Chapter Thirty-Three
Time passed in a daze. Christiana made arrangements as though she were living in another’s body.
Hugh agreed that Amelia ought to stay home—Barnsley Hall was not an appropriate place for an unmarried woman.
However much Christiana disliked Miss Byrd and the manner by which she had attempted to force her will on Amelia, she had at least been right on this.
And more to the point, Christiana could not be certain that the house was in a condition to receive guests.
It would almost certainly not be.
Once that was done, she sat in the library with a cup of hot tea, the steam toying with her mouth and nose.
How ludicrous love could be. After all this time hating her father, the news of his imminent demise—something she had known would happen sooner rather than later—made her feel oddly untethered.
She hadn’t thought she loved him at all. Certainly, he had done nothing to deserve her love. If he were drowning, she could not be certain she would lend him a hand. Logic dictated that she should feel nothing for him.
Yet here she was, undoubtedly grieving.
With his last breath, he had requested she attend his bedside, and although she knew she ought to refuse, she couldn’t.
Love was foolish. It ate at reason and left her emptyhanded. She knew he would have nothing kind to say, yet hope had her praying he had repented.
The door opened and closed, and Hugh took the seat opposite. Unusually, he wore his mask, closing off half his expression. Unsettled, she frowned at it, and at the coldness of his eyes. He surveyed her for a long moment, and she waited for soothing words that never came.
Once, she might have been content with his silence, the companionship offered by his presence, but now it felt like salt rubbed into a fresh wound.
She didn’t want companionship—she wanted the deeper intimacy they had found over the past few weeks.
“Is everything ready for the journey tomorrow?” she asked.
He shifted in the chair. “I believe so.”
“Thank you for accompanying me. I know the timing is poor. We have made so many positive steps in the community, and I know we ought to make the most of that, but…” But she couldn’t think of that now. Her throat closed. “I’m sorry.”
“I know.” He sat still for a moment, then leaned closer, taking her hand in both of his. “What if this is another ploy from your father to gain your pity?”
“Mr. Stephens would not lie, Hugh. My father must be dying. And he must have asked for me. As to what his purpose might be in that… I don’t know.
But while he can have my pity, he will have nothing else from me.
” She squeezed his hands, hoping to convey everything that had built in her throat, impossible to say.
Just like when her thoughts were too much, racing and bouncing about her head, when she felt too much, the words wouldn’t come, either.
What a thing love was.
She loved her father when he didn’t deserve it. And she couldn’t bring herself to tell her husband how much he meant to her when no man deserved it more.
“My reasoning makes no sense even to me,” she whispered. “I thought I had discounted him from my life entirely. But knowing he is about to pass from this world to the next—if there is ever a chance of repentance, this is it. Can I really deny him that?”
Hugh’s eyes were sharp. “I would.”
“Yes, I know.” Her laugh quavered a little on the way out. “You despise him, and rightly so. But if there’s a chance, Hugh… I thought I could leave him to die in his own filth, but I can’t. And I would much rather have you with me.”
He turned her hand over so he could see her lifeline, the way it split halfway down. Christiana put no stock in such things, but for a second, she wondered if Hugh did.
“Why?” he asked quietly.
“Why what?”
“Why do you want me with you?”
“Why do you think?” She came closer, hesitating for a fraction of a second before climbing onto his lap the way she had so many times over the past two weeks.
Unlike ordinarily, however, he sat stiff underneath her, his arms not coming to twine about her the way she was accustomed to.
“Because you are my husband, Hugh, and that is what marriage is. Facing things together.” She made to take off his mask, but he stopped her with one hand.
“Not today.”
“Hmm?”
His grip on her wrist didn’t falter, and she frowned, looking into his eyes. “I would prefer to keep the mask on today,” he said.
“I prefer to see you without it.”
His fingers tightened, and he drew her hand away, placing it deliberately in her lap. “You should go to bed. The next few days will be trying.”
“Hugh—”
“We can talk when we return.”
“Talk about what?”
But he just shook his head, making her feel as though the last solid thing under her feet had abruptly fallen away. Her stomach swooped, and the rush of uncertainty that swept through her now felt even worse than the blow of hearing about her father’s impending death.
She had always had a father and always known that he would die at some point.
But she had not counted on a husband. She had never, not once, not in her whole life, thought she would have Hugh.
To have had him and then to feel him slipping through her fingertips was a fear she had never once had to combat.
“Hugh,” she said, her heart fluttering in her chest. “Tell me. Has my father—has that changed something for you?”
“No.” Although the word was gentle, there was still a finality to it. He had none of his customary softness; he was as remote and unobtainable as the duke she had first met in Mrs. Dove-Lyon’s study. “Go to bed, Chris.”
“Will you at least come with me?”
His gaze skipped across her features, and she wished she could understand what he saw in her face. Whatever it was, it compelled him to nod. “I’ll be up later. Don’t wait for me.”
