Chapter 14
“What’s wrong with you?”
Phoebe’s back stiffened.
It had been a long day. A long, mostly lonely day.
She was not in the mood for any—any guff from her new husband.
She’d woken up alone, still wearing her clothes from the night before.
This was insult enough in more ways than one—not only had she waited for him until she’d fallen asleep, and not only had he never come, but she was wretchedly uncomfortable from a night spent wearing her stupid, thrice damned wedding corset.
When she’d finally wrangled herself free from that death trap of a garment, she’d felt like her ribs were shrieking in relief.
Since ribs were unfairly lacking in voices, she decided to show her displeasure by stamping around the house, ‘settling in’ in the most obtrusive way she could manage.
Unfortunately, that was actually very difficult because the staff was overall lovely and accommodating.
“I shall have to redecorate,” she said loudly to a parlor she’d thought was empty—and then yelped and nearly toppled over backward when the housekeeper appeared out of nowhere.
“Oh, how lovely, Your Grace,” said the slate-haired Scottish woman, clasping her hands in front of her delightedly.
“I’m Mrs. Abermale; so nice to meet ye. Now.
About the redecorating. It’s been an age since we’ve had things freshened up in here.
The previous duke—His Grace’s brother—didn’t marry before the good Lord took him, the poor soul.
And the duchess prior wasnae one for the décor though she was a sweet enough woman, may her soul be at rest. But ye!
If ye would like to change things, I’d be best pleased to send one of the lads out for some samples. ”
This was all said with such robust cheer that it nearly knocked Phoebe flat on her bum with its force. She was like… Father Christmas, except a woman. Mother Christmas? Phoebe didn’t know; she hated Christmas.
She wasn’t going to take that hatred out on this sweet old woman—she was a grouch, not a monster—but still, this level of good spirit was far, far beyond what she could manage at the moment.
“Oh, uh, that’s all right,” she said, backing slowly away from the housekeeper’s smile. “I’ll tend to that… later. It’s not the time, since it is… winter.”
This made absolutely no sense at all, but Phoebe had, by that point, gotten far enough away that she could bolt.
The rest of her day did not get much better from there.
Everywhere she went, she tried to do something—anything—that would annoy and provoke her husband, only to be met with a seemingly endless slate of happy and helpful staff.
And there was no glimpse of Aaron at all.
She had avoided breakfast, just to be difficult, but she deigned to go to lunch…
Only to find that Aaron wasn’t there.
This made her at least twice as furious as she had been because that had been her trick, damn it all. Her trick and his stupid demand. And so, he came and just stole it from her?
Rude. Rude and annoying.
She had sullenly eaten a roast beef sandwich—it was exceedingly good, and she was furious about it—before stomping off to the library on the justification that it was utterly impossible to be in a poor mood while in the library.
She was proven wrong.
She was staring, barely seeing anything, at a wall of gorgeous, expertly bound books when, finally, her husband decided to make his appearance.
“What’s wrong with you?”
She whirled on him like he had set her on fire.
“What is wrong with me?” she demanded. “What is wrong with me? I am not the one who disappeared all day. I am not the one keeping secrets. I am not the one who didn’t tell his sister he got married.”
She was shrieking. She knew she was shrieking, and she knew that was unreasonable, but she couldn’t seem to stop.
“I am not the one who treats other people like they don’t matter because I am not a self-important duke, you stupid, stupid, stubborn man!”
She punctuated this last statement with a stamp of her foot. It was the childish end to a childish tirade—hell, to a childish day.
All it did was serve to hurt her ankle.
He waited until she was done, then just one moment more to really make his point.
And then he said, “What I meant to say is… you seem upset.”
It was so understated, so level, that it practically shocked Phoebe out of her bad temper. Maybe this was why they suggested cold water for people who were hysterical. Evidently, a cold attitude would do the same.
“Yes,” she told him. “I just listed all the things I’m upset about. They are mostly focused on how, just yesterday, I married a man that I did not choose, and how, every minute since then he has been plaguing me.”
This might still have been argumentative, and yes, childish, but Phoebe didn’t yell it, so she considered that a triumph.
