Chapter 15 #3
Aidan rolled his shoulders, wincing at the soreness that gripped him still, no doubt intensified by the tension strung tight through his frame as he calculated how he might ever make amends to his bride.
“But why?” he asked, voice hoarse with weariness. “Why are you doing all this?”
Smythe rose, pushing his chair back with a soft scrape of mahogany on carpet. Clasping his hands behind him, he moved to the fireplace and stared into the cold hearth, where only the charred remnants of earlier warmth lingered.
“My estate income was declining. When I inherit the title from my brother … he is a man stuck in the past. His estates are out of date, run with the same methods as our father and our grandfather before him. The Americans have unlimited lands for growing and export. I have seen the future, and it is grim unless I take steps to build a secure future for my son. Gareth will have nothing left unless I take action.”
At the mention of Gwen’s younger brother at Eton, everything fell into place for Aidan. The driving ambition Smythe had exuded on their wedding day was not mere personal ambition. It had been desperation. A frantic need to secure Gwen’s future before society caught wind of his commercial ventures.
“You wanted Gwen married before word spread.”
Smythe turned from the hearth, his familiar grin flickering back into place. “Precisely! She is now the wife of a future viscount, allied by marriage to the Earl of Saunton and the Duke of Halmesbury. My daughter is somebody now. The haut ton will not dare ridicule her again.”
Aidan frowned. “Ridicule her? What are you talking about?”
And then Smythe told him.
Of how Gwen, shattered by her mother’s death, had been sent to school.
A decision Smythe had believed to be sound, thinking the company of other young ladies would help his daughter heal.
But grief, paired with Gwen’s height, her freckles, her quiet and bookish nature, had made her an easy target.
The other girls, cruel in the way children often are, had taunted her mercilessly.
Letters home had not given away the truth, for Gwen had borne her torment in silence, determined not to trouble her grieving father.
It was not until she returned for good, two years later, that the truth emerged. But by then, the damage had been done. Those very same girls made their curtsies during Gwen’s first Season. And society, following their lead, had found Gwen odd, unfashionable, and altogether too peculiar.
“Year after year, she faced their disdain,” Smythe said, his voice rough. “Their whispers. Their smirks. And always, she smiled. Always, she endured.”
Aidan sat back, stricken. It was so easy to look at Gwen and see fire, spirit, intelligence. He had never realized how much of that courage had been forged in loneliness.
And now … now she believed he had married her not for who she was but as part of a scheme.
He closed his eyes, despair threatening to drag him under once more.
“She must think I am just another one of them.”
Smythe gave a solemn nod.
“Gwen is a lovely girl,” he replied softly.
“And the elder matrons of the ton have long adored her, though the young wretches who followed the schoolroom herd were less kind. When you declared yourself overcome and offered marriage, I thought … this was her chance. To finally become the woman she was meant to be. To rise above the barbed whispers. The doubt.”
He paused, eyes searching Aidan’s face. “Tell me true … did you lie? Did you marry her only to investigate me?”
Aidan’s breath caught, the weight of shame as heavy as a wagon of stones.
Gwen. His brilliant, kind, whip-smart Gwen.
He had seen her strength but had not grasped the wounds she carried, the years of solitude and whispered cruelty that had shaped her quiet resolve.
And now … this. His betrayal must have ripped the scab from every one of those old wounds.
How deeply she must be hurting.
He clenched the arms of the chair. “Never. Gwen was never a scheme. She was the unexpected gift the Fates bestowed upon me. The moment I saw her in your receiving line, I was struck dumb. And when she quoted Manilius, I knew—I knew—I had found the other half of my soul.”
Smythe huffed a mirthless laugh. “Aristotle.”
Aidan smiled faintly. “I was thinking Plato, but Aristotle would agree.”
Silence stretched between them for a moment, thick with the memory of what had passed and what must now be mended.
“Are we settled, then?” Smythe asked. “You are convinced I am not a murderer?”
“I believe Gwen implicitly,” Aidan said. “But I also received confirmation from one I trust.”
Smythe nodded slowly. “Then we are in a fine pickle indeed. Gwen has always harbored a skeptic’s soul when it comes to her own appeal. You will find that convincing her of your sincerity now will be no easy task.”
Aidan leaned back, exhausted. His bruises throbbed, but it was the ache in his heart that all but unmanned him. “She is more than I deserve after the havoc I have wrought.”
Smythe lifted a brow. “That is the lot of all men where their wives are concerned. But you must find a way to restore her trust. She needs to know that you are, in fact, the man you seemed to be.”