34. CHAPTER 34
A fter returning to his bedroom last night, he had sat by the fire until four. Then he had washed and dressed without waking his valet and gone down to the study to do the only thing he knew how to do when he could not manage the rest of his life, which was to work.
He was on his third dispatch of the morning when he heard the door.
He didn't need to turn to know it was his wife. He knew the cadence of her steps. She came in and closed the door behind her without a sound. She was holding the diary.
"I have read it," she said.
He set the pen in its rest and turned.
She had dressed and pinned her hair. Her eyes were red-rimmed but clear. The evidence that she had been crying stared at him, stabbing at his heart.
"I assumed."
She came around the desk and sat in the chair by the window.
"Talk to me. Why did you stop trying?"
He had known this was coming. He had rehearsed, through the small hours, what he would say, and had abandoned every version.
He stood and went to the window. Better to observe the gray sky and dripping garden outside than to face her.
"You nearly died the third time," he said. "The bleeding would not stop. The doctor administered ergot of rye every quarter of an hour, and still it would not stop. He was there for nine hours. I held your hand and — "
He stopped. Prayed was not the right word. What he had done that night was the kind of bargain men made when they had nothing left to spend but themselves.
"And what?" she asked.
"And I bargained with God." It came out flatter than he meant. "I promised Him I would never let it happen again if He would only spare you this once."
The small rustle of her skirts and the movement of the fire in the grate were the only sounds in the room. She would not interrupt him until he finished. He breathed into the silence, gathering his thoughts.
"I looked at you in that bed and I decided I would not risk your life again."
The sparrows on the railing flew off in a small gray burst.
"My mother died in childbirth. You know that. My father never recovered. A year later, almost to the day, he put a pistol to his head."
He heard her breathing change behind him.
"I was seventeen. I inherited a dukedom and a ten-year-old sister, and an understanding that has never left me. Love without control is a loaded gun. My father proved it. I have spent every year since making certain I would not prove it again."
He heard her move. He didn't look.
"Val."
"Do not pity me, Vivi." He said it more harshly than he meant. "I'm not telling you this to earn your pity, but to help you understand my motives."
"It isn't pity. What I'm offering is empathy."
She crossed the room and stood behind him. He didn't turn around.
Her hand came to rest against his back, between his shoulder blades. Flat. Warm.
"You decided alone," she said. "And you have carried it alone.
Val, it is not yours to carry. I was the one who bled.
I was the one whose body did the losing.
You made a decision about my body in my name while I was unconscious, and you have kept that decision for ten years, and never once let me in to discuss it. "
"I know."
"It has to stop."
"I know."
She exhaled. Then her hand left his back, and he missed it at once.
She came round to stand beside him at the window and looked out at the same gray landscape he had been looking at.
"I still want a child."
"I know," he said.
"No, you do not. You think I want a child because women want children, because I saw you with Abigail's little girl yesterday, because the diary told you so ten years ago. Maybe those were the reasons then. They are not my reasons now."
He turned his head and looked at her profile.
"I spent seven years on Guernsey," she said. "Seven years with no past, no name, no family of my own. Do you know what I wanted most in those seven years?"
"To remember? To regain your life? Your past, your history? At least those are the things I would want."
"Yes, remembering, of course. But not just for the sake of remembering.
I wanted to belong. I wanted a child." Her voice did not rise.
It only thickened. "I wanted someone who was mine.
Mine by blood. Bone of my bones. And that wanting was so strong that I agreed to marry a man I didn't love because I thought he could give me something that would look enough like a family to fill the hole. "
He had known she had almost married the doctor. He had not known why. He had assumed it was loneliness, the reasonable calculation of a woman who had been alone for too long. He had not understood that she had been trying to make out of her own body what had been taken from her.
He understood it now.
"That ache did not go when you brought me to Penrose," she said. "It is still here. And it is not a whim, Val."
"But if I lost you again — " he began .
"I know what I'm asking, and I know what it costs you. But I'm not your mother. And you are not your father. You don't need to save me from myself. I deserve to choose."
He held his silence because there was nothing he could counter. She was right about deserving to choose. But it had never been about that. Not that he thought her undeserving. Never that. The problem was his fear of losing her. He was doing it for her own good.
Hubris, just as she had accused him.
