Chapter 22
“Joyce,” he said once he finally found her in the small sitting room she had claimed for her own. “We need to talk.”
Maxwell was not entirely sure where he had gone wrong, but as two more days passed and Thalia continued to barely acknowledge his existence, he knew where he could lay at least some of the blame.
She glanced up from the fashion plate she had been idly flicking through. “Can it not wait, Maxwell? I have an engagement in half an hour.”
“Your engagement will have to wait.” He closed the door and stared at her. Thalia had mentioned Joyce’s unhappiness, but he had never seen Lady Rivenhall as an unhappy woman so much as one determined to take as much from the world as she could.
Why Christopher had ever fallen in love with her, he didn’t know, but time and life changed people. That much, he could accept.
For Christopher’s sake, he had been civil and understanding, but that stopped now.
“What is this about?” she asked, managing to sound impatient and put-upon in his home, where he clothed and fed her and chaperoned her only daughter into Society as though she was his own.
For Lydia’s sake, he would do it all over again, but enough was enough.
“I know you’ve been speaking to my wife,” he said, pushing off from the door and stalking toward her.
"Well, of course I have. We live in the same house.”
“Don’t play games with me,” he snarled. “You’ve been speaking to her about our marriage.”
Joyce sniffed, her eyes narrowing as she looked up at him. “I hardly see what the fuss is about. I said nothing negative about you, you know.”
“No, you said that she ought to be grateful that I am not cruel to her, and that she ought not expect too much from me.”
“And is that wrong?” Joyce asked, cocking a brow.
“We both know you are not about to fall in love with the girl, and that was what she was hoping for. You have never been in such a position yourself, but you ought to know that a woman’s chances of happiness often depend entirely on a man.
It is all quite unfortunate, of course; that is the reality of things.
Her happiness depended on you loving her, and the poor girl deserved to know how things stood. ”
Rage boiled inside him. “I told her the way things stood,” he snapped. “And she would have been content with it, or so I hoped, until you came whispering these vile things in her ear. Our marriage is not the same as yours.”
“She was forced into it the same way I was.”
“You were pushed into a match with an older gentleman to preserve your reputation after you were heavy with my brother’s child.” His fists clenched, and he sucked in a breath, delving into the cold anger he had once been known for. “We both know the cases are different.”
“Are they? Do you think she will be happier with you than I was?”
“I do.” On this point, he was certain. “You presented her choices as being either to enter into a love match or be miserable for the rest of her life, but there can be nuance. A prospect you seem unable to grasp. Would Rivenhall have supported you and your art in this way if the tables had been turned?” When she didn’t answer, he pushed on. “What would he have done, Joyce?”
Her nostrils flared. “Does it matter?”
“It does when speaking about marital happiness. Tell me. Would I ever treat her the way he treated you?”
Joyce gritted her teeth, but he left the silence to grow until she finally muttered, “No.”
“And speaking of that. Why did you choose last night, when she needed support and encouragement and friendship, to tell her that she would never be happy with me? What would that achieve, by chance? Were you hoping to scupper the chances of my marriage before they even had a chance to begin?”
“Well, what were you thinking of marrying this Season anyway?” Joyce demanded, and the sudden volume of her voice made him start. She rose, though her nose only came to his chin. “You have a duty toward Lydia.”
“I haven’t forgotten my duty.”
“No, but now you have a wife—what if you have a child, Maxwell? What then? If Lydia doesn’t manage to marry this year—” Her voice cut out. “Next year, she will need sponsorship in London too. I can’t do it alone—we both know it. So, what then?”
A terrible thought occurred to him. “Did you know Thalia was Alessandro Rossi?”
Joyce’s face went carefully blank, and he knew he had his answer.
“Joyce,” he warned. “Think very carefully before you lie to me.”
“It was hardly a carefully kept secret, the way she swanned away to that man’s apartments every chance she had. I suspected when she gifted Lydia the sculpture, but I didn’t know for certain until I had her followed.”
Maxwell’s icy calm vanished, and he strode to her side, gripping her shoulder. “You betrayed her?”
“The world had a right to know. You had a right to know.” Joyce wrenched herself free again, but any anger she felt was nothing compared to the anger he faced. “How should I know that you had married her in the full knowledge that she would behave in a way that risked ruining us all?”
“You had no right,” he said, his voice quiet.
If he spoke any louder, he risked losing what little hold he had of his self-control.
“Oh, easy for you to say! You are a duke; your reputation is all but guaranteed. What about Lydia? You never once thought of her.”
“I came back because of her!” he snarled. “Otherwise, I might easily have spent months in the country acclimatizing Thalia to her new way of life as duchess.”
Months of the two of them, of the bliss they had experienced for those two short weeks. That would have been dangerous indeed for his heart, but compared to what he had faced subsequently, it felt like a lesser evil.
“We returned for Lydia’s sake. But even if I had not, you had no right to sabotage my life with my wife to what, turn her against me so we would have no chance of bearing children?
” He laughed bitterly; if Thalia’s present behavior was any indication, Joyce had succeeded in her intention, and it made Lydia no less likely to marry.
“If you had thought about your daughter at all, you would have let Thalia keep her secret,” Maxwell said as he turned away.
He’d had enough of the conversation—of her.
“Instead, you were so eager to destroy Thalia’s chance of happiness that you threatened to ruin Lydia’s chances, too.
That is not the actions of a loving mother. ”
“Wait, Maxwell.” Joyce’s righteous anger vanished as though it had never existed. “Wait, that is not what happened! I never wanted to ruin anyone’s chance of happiness. I thought you deserved the truth!”