She could have pushed harder. Demanded to know what it was he hid from her. His own pain, perhaps? Her father’s imminent demise reminded him of how it had felt losing his own parents. But why, then, did he push her away? Surely, if the news left him as raw as her, he would seek solace in her arms.
All she could do was give him the space he so clearly desired and leave him to his own devices. And hope, desperately, with everything she had in her, that the conversation he deemed so important for them to have did not involve her leaving and living elsewhere the moment her father passed on.
When Christiana awoke, Hugh had already risen and was straightening his cravat in the mirror.
Roberts had already departed, the closing of the door the thing that must have woken her.
He was, once again, wearing his mask. She had vague memories of him coming to bed sometime in the early hours, but he showed no signs of exhaustion.
She propped her elbows against the pillows as she watched him.
A few seconds ticked by before he noticed she was awake in the mirror, and he turned, giving her a clear view of the reserve in the set of his mouth.
With his mask on, there was so little of his face visible to give her clues about his mood, and she hated it.
“You’re up,” he said by way of greeting. “I’ll call Baxter for you.”
“Wait, Hugh—”
He left the room and closed the door with a click behind him.
Christiana put her face in her pillow and screamed.
When Christiana dressed and came downstairs for breakfast, Hugh explained that he had arranged for two carriages to convey them to her father’s home.
She would go ahead with Baxter, and he would follow more slowly behind her.
That way, she would reach her father faster and he would have the liberty to take the time required for his burns.
“It feels like the best compromise for us both,” he said, the words perfectly neutral.
Her heart sank. “So we would not arrive together?”
“I fear if you wait for me, you may miss him entirely. The journey is already a long one.”
Logically, it made perfect sense. Two months ago, she would have suggested the same. But now, she felt irrationally as though he were establishing distance between them, no doubt in preparation to send her to live in her father’s house when the time came.
“Oh,” she managed. “Of course.”
He strode from the room, organizing the servants placing the luggage on the roofs of the carriages.
Amelia came to stand behind her, watching Hugh with the same contemplative expression. “He gets like this sometimes. Don’t think too much of it.”
But he has never been this way with me.
The words wouldn’t come; they felt too petty.
“Did I do something to make him think ill of me?” she asked.
Outside, Baxter handed a small carpetbag to a footman, who placed it securely on the luggage rack. Hugh strode through the chaos, giving them all instructions.
“Not that I know of,” Amelia said. “The dinner was a success, and he has been happier over the past month than I can recall him being.”
Christiana blushed a little, but the pleasure faded at the thought of the way Hugh had looked at her that morning.
Had her father’s death really changed so much?
Or perhaps her insistence on going had. He would never have chosen to. Did he resent her for wanting him with her?
“He’s going to Yorkshire for you,” Amelia said, knocking her elbow against Christiana’s arm. “For Hugh, that’s an act of love.”
“I asked him to.”
“He assumed he would be,” Amelia said. “And then asked if you wanted him to. I was there, remember? Believe me, that says volumes.”
What also said volumes was the way he wouldn’t look at her. The way he hadn’t kissed her.
The mask he wore so steadfastly on his face. All the progress they’d made, and it was as though they had gone back to the very beginning.
“He said he wanted to speak to me about something when we got back,” Christiana said, then she shook her head. Why was she confiding in Amelia, anyway? The girl had an agenda of her own; she would hardly be impartial. “Never mind. I’m sure everything is fine.”
“I can speak with him,” Amelia suggested. “There’s a good chance he’s just being a big, strong man who doesn’t realize he’s behaving like a—”
“No,” Christiana said hastily. “Really, there’s no need.”
“He’s my brother. And if he’s being a pig, I ought to speak to him about it.”
Christiana sighed, but all too soon, it was time to leave. Hugh clasped her hand, wearing his gloves once more, and she thought she saw a spark of earnestness in his eyes behind his mask. “Safe travels,” he told her, and she believed he meant it.
When this was over, she would get to the bottom of whatever this was.
There were eyes on them, which was why Christiana didn’t lean up for a kiss. That, and she wasn’t sure he would kiss her back. That would be a blow her heart would not be able to handle. And so she merely squeezed his fingers in silent thanks as he handed her into the carriage.
“See you soon,” she said to him, then leaned past him to Amelia. “I’ll be home soon. Goodbye!”
Home. The word had left her lips before she could stop it, and Hugh’s expression had gone blank as he stepped back.
The coachman flicked his whip, and the horses lurched into motion.
Christiana sat back in her seat, feeling as though she were leaving part of herself in the house that faded from view.
Strange, how she had never felt that way leaving her father’s home, no matter how much she’d thought she loved the old house.
“Well,” Baxter said comfortably, settling in the other seat with an air of finery. “Don’t look too concerned, Your Grace. I’m sure we’ll see your father soon.”
Christiana nodded, unable to find any words.
Baxter meant well, but Christiana was on the receiving end of her father’s cruelty without the in-built love that came from sharing blood.
Her father had engineered his life so that the only person who might mourn his passing was the person who had no choice about it; biology, not logic, dictated that part of her still cared for him.
And how she wished she didn’t.