Chapter 28 #2
More eye contact from Ramsay and Jonathan. Hector decided he was too tired to be annoyed by this—or by the clear implication that these two men had been talking about him when he wasn’t around.
This time, Jonathan lost.
He coughed politely. “And why do you think that might be, Your Grace?”
“That was weak,” Ramsay accused.
“It was a guiding question!” Jonathan protested, all politeness gone.
“If he was going to get there himself, don’t you think he would have done it by now?” Ramsay countered.
“He is my employer, as you might recall!”
Ramsay looked disgusted.
“This is why we shouldn’t have dukes, you know,” he said, apparently to both of the other men present. Then, he fixed his attention firmly on Hector.
“You are sad,” he said, as if explaining a very simple concept to a very small child, “because you are fighting with your wife.”
“No, I’m not,” Hector said at once, again reacting on impulse more than anything else.
Ramsay’s eye roll was frankly a work of art. “Are you trying to convince me that you aren’t fighting with her, or that you aren’t sad about it? Because I can list all the reasons why both of those arguments are stupid, blatant lies, but you could also just give in and save us all the time.”
Jonathan must have thought this was a bit too harsh, because he added, “We have seen rather less of Her Grace than usual of late. The staff has only noticed it because … well, she’s quite well-liked below stairs.”
Despite himself, Hector felt a smile creep across his face.
Aye, she would be well-liked by the staff, wouldn’t she?
She’d become good enough friends with her former governess that the woman had relocated to England on Clio’s recommendation—goodness knew that she wouldn’t be the kind of lady of the house that would make unreasonable demands.
And yet Clio wouldn’t be an absent figure, one that the staff hardly knew, if given free rein over the house.
He thought about her comments about the decor with a bittersweet pang of fondness.
She didn’t live and die for fashion like some people did, but she wouldn’t let her home remain a relic, either.
It was too easy to let these kinds of thoughts coalesce into something more pointed and far, far more painful.
I miss her.
“It doesn’t matter,” he told his friends on a sigh—because, yes, no matter what noise Jonathan might make about his employment, they were friends, too. “She never truly wanted me, never truly wanted to be married to me.”
He sounded so wretched at the admission that this was followed by one of the most awkward pauses of Hector’s life.
And then, Jonathan snapped.
“Oh, but that is just so stupid,” he said, surging to his feet. “Honestly, Your Grace, I am sorry—but that is very, very stupid.”
“Bravo,” Ramsay said with feeling.
Hector wanted to laugh, but he couldn’t quite summon the energy.
“I don’t know,” he said, haltingly, feeling out the words as he went. It had been a long, long week, and everything felt so dreadfully hard. “Maybe there was a chance, at one point. I mean—there was obviously an attraction—”
Ramsay snorted. “The two of you were caught wrapped up in one another like randy youths on May Day,” he observed. “Yes, Hector, I would dare say there is an attraction.”
Hector leveled a glare at his friend so Ramsay would know he wasn’t helping.
“But,” he went on, “we spoiled it. I spoiled it.”
He didn’t think he’d been fully wrong to challenge Clio about what she wanted, even if he did recognize that he hadn’t had as much as a teaspoon of tact about it. He even understood why he’d been such a brute about the whole thing—
Because he had wanted—still wanted, with a desperation that carved out his chest—for her to say that she wanted him.
But he hadn’t been brave, either. He had hidden behind his prejudices—which, he maintained, weren't entirely wrong, as most aristocrats were utter bastards—and his responsibilities.
He hadn’t admitted that he wanted her. Not to himself, and certainly not aloud.
Instead, he’d let his anger drive her away.
“She said it’s broken,” he confessed, knocking back the rest of his drink just to feel the burn in his throat from something other than the admission. “Our marriage. She said it’s broken. That we shouldn’t have done it.”
There was another dreadful pause. Then, Ramsay said, “So what?”
The only reason that Hector didn’t hit him was that he was too stunned.
“What … what do you mean, ‘so what?’ So, she hates me. She’s been staying with her family. It’s broken.”
“Hector.” Ramsay shook his head. “Yes, you are a duke now—and again, congratulations; we have glossed over that a bit—but you do recall that before that, you were a blacksmith? For decades, I might add. And you were rather good at it, too. Whenever someone needed delicate work done, they came to you. From three towns all around, they’d come to you. ”
This was, Hector supposed, a nice reminder that he wasn’t an entirely useless sot, that he offered something more to society than sitting around in fancy rooms and complaining about the poor’s audacity in existing, which he assumed was how most dukes spent their time.
But that didn’t mean it was relevant to his current situation.
“And your point?” he asked. He wanted to sound dry and urbane, but he just sounded wretched.
Jonathan apparently understood where this was going, however, because he sat up in his chair, his eyes gleaming with excitement.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “Oh, that’s very good.”
“Thank you,” Ramsay said, practically preening.
“Would someone please tell me what in the nine hells you’re talking about?” Hector demanded.
Jonathan turned, his smile bright.
“So, Your Grace,” he said eagerly, “you are a blacksmith. You know how to fix things that are broken, do you not?”