Chapter 19
“He isn’t here, Your Grace.”
Phoebe looked at the butler delivering this news, then at the ice coating the windowpane next to the front door, then back at the butler.
He cleared his throat delicately.
“I do believe the roads are in rather better shape than our windows, Your Grace,” he suggested.
The butler, Phoebe knew, was not at fault in any of this. And it would make her the worst kind of noblewoman to force him to manage the fit of temper that shot through her. It wouldn’t be fair, not when he couldn’t respond or fight back, not without risking his job.
Thus, even though she really wanted to shout several obscenities and stamp her foot hard enough to break straight through the floor and into the ground, she just clenched her fists and gritted her teeth.
“I see,” she choked out.
He looked briefly sympathetic.
“I could let you know when he returns, Your Grace?” he offered, and Phoebe recognized the generosity of this offer.
She was the newcomer—and she wasn’t the one who paid his wages.
It would have been more sensible of him to suggest letting Aaron know she’d been looking for him—something that would let her husband continue to avoid her if he wished.
And he was definitely avoiding her. There really wasn’t any other explanation for why she hadn’t seen him in several days, in which they had quite literally been trapped in a house together, only for him to flee the moment he was able.
“No need,” she told the butler, her nails biting into her palms with the force of her clench. “I will be going out as well.”
She said it on impulse, a sort of irritated quid pro quo, but as soon as the words left her lips, she realized that they were the perfect solution to this… restlessness brewing inside her.
The problem with Aaron’s absence was that Phoebe didn’t know what had caused it.
At first, she had thought that maybe there was some sort of unresolved issue with his sister.
But she’d spent several days with Clio now, and after a few pokes and prods from Phoebe, Clio and Aaron had stolen a few moments together, which was more than Phoebe could say for herself.
She should have felt satisfied that she’d managed to make Clio happy, but instead, she’d started to worry.
Aaron had started avoiding her after their… interlude at the ball.
Had Phoebe done something wrong?
Thinking about that made her feel hot and itchy in a very different way than the physical experience itself had made her feel. Instead of making her feel like she was opening, like a flower blooming in the sun, it made her want to shrink in on herself, like a frightened animal seeking protection.
She did not like it, and she did not like the stupid metaphors that kept occurring to her. This was what she got for reading all those salacious poems over the years.
She’d pushed that feeling away, clinging to her irritation instead. It was easier to feel that Aaron was being difficult than to imagine that she had been somehow lacking. She nursed that irritation, clutching it tight to her chest until it became outright anger.
Fine. If he wanted to avoid her, what did she care? She hadn’t even wanted to marry him in the first place!
And if he wasn’t here to ask her to fulfill the stupid agreements that they’d made, then she wasn’t obliged to wait around for him, either.
She could just go back to doing the things she liked to do, like none of this had ever happened.
“Are you sure that you want to go out, Your Grace?” her maid fretted as she fluttered through helping Phoebe get into a gown suitable for an evening out in London. “It’s mighty cold out there, still.”
“I’m sure,” Phoebe said… though she wasn’t quite certain that this was the truth. She felt determined more than certain.
She needed to do something. She couldn’t bear to stand around this house, waiting for Aaron to come home.
It reminded her too much of her mother, waiting for her father—wasting the hours, days, and weeks of her too-short life waiting for some man who had never cared enough to show up on time, if he had shown up at all.
She had to do something that made her feel like herself.
And there was a performance going on in Cheapside that she’d wanted to see. Apparently, it featured two men who were extremely… acrobatic.
“And you’re sure you want to wear such a… sedate gown?” the maid tried again. Clearly, Phoebe’s understated gown and even less remarkable coiffure were an affront to the young woman’s professional pride. She was, after all, a lady’s maid to a duchess. It was an esteemed position.
But Phoebe didn’t want to look like a duchess tonight. She didn’t want to look like anyone important. She wanted to blend in, to hover at the edges without being noticed.
“I am,” she confirmed, this time more confident in her answer.
Her maid let out a little, muted sigh, but she complied. She offered Phoebe jewels and adornments four more times, but she complied with each refusal, albeit with visibly diminishing patience.
