Chapter 17
P ortia sat at the breakfast table trying not to cry.
This was not at all how she’d imagined marriage would be. Not even to Rufus, who she had known might prove a bit difficult. But something had happened on the day of their wedding. She’d begun to witness his withdrawal, even at their wedding breakfast and then later in the evening.
Oh, he’d made wonderful love to her, and he continued to do so every night. But he was like two people, someone who could show passion and kindness under the light of the moon. But then, when day came, he was someone else entirely. Someone she barely knew. Certainly not the man who had jested with her and stolen kisses.
But whoever this Rufus was, he had been forged a long time ago. She could feel the pain and intensity of it. A pain he tried to hide.
She was trying her best to be the sort of duchess he wanted, but it was not easy, because what he had said he wanted and what he actually wanted seemed to be two different things.
He wished for someone to run his social calendar, which, of course, she could do. But he also seemed to wish her to be rather unexciting while doing it. He gave her tasks every day, things to get done, and gave very little allowance for her own ideas about things.
He’d said he would let her be herself.
Why had he retracted, trying to make up for it with gifts that arrived from Bond Street almost daily?
She knew why, or at least she thought she did. Sometimes it was impossible for people to change even if they wanted to. This Rufus that was with her? It wasn’t a new Rufus. It was the old Rufus. Who he had been before he met her.
And she had been a fool. She should have listened to Nestor and to Calchas. They’d said he was boring with everyone, and she’d assumed that because he was different with her, that he would be different when they married.
It was as if once he’d caught her, he’d felt he could return to the person he must have always been.
“Don’t cry.”
She wiped her eyes fast.
“Margery,” Portia said, “do come in.”
Margery slipped into the breakfast room and sat down beside her, then took her hand in hers. “You mustn’t cry. You’re the happiest person I know.”
Portia laughed ruefully, horrified to realize she had not felt happy in some time. “Well, even happy people cry, Margery. Remember what we told you?”
“Yes, but this is different, isn’t it?”
Hot tears slipped down her cheeks. “Yes, it is. I confess I did not anticipate this.”
“Maybe I should have warned you,” Margery whispered, sympathy softening her gaze, “but I hoped… He seemed so happy with you. He seemed as if he was letting all of it go.”
“Letting all of what go?” she asked. She had to know. She had to understand because she did have a suspicion. These last days she had felt odd. Different. Her body changing as if it had suddenly taken a new course.
And if what she thought was true, she couldn’t abandon the Rufus who had loved her. She needed to make sense of it all.
“Papa,” Margery confessed, looking ashamed as she did so. “I don’t think you know what Papa was truly like. I don’t think anybody on the outside could know. He terrorized my brother.”
“Terrorized?” she echoed, her throat tightening with dismay. “What do you mean?”
“Anytime he stepped out of line, Papa beat him or had him beaten. Sometimes he withheld food from him. He kept him alone, away from anyone, and he certainly wouldn’t let him speak to or be kind to any person who was deemed lesser. And when one is a duke, everyone is lesser.”
And Portia realized that was what he had meant by beneath him . “He doesn’t think he’s better than anyone else, does he?” she asked softly.
Margery shook her head vehemently. “No. He never has and never will. But you have to understand there were consequences whenever he tried to associate with anyone who was deemed—”
She cut in. “Lesser.”
“Yes.”
“Well, that would explain him this morning.”
“What do you mean?” Margery asked.
She drew in a long breath, hating how pain could shape people. How memory could control and destroy. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen it. She’d seen it almost destroy love before. She’d been a girl, and her dear cousin Jean-Luc had been beset by memories of the French Terror and all the family he’d lost. He’d almost thrown love away, but she had reminded him how brave he needed to be.
She held Margery’s hand and explained as her emotions got the better of her. For she hated how so many bore their suffering without kindness or help. “I asked him to come to the East End to meet some children there, interact with them, and told him that perhaps one day our children could do the same.”
Margery flinched. “He tried that as a child. I only heard about it, you see, because our tutor would mock him for it and how foolish he had been. How ridiculous it had been to wish to associate with boys from the village. And every time my brother got a little bit out of line, his tutor would warn him that he would have to do again what he’d done that day. So, my brother learned very well to stay alone, to stay away from others, and to not talk with anyone who was not someone our father allowed. He doesn’t know how to let anyone in, but it’s not his fault,” Margery lamented as her own eyes filled with tears. “He was literally punished anytime he tried. And it was only after my mother’s and father’s deaths that he took care of me as best he could. He has been so kind, and yet he was hurt so deeply, perhaps irreparably. I don’t know if he can ever show the sort of affection that you wish. It was all but beaten out of him.”
“What have I done?” Portia whispered, thinking of how she’d just pushed him and assumed the worst about him.
“You’ve chosen hope,” Margery said. “I chose it too when I didn’t warn you, and I’m so sorry. But perhaps you could choose hope still?”
“I’ll always choose hope,” she whispered. “But…I don’t know—”
“He’s married you, and he’s gone back to who he was before, but perhaps he doesn’t have to,” argued Margery, holding tight, leaning in as if her brother’s life depended on it. “Perhaps you could stop him. Perhaps you could find a way to make him see.”
Perhaps she could. For such isolation and so much suffering could not be good for him. No one could isolate themselves from others for all their life without ill effect.
She fiddled with her teacup.
Was she made of such weak stuff that she would give up after but a few weeks? She thought of her grandmother, who had pulled herself up from the gutters of London to become a duchess. She thought of Jean-Luc, who had chosen love over his nightmares.
She thought of her family, who never let anyone fall.
Rufus was her family now, and she was not about to let him fall. Certainly not because of his dead father and all the rules and cruelty that had entrapped him.
No, she was going to do what she should have done from day one. She was going to bring in the Briarwoods, and that would change everything. It always did.