He closed his eyes.
"Everyone knows a man in your position needs an heir to carry on the family name."
"Carrying on the title is not more important than your life and health."
"It is a peer's wife's duty to provide an heir. If I can't do that, I don't deserve to be your wife or a duchess."
"That is not true, and that is not why I married you."
"Why did you marry me, then? You must have known that children could be a natural consequence of marriage. At some point, you must have wanted them."
He turned away, circling the room, fidgeting as he weighed her question.
"Nobody knows this, but when I decided to marry, I made a list of requirements that any potential bride needed to meet."
"A list?"
"That is how I like to approach everything in my life. Establish the desired outcome. Analyze the steps to get there. Calculate the risks and benefits. Trace a course."
He moved to the fireplace. Leaned back against it and crossed his arms. "I needed two things from a wife. An heir, of course. And also someone who could guide my sister in society, as Venus was of an age to make her debut."
"So you admit you need an heir."
"Yes, but my list included very specific requirements in order to meet my goals.
I needed a woman who had experience navigating the ton.
A widow. One who had already borne children successfully, to minimize that risk.
She needed to be young enough to still be of childbearing age, but not too young as to be inexperienced. "
"That seems… very calculated. Did you think I met your requirements?"
"Quite the opposite, Vivi. You did not meet a single one of them."
She inhaled.
"You were too young, merely two years older than my sister.
Never married, never borne children. Well-born, yes, but from a Scottish family, and with no experience of London society.
Instead of poised, vivacious. Instead of well-versed in the rules of polite society, you were well-versed at thumbing them. "
Shock. Hurt. He would never forget the wounded expression in her hazel eyes.
"But that is not criticism," he hastened to explain. "More like proof of what you mean to me."
"Why did you choose me, then?" she asked, and her voice wobbled the slightest bit on the last word.
"I chose you because from the moment I met you, I could not even look at another woman, much less contemplate marrying one. You were all I wanted. Everything I thought I needed flew out the window, and I knew I had to have you and no other."
"So you married me against your better judgment," she whispered. "No wonder I have failed so miserably at being your wife. I was never qualified for the position."
"Vivi, no. That is not what I meant. That is, in fact, the opposite of what I meant. I don't regret marrying you. I would choose you every day for the rest of my life. Why do you think I never remarried in all these seven years when I thought I was a widower?"
"I don't understand."
"What I'm saying is, every action has consequences. Whatever we choose, there are trade-offs. I choose you. If that means I must sacrifice having an heir, it is a sacrifice I am willing to make. We cannot have it all."
"You say love is sacrifice, then. "
"No. Love is an indulgence. For which we have to sacrifice something else."
"But you are asking me to make that sacrifice as well, and I refuse to make it. I refuse to give up my dream until I am convinced there is no other way."
He had known she would not give up the fight.
"What do you want me to do?" he said.
"I would have a doctor examine me."
"Now you want to see a doctor."
"I heard Abigail recommend her accoucheur to Alice.
She said he is one of the best in London.
He should be able to tell us whether my body can carry a child.
A medical opinion, Val. An answer you cannot control.
Not your fear. Not a decision you made in grief ten years ago.
I'm not asking for the child tonight. I'm asking for the information.
Before we decide anything, we should know what it is we are deciding about. "
He opened his eyes.
It was a smaller request than he had braced for. It was, in fact, the smallest request a woman could make of a husband in her position. She was not asking him to risk her. She was asking him to consent to an unbiased conversation about risk.
And still the refusal rose in him. Almost instinctive by now. He didn't let it pass his throat.
"Yes. I will agree to talk to a doctor. I will take you to any physician you choose and hear what he says. I can't promise more than that today, Vivi, and will not lie to you. But that much I do promise."
She reached up and placed her hand flat against his chest, over his heart.
He didn't know what his heart was doing. He knew only that she could feel it, because her fingers moved, as if she wanted to soothe it.
"Thank you," she said.
He covered her hand with his own.
He understood, even as he held her hand against him, that this was not an end. The examination would produce an answer. The answer, whatever it was, would require him to make another decision. That decision would be harder than this one, and he was not yet sure whether he could make it .
He had said yes because she had asked. Not because his fear had diminished.
Or because he expected to change his mind.