Chapter 21 #2
So she went where he indicated, tucking her skirts around her without trying to seem as though she was avoiding touching him. Touching, however, always led them to… other things, and while she enjoyed those things immensely, they never seemed to solve anything.
Instead, she only got more confused every time.
He didn’t speak at first. When he did, he was looking down at his hands. Phoebe had to focus hard on not thinking about those hands felt against her—inside her.
“Thank you,” he said eventually.
Her head jerked up in surprise.
“For what?”
His smile was rueful, but it was still almost breathtakingly lovely. His smiles always were. It was like someone had peeled away the outer shell of him to reveal the man beneath. She wished he wouldn’t hide that truth inside so much of the time.
“For being kind to Clio,” he said. “I daresay she would have enjoyed it much less if she had returned to England only to be trapped with only me in a house for days on end. You’ve made her return so much more pleasant. And she’s told me that she already regards you as a sister.”
“I feel the same about her,” Phoebe said. “But—I don’t think you’re right about her being unhappy if it was just you here. You do realize that she loves you, right?”
He looked like these words hurt him more than a jab from any kind of blade.
“I know,” he said, the words quiet. “Likely more than she should.”
It was Phoebe’s time to feel a jolt of pain. She hated that he felt that way. Why did he feel that he didn’t deserve something as simple as a sister’s love?
She decided that the risk of speaking was less than the dangers of remaining quiet.
“Aaron,” she asked, reaching out to touch his hand, forgetting her fear that touching him would make her lose her head. “Why do you do that?”
He at least had the grace not to pretend he didn’t know what she meant.
“Phoebe,” he said, shaking his head minutely. “Don’t. Please.”
“I don’t understand,” she lamented, throwing up her hands in exasperation. “You act as though you’re hiding a sin from the world, but it’s the opposite. Why do you hide your goodness?”
He flinched—outright flinched—at that.
But Phoebe still could not hold back.
“The soldiers at the rehabilitation home—they told me that you pay for the whole place,” she told him fiercely.
“They told me that their previous place was terrible, and that even then, they were in constant peril of losing it. They told me that you gave them security that they otherwise would have lacked.”
“It was the least I could do,” he said. “Those men… I led some of them into battle myself. And now, they are injured—some of them so desperately injured that they are entirely insensible to the world around them. And I—”
He cut off his speech and waved an arm around the splendor of the household.
“I have all this and an able body,” he said. “I would not blame them—not any of them—for loathing me for it.”
It gutted Phoebe how wrong he was.
“They don’t hate you, Aaron,” she said, and then, when he looked like he was going to object, she seized both his hands in hers and tugged until he looked directly at her. “They don’t. They told me. They admire you.”
He scoffed, but she wondered if that wasn’t hope in his eye, buried deep beneath the discomfort. “They would hardly say otherwise to my wife,” he objected.
She gave him a skeptical look. “They didn’t need to say anything at all. We were playing cards; I wasn’t precisely plying them for details. Any admiration they expressed, they did so of their own accord.”
He didn’t respond, though he squeezed her fingers in a seemingly frantic gesture.
She pushed. It was just who she was.
“Why do you hide your kindness, Aaron?” she asked quietly. “Why don’t you let anyone see it?”
This time, he jerked out of her grasp, his face twisting into an expression of anger, though it reminded Phoebe of the way a small, injured animal might hiss even as someone offered it aid.
“You do the same thing, you know,” he protested.
Ah. Just like the small animal, her husband had sharp teeth.
“I do not,” she protested.
“Oh, yes you do,” he countered, leaning in. “You act as though you are immune to the censure of others. You’re Phoebe Warson! You don’t care about the rules.”
She tensed at the sarcasm in his tone.
“I don’t,” she said. “I mean, there’s human decency, yes, but the arbitrary rules of Society? I don’t care about those.”
“Ah,” he said, holding a finger up between them. “But that’s not all you are, is it? There’s vulnerability beneath. And you hide that.”
She smacked his finger away, the insolent man.
“So what?” she demanded. “Everyone hides things.”
“But you,” he pressed, “are hiding that you’re afraid.”
She reared away from him. “I am not,” she protested, straightening her spine so that he wasn’t looming over her quite so. He gave her a smug, knowing look. “Fine,” she snapped. “But if I’m afraid, then you are, too.”
His protest was no more believable than hers.
“Me, afraid?” he dissembled. “I’ve been to war, Phoebe. I’ve seen men die in horrific ways. I’m not afraid of anything.”
“Nobody is immune to fear, Aaron,” she said, grabbing at his shoulder, preventing him from turning further away from her.
He didn’t resist her grip, but he didn’t give in, either.
“I am,” he said. “I have to be.”
Phoebe felt something inside her crumble, like it had been crushed inside a fist.
She stood, letting her hand fall from his shoulder.
“I don’t know why you bothered to marry me, then, Aaron,” she said, her voice sounding damp and desperate. “If you don’t need any help, and you don’t want any companionship, I don’t know what use I am to you. I’ll just go.”
She turned, feeling tears prickling at her eyes as she went. This did feel like a closing door after all, but she didn’t know how to keep it prised open. She didn’t know if she ought to even try.
And then, just as she could feel the last bits of hope dropping away, Aaron’s hand reached out and grasped her around the wrist.
She looked down at where he was touching her, then let her gaze travel up to his face. There was something… unprotected there. Something desperate and naked and—no matter what he protested—afraid.
That look settled something inside her. He might not know what to do any more than she did, but at least she wasn’t alone.
“Don’t you dare go,” he said.
He paused just long enough to confirm that she wasn’t still trying to get away from him.
She appreciated that more than words could say—and recognizing that made her wonder if perhaps she hadn’t been going about this all wrong.
Perhaps she had been wrong to try to force the words when words had never been the thing that worked between them.
He gave her one quick tug, and she went along. And then she was on his lap.
“Don’t go,” he said again.
“I won’t,” she told him.
And then he was kissing her, and at least for the moment, everything was right between them.