“Then you could have told me privately.” He shook off her hand, looking into her stricken face and feeling no pity. “There were so many things you could have done, Joyce. But you chose to act against me, and for that, I can’t forgive you.”
“Please. Please.” Joyce sank to her knees, clasping her hands before her, the very picture of penitence. “Don’t tell Lydia. Please, Maxwell. Don’t take your revenge on her. She’s just a girl.”
“I am not you,” Maxwell said, his lip curling. “And I have no intention of harming someone innocent of all crimes.” He believed in Lydia’s wholehearted affection for Thalia; he would never have punished her. “But you and I both know you cannot stay here.”
Her face went pale. “What?”
“You heard me. I refuse to open my home to someone so vicious and underhanded. You wished to break my family apart—well, congratulations, you have managed it. Pack your bags. You are leaving tonight.”
“Leaving? Where to? You can’t send me away!”
“I can and I will. As for where—” He considered a moment. For Lydia’s sake, he would not toss her out into the street—but he would have done for Thalia’s sake. “I have a small house in Cornwall. You may retire there.”
“What about Lydia?” Joyce asked. “Tell me you won’t cast Lydia aside!”
There was a gasp from the doorway, and Lydia stormed into the room, her face bright with anger.
“If he did, it should be nothing more than you deserved,” she said. “Tell me you didn’t act to shame Thalia in front of the ton, Mama. Tell me you would never do that to someone I cared about!”
Joyce sat back on her heels and covered her face with her hands. “I wanted to spare you.”
“Spare me? By hurting my friend?” Lydia turned to Maxwell, tears brimming in her eyes. “I didn’t know, I swear.”
“I know.” Maxwell wanted to rage, but he couldn’t in front of Lydia.
Ghosts of his father’s presence in his life reminded him of all the things he might be if he were not careful.
“You may follow your mother if you wish, but you are more than welcome to stay here with me. I will see the remainder of the Season through with you, and if you do not marry, then you may return next year. And the next. Until you are married.”
Lydia’s breath caught, and she glanced at her mother. “And Mama?”
“She is not welcome in this home any longer,” Maxwell said, his voice hard.
“For your sake, I will not throw her out on the street, but mark my words, I do not take a betrayal of this kind lightly.” He glanced at Joyce, who shrank away.
“You did your best to harm my family. That is where your place in matters ends. Tell your maids to pack. I will arrange for a carriage; if you are not ready to leave by this evening, I will have you forcibly removed from the house.”
Unable to look at her any longer, he turned and strode from the room.
His gut churned with emotion. A desire to apologize to Thalia, even though it had not been his fault that this had happened. He had been the one to welcome Joyce into his home and bring Thalia into it.
When Joyce had been cold and unwelcoming, he’d demanded she be less so, but he had not looked any closer at the cause of her actions.
This was his fault. If not directly, then indirectly so.
But even as he strode through the house searching for her, he was unable to find Thalia anywhere. While he had been arguing with Joyce, she had gone.
The pillow still smelled of her. If he had been a different man, he might have inhaled her scent as though he could hold on to her a little longer. But he was not a different man. He was not a better man.
And he was terribly, horribly afraid he loved her.
Thalia perched in Simon and Anna’s drawing room, a cup of tea in her hands and an aching pit in her stomach. Ever since her confrontation with Maxwell, it had felt as though that pit only got larger. It consumed her waking hours, her thoughts, her dreams at night.
“Tell me again what he said,” Anna said, leaning forward and placing her hand over Thalia’s. “Are you telling me he said to your face that he would never love you?”
“He thinks I ought to be happy with the marriage we have,” Thalia said. “And some part of me wonders if he’s right. I am fortunate to have him as a husband—who else would have stood up for me with the sculpting?”
“Simon would have done,” Anna said instantly. “Wouldn’t you, Dear?”
“I would have done,” Simon said. “But I also love you.”
Thalia’s shoulders sank as she slumped further into the seat. Her tea trembled, threatening to spill everywhere.
“That’s the problem,” she whispered. “I just can’t accept a life with a man who will never love me. Even if he cares for me, even if he’s prepared to be selfless for my sake, it isn’t enough. Could you do it, Anna?”
Anna glanced at Simon, her expression contemplative, and Thalia read the answer there. No, Anna would never have consented to marry Simon if they had not fallen in love.
“The question is,” Anna said gently, “whether you love him.”
“Is a loveless marriage easier to bear if both parties do not love the other?”
“I think it might be,” Anna said. “At least it would be equal.”
There was nothing equal about Thalia’s marriage. And the problem was, she had started to fall for him long before they had ever gotten to this point. Really, she ought to have known that falling in love with him was unavoidable. And she ought, equally, to have known that he would not love her back.
He had never, at any stage, spoken to her about the prospect of love. Or children, even. She had assumed, given the way they had behaved after their marriage, that children were a certainty, but now she started to doubt it.
If he didn’t want her, did he want the children she would bear?
Logically, she supposed yes, but he had been all too eager to allow her access to the schoolroom at Marrowhurst Hall. Things were now at a point where she didn’t trust anything.
She no longer trusted him.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said. “How to be. Where to be. The house—it’s as though any time I leave my room, I may encounter him, and then I’m reminded of everything I can’t have, and—”
“Stay here,” Anna said, her hand still firm on Thalia’s. “As long as you need, you have a place here.”
Thalia’s nose stung. “Thank you. Truly. I know I ought to face the reality of my life, but… Not yet.”
“Not yet,” Anna agreed. “There may yet be a solution. You had