Phoebe made a mental note to ask the woman for her advice over the next few days, just so that she knew her work was appreciated. A small gift might not go amiss, either.
Phoebe would say this much for being a duchess—it was nice to have a bit more pin money to go around for moments such as this.
When Phoebe was ready to go, she looked less like a duchess and more like the daughter of a merchant—one of middling success who probably didn’t leave his daughter with enough money in her reticule that she was worth the trouble of robbing.
This was perfect. And in the event that any miscreant failed to be deterred, her reticule contained a handy little knife for personal defense.
“You look very nice,” her maid said, sounding like the words tasted sour.
“Thank you,” Phoebe said graciously, stifling her laughter. It felt good to be dressed like this. It felt good to laugh.
Who needed men?
Excepting, of course, for the acrobatic fellows she’d be watching on stage. Obviously. Those men could stay.
It was late by the time she started down the stairs to where the carriage she had summoned was waiting. Too late, apparently, because just as she was wrapping her cloak around her shoulders, the door opened—
And in walked her husband.
When a man came home late in the night after slipping out alone, leaving his wife unaware of his whereabouts, Phoebe expected that man to smell of liquor. Possibly cheap perfume.
And there was technically a faint whiff of ale about her husband’s clothing, but mostly, he smelled of his own soap with a hint of something rich and warm like stew.
“Where have you been?” she demanded before she thought better of it, given that she herself was about to head out somewhere that she did not care to disclose.
And as predicted, Aaron looked back at her with the same question in his eyes.
“Never mind about me,” he said. “Where do you think you are going?”
She resented this. It wasn’t fair. He could brush off her question—after avoiding her for days—but she was supposed to account for her comings and goings?
No. It was hypocrisy of the highest order. She wouldn’t stand for it.
“Oh, now you’re curious?” she asked archly. “How novel, given that I haven’t seen hide nor hair of you in days.”
“Phoebe,” he said in his forbidding ducal tone.
“Aaron,” she replied, not bothering to hide her mockery.
He scowled.
She copied him.
It was childish, certainly, but her options at the moment were either to be childish or to demand to know why he didn’t want her, and that latter choice would be embarrassing for everyone involved and would likely involve tears.
So, childishness it was.
“Phoebe, what do you think you are doing?” he asked when she returned to fastening the ties on her cloak.
“I’m going out,” she said.
It probably made sense that Aaron was unaccustomed to being disobeyed, what with his whole determination to turn everything into a military excursion, but—as Phoebe had said many, many times—she was not a soldier.
To really punctuate this point, she swept past him and out the door that was still gaping open after his arrival. He looked at her, visibly astonished, but he made no move to stop her.
She made it halfway down the walk—and would have gotten farther if she hadn’t needed to exercise caution due to all the ice—when he came to his senses and caught up with her.
“Phoebe, you can’t just walk away,” he said, overtaking her and standing in front of her to block her path.
She stepped around him. It caused the lingering snow to crunch up and get inside her boots, which meant she’d suffer from cold, wet feet later, but it was worth it.
“I think,” she said, “that you will find that I can.”
The coachman stood at the side of the carriage, hovering and clearly uncertain about how to navigate this disagreement.
Phoebe took pity on him and reached out to open the carriage herself.
The coachman instinctively took a step forward to help her clamber up into the conveyance, then, at a quelling look from the Duke, stepped back just as hastily.
No matter. Phoebe was wearing extremely practical clothing. She could climb.
“Phoebe!” her husband protested as she did precisely that.
Phoebe wasn’t a fool. She knew that her odds of convincing the coachman to actually drive away with her in the back were low. Vanishingly low. She also knew that asking the coachman to openly defy his employer would be both unkind and ineffectual.
But sometimes a woman had to take a stand. And this seemed like her moment.
She sat in the back of the carriage and stubbornly crossed her arms over her chest.
And then she gasped when Aaron climbed right in after her and pulled the door shut behind him.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
This time, he was the one mimicking her; he crossed his arms and looked stubbornly at her.