albina said with a firm nod. “Best to say what you felt, rather than live a lie. And if the duke cannot accept that, if he cannot see you for what you are—if he cannot accept how he feels, then that is on him.”
“No, Albina. It is on me.”
“She knew what this was,” Hudson said into his tankard of ale. “What was she thinking, telling me that she loved me?”
Elias sighed. “I suspect she was thinking about how much she loves you.”
“She ruined everything,” he snapped. He was angry at her. Angry at his brother. Angry at himself, most of all. “Our marriage was going so well, Elias. Perfectly. We were happy...I was happy. And you know how rare that is.”
He laughed softly. “I do.”
“I have no choice but to avoid her now,” he sighed and took another deep sip.
“I have thought about this for days, and it is all I can do. A few more weeks, perhaps a month or two. Surely, if I give her time away from me, she will realize that whatever she thinks she feels is not as strong as she suspects. That she will get over it.”
“You clearly do not know how love works.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that if she was able to fall in love with you, it is not going to simply vanish, Hudson. It is not the flu. It is not a raindrop in a storm. She loves you not because of a few brief moments of laughter or whatever is it that the two of you have been doing. She loves you because...” He shook his head and sighed again.
“She loves you because of who you are, and that will not change.”
“I am not who she thinks.”
“But you are.” Elias sat up and looked at Hudson, trying to meet his eyes, even if Hudson refused to give them.
Out the corner of his eyes, however, he could see the worry that his brother felt for him.
The sadness, also. “I know that you believe yourself to be...to be this cold, dispassionate monster.”
“I do not think it. It is what I am.”
“You are not!”
“I am, Elias. Like our father, I am not made for the world of romance. I am a businessman first, and to be that I cannot allow emotions to besiege me. It is a weakness.”
“You are not our father, Hudson,” Elias snapped, suddenly angry. “You never have been! And why you insist on pretending otherwise...” He snarled. “It is as if you wish you were him.”
“I do not wish it! You think I want to be like...like him?”
“I think you believe you have no choice. That is why you act the way you always have. Why you guard yourself from emotions. Why you pretend that they are a weakness.”
“They are a weakness.”
“They are a strength, Hudson!” Elias cried.
“Our emotions are what make us who we are! It is how we grow. It is how we fight. And the greatest of them all, without question, is love. Love is...” He smiled warmly; eyes sparkling.
“It is the most glorious thing which exists in this cold, cruel world. When we are sad. When we are alone. When we are afraid or unsure or in need of help. Love is what saves us. And to share that love with another.” He took a long sip.
“I would rather die than live without it.”
“That is where you and I differ,” Hudson said distantly.
He was staring at his lap, thinking now about his father, his upbringing, the lessons he had been raised on.
What would his father say if he saw him now?
He would mock me, no doubt. He would call me a weak, pathetic loser of a man.
He would despise that I let a woman do this to me. And he would be right.
“So, that is it then, is it?” Elias sighed, the tone in his voice suggesting that he was just about done with this conversation. “You are set on this course of action? To avoid your wife until she hates you?”
“She likely already does.”
He scoffed. “And as I have said, you are a fool to think it.”
“She will get over me.” He spoke into his chest, chin wobbling, a pain in his throat which made him want to tear it out. “I am easy to hate, and if she is smart, she will understand that soon enough.”
“May I ask you one more thing? And do not dare lie to me.” Elias’s voice hardened as he sat himself up. Hudson glanced at him, seeing the same determined steel in his gaze. “You owe me that much.”
“What?”
“Florentia told you that she was in love with you. She gave you her heart and you crushed it because you thought that you had no choice. But you have yet failed to tell me one simple thing.”
“Which is?”
“Do you love her back? If things were different. If you were not...” He scoffed with a level of disgust that Hudson felt himself deserving of. “If you were not you. How do you really feel about her?”
“What does it matter? I am me, and that will not change.”
“Answer the question,” Elias growled. “Do you love her?”
Hudson thought to lie, for it felt like the right thing to do.
He even went so far as to open his mouth, the lie right there on the tip of his tongue.
Only, when he went to say it, he risked a quick glance at his brother who still looked at him with extreme pity, and he found that he could not.
He could not bring himself to speak the lie, as if that was one betrayal too many.
Yes, I love her. I do not want to. I wish it was not the case, for it would make things so much easier. But if these last days have proven anything, the wretched torment and pain and suffering I have felt, they have proven that I am not the man I wish I was. I...I love my wife.
Hudson could not bring himself to speak, so he bowed his head in shame, which was all Elias needed to see.
“As I thought,” he said. Then, he stood up and collected his tankard. “I would ask if you would like another, but I cannot stand to look at you at the moment. You understand.” He stepped out of the booth and wandered across the room toward the bar.
Hudson did not call after him. He did not try and explain himself. His brother was right. Florentia was right. And Hudson, too stubborn to admit the truth, too cowardly to do anything about it, chose to wallow in pity instead.
It was, after all, what his father would have done.
“What now?” Albina asked Florentia. She too had started to cry, tears for her friend which she was happy to share. “What will you do?”
“What can I do?” Florentia sighed. “Hudson knows how I feel, and if I know him half as well as I think, there will be no changing his mind.”
“So, that is it, then? You are giving up?”
“I am not giving up. I am simply accepting reality as it is presented.”
“Florentia, you cannot just bow your head and—”
“No, Albina.” Florentia looked sharply at her friend. She appreciated Albina’s sympathy. She was grateful for her help. But she would not be treated like some ill-gotten fool who was seeking an easy way out.
“I am not going to beg. I am not going to chase. I did everything I could and more. I...” She firmed her wobbling chin.
“I saw through Hudson’s quirks. I was patient with him like I never thought I could be.
I was kind, caring, understanding—I was everything I needed to be!
And if that is not enough, if he refuses to see it. ..”
She bared her teeth angrily. “Then there is nothing else to be done. The next move is his to make and if he refuses to make it...” She shook her head and looked away.
“You know he will not,” Albina said. “That man is even more stubborn than you are.”
“I suppose that it is then,” she said, doing what she could to sound as if she did not care. “This marriage was only ever meant to be one of convenience, and so it will remain.”
Florentia did not want to accept this as her fate. Oh, how she would have loved to have fought for her love. Sadly, she knew her husband as well as anyone, and she knew that to fight, to push, would only drive him away.
It was not meant to be this way. From when she was a little girl, all she had wanted was to marry and start a family. She had done everything right! She deserved this. But life was not fair, and this was a cold dose of reality she was beginning to become acquainted with.
All she could do now was wait and pray. Pray that Hudson would see reason. Pray that he would miss her as she missed him. Pray that the fates would force his hand and he would fight for her as she knew he was capable of doing. Pray that...pray that this was not the end.