Aaron paused, looking at her with the slightest tilt to his head.
“No,” he said slowly, like he was tasting the words in his mouth. “No, that’s not it.”
She was extremely close to just walking away. Extremely close.
But then he said, “Phoebe. Just tell me.”
Those four words weren’t a command. They were a request. Maybe even a plea.
But whatever it was, they were soft. Almost kind. And Phoebe could see, all too easily, that refusing to answer him now would be like stamping her foot—it would only hurt her, and it would accomplish nothing.
Telling the truth…
Well, that would hurt, too, but it might accomplish something in the end.
Wearily, she tilted her head, indicating the pair of chairs near the fire. It made for a cozy image—the cheerful blaze, the pair of overstuffed armchairs, the two of them, seated across from one another.
It made her throat clog with misery.
Aaron waited, patient and undemanding as Phoebe gathered her thoughts. She ached to tease him about a soldier’s patience, about waiting for the moment to strike—anything to distract from the story she had to tell.
But that would be a coward’s way out. And she did not want to be a coward—not for herself, not in front of a hero.
“My mother died at Christmas,” she said, feeling as though her voice was coming from somewhere very far off. “I last spoke to her on Christmas Eve, and when I woke up on Christmas morning, she was dead.”
It felt terrible to say, but in another way, it felt good, too. Her family never really spoke of it.
And wasn’t that just another form of pretending?
But Aaron didn’t try to stop her, didn’t try to interrupt.
He just watched as she continued.
“Before she died,” Phoebe went on, “she told me to not pretend to be something that I’m not. She said that she’d done that, and she regretted it. And I’ve tried. I’ve really, really tried.”
Her eyes fluttered closed for a moment as she thought, but didn’t speak about how it was an effort, despite all appearances to the contrary—maybe even because she made it look as though there was no effort involved at all.
No, she didn’t want to be the picture-perfect Society lady that her father obviously wished her to be.
She didn’t want to frantically follow every rule or to make herself smaller and smaller until she all but disappeared.
She liked who she was, liked trying the things that she wasn’t meant to try, liked feeding the curiosity that had always brimmed so full inside of her.
But the world wasn’t built for someone like her. And resisting, always resisting—it was hard.
She was very tired sometimes.
And her failures—the times when she gave in and did as she was told just because she was so weary of fighting, the times when she was not true to herself, no matter that that was her mother’s dying wish—those failures weighed heavily upon her.
Often, they felt as heavy as her grief.
She kept her eyes closed because she feared that if she opened them, they would sparkle with tears.
Aaron began to speak.
“I’ve seen a lot of death,” he said, and she couldn’t resist looking at him then because there was a heaviness in his words that matched the hard rock that she felt inside her own chest.
“More than most. More than I would hope for anyone. And I’ve seen a lot of loss. Soldiers losing comrades. Families losing sons, husbands, brothers. Sometimes, I was the one who had to tell them, had to go to them and give them the very worst news they had ever received.”
He was looking at her, but he was also looking through her. She could see, somehow, in that faraway look in his eyes, the journeys he’d been forced to make, the people he’d been forced to face as he broke their hearts.
Phoebe practically held her breath, afraid to break whatever spell he’d woven around them.
“I told them, time and again, that the best way to honor the deaths of those who had gone was to live. Live because those sailors had died to protect and safeguard that life in one way or another. And perhaps a mother is not exactly the same as a soldier, but…” His eyes refocused on her, then, and he was here in this room with her.
“But I still think, even without knowing her, that she probably was telling you the same thing. To live and to live well.”
She stared at him. She stared because it sounded so right when he said it like that. Because her clogged throat wouldn’t let her say anything else.
And she stared because was this the same man who had all but blackmailed her into a marriage? Was this the man who had thrown their guests out on their heels because he’d decided his duty had been discharged?
No, she thought, this was the man who had kissed her in the gazebo. The one who had bargained with her like an equal. The one who had seen her in a way that nobody else ever had.
But she stared too long because the openness in his expression disappeared. It was like a shutter slamming down, leaving only sternness behind, and Phoebe felt something like a pang of panic as she realized that she’d lost her chance.
“Aaron—”