Chapter 25
Aaron was not a man who faltered. When facing down imminent death, he did not falter. When his ship got stuck in ice for weeks and provisions ran low and tempers ran high, he did not falter. When he received a letter telling him that his brother was dead and the dukedom was his, he did not falter.
But when he returned to his house and found his wife, her face immovable and her posture rigid, directing a footman to transport a trunk of her things into the waiting carriage, he faltered. He balked. He froze.
A curious sensation overcame Aaron then. He became two men—one, the knowledgeable observer who knew that everything he was doing and saying was so bloody stupid that it frankly deserved an award for idiocy, and the second, who did the stupid thing anyway.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he asked, and the words were too harsh, the tone too harsh. He was meant to be making amends, not… this.
Phoebe turned to him, her face still as impassive as that of a statue.
“I needed some of my things,” she said as though this were any sort of explanation worth hearing.
The intelligent man in Aaron exhorted him to fall at her feet. To plead with her for forgiveness.
But the stupid man had spent years equating sternness with safety, and for much of the time, he’d been right.
In the Navy, showing weakness meant that his orders might not be followed, and that would get good men killed.
And in his childhood home, any faltering would be taken out of his hide by his father.
And God, it was so wretchedly hard to change.
Which meant that the ice was still in his voice as he raised his chin and glared down his nose at his wife, the woman who had not erred in this situation.
“You’ve decided to leave for good, then?” he asked.
There was a flicker of something in her expression. Aaron hated himself for the likelihood that it was hurt.
“I don’t know,” she said. He was so goddamned jealous of that honesty of hers. How did she do it when she, too, had been so regularly kicked down and cast aside by her family? “But, right now, I need to be around people who love me.”
He knew he flinched outwardly at that, but for some reason, the weakness he showed seemed to make Phoebe soften slightly rather than pounce upon him as others would have done—as others had done.
“Plenty of dukes and duchesses keep separate households,” she said tentatively, and the reasonable side of Aaron was practically screaming inside him now, shrieking with fury at how much he did not want that. “It won’t be a scandal.”
As though the scandal was his concern. It should have been, perhaps, but it wasn’t.
He remained silent, and after a beat, it was clear that this was a failure of some kind. Phoebe’s expression hardened again.
“If I learn that I am increasing, I will let you know,” she said icily, and this was another knife to the chest, the idea that she might be carrying his babe, their babe, and he would not be there to see her grow round, that he would not be there to comfort her through any illness that may arise, that he would not be there to hold her and marvel at the life they had created together.
Still, he could not find the right words.
She sighed, then lowered her gaze briefly before stepping around him to the carriage, which was now packed and ready. Through the noise in his skull, Aaron noticed that it was the Duke of Wilds’ carriage, and despite everything, he felt a flicker of relief.
At least she would be safe. Ariadne would take good care of her—maybe better care than Aaron could, given how wretchedly he was failing her right now.
As the footman handed her up, Phoebe looked over her shoulder at him.
She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again without speaking.
As the door closed behind her and she rode out of sight, leaving Aaron there like the complete wastrel that he was, standing blankly on his own doorstep, he found himself wondering furiously what it was that she had been going to say.
He probably would have taken himself inside to mope for a few days more—he was starting to truly believe that as far as civilian life went, moping might be the only thing he was good for—except the moment he crossed the threshold, he found his sister, standing in the foyer, her arms crossed and a ferocious scowl etched across her face.
“What,” she demanded in that needling sort of tone that only little sisters could ever access, “is wrong with you, Aaron?”
Aaron’s head was spinning so desperately that he could no longer tell if he was meant to be the knowledgeable elder brother in all this—if he was meant to pretend that everything was fine, that he had it all under control.
But everything was not under control, and he suspected that if he tried to play it off as such, Clio might kick him in the shins like she’d done when she was a child, and it was all just too much.
So, he answered honestly.
“So much.” He let out a bitter laugh at the relief of just telling the truth for once. “I’m… Christ, I’m not doing well at all.”
And finally—bloody finally—this was the right thing to say, because Clio stopped looking angry and started looking sympathetic.
She crossed to him and then must have accessed some sort of heretofore undiscovered feminine witchcraft because the next thing he knew, Aaron was sitting in his parlor with a cup of tea in his hands while a fire crackled merrily behind him.
“Right,” Clio said briskly. “Tell me what’s happened.”
So, for the second time that day, Aaron found the story spilling out of him.
“And now she’s gone,” he concluded when he got through the whole wretched ordeal. “And I feel… I feel—”
“I know exactly how you feel,” Clio interrupted quietly, “because it’s exactly how I felt when you sent me away.”
There wasn’t any judgment in her words, but Aaron found that the horrible acceptance was much, much worse.
“Clio,” he said, and the words came out like a plea, “I didn’t do it to hurt you.”
“I know,” she said simply. “I mean, I know now. At first, poor Great Aunt Mathilde had to listen to a lot of insults with your name tacked on the end. But eventually I realized that you weren’t trying to be cruel or dismissive. But that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt me,” she added with a pointed look.
“I was trying to protect you,” he explained, his tone no less desperate.
“I know,” she said.
“After the war, I was in no state…”
“I know.”
“I was so afraid that I would hurt you.” He sounded like he was begging now, though he couldn’t say what he was begging for. Her expression said that she was already offering forgiveness, no matter that he likely didn’t deserve it.
She reached out and put her hand on his arm. “Aaron,” she said, “I know. I know all of it. But it hurt anyway.”
His eyes fell shut.
“God, Clio,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
He felt the shifting of the settee as she moved closer to him, and then his teacup was removed from his hands. He let out a sigh of something like relief when his sister wrapped her arms around him.
“I know,” she said. “I’m not angry. I love you, Aaron.”
He laid his cheek against the top of her head, something he hadn’t done since she was a little girl who would sneak into his room when she’d had a nightmare and needed her big brother to fight away the ghosts.
“I love you, too,” he told her.
“I actually know that, too,” she said, the pert little sister back to the fore, and it was such a relief to hear her tease him that Aaron could have wept.
“Brat,” he said, shoving gently at her arm—though not so much that she couldn’t continue embracing him.
“You deserve it,” she declared, pinching him mercilessly on the arm. Her tone grew more measured. “I’m pleased that we had this talk, though. I think it was far overdue.”
“It was,” he agreed.
“But—” She pulled back so she could give him another stern look. “—you must know that the reason I was brave enough to bring it up was because of Phoebe.”
Aaron would not have said that he expected this turn in the conversation, but he did not necessarily register surprise when it happened.
“Clio,” he said tiredly.
She pinched him again.
“Don’t you Clio me,” she said, bold as brass. “I saw your whole exchange out there. It was a disaster!”
“You were spying on me?” He couldn’t quite muster the outrage he wanted to put into this sentence, and, indeed, Clio was markedly unimpressed.
“It’s hardly spying when you’re airing your business right on the front stoop for all of Mayfair to see,” she replied—which was irksomely fair. “And you were the one supposedly so afraid of a scandal!”
Aaron, lacking a better response, harrumphed.
And then, just as he had previously feared, his sister kicked him in the shins.
“Ow!” he protested.
“You deserved it,” she said, unrepentant. “It’s one thing for you to apologize to me for having such a massive stick up your arse—”
“Clio!” he exclaimed, genuinely shocked.
“If you didn’t want me to learn swears, you ought not have sent me to the Continent,” she informed him archly.
“They are far more liberal with what they say around young ladies. But to my point, you need to be honest with Phoebe. You need to explain that you’re being such a wretched ninnyhammer because you are afraid. ”
Aaron waited a moment for any instinctive denials that wanted to fly from his mouth. Surely, he should protest this. He had just told his sister that he had married Phoebe out of a plan to improve his reputation—and by extension, Clio’s prospects. Love was not involved in any capacity.
Except no such denials emerged from his lips.
“I think… I might love her,” he said wonderingly.
Clio rolled her eyes expansively. “God, men are so stupid,” she sighed to the ceiling as though praying for deliverance from such ineptitude. “Yes,” she continued, turning back to her brother. “Of course, you love her. You idiot.”
Aaron lacked any grounds to protest this near-constant stream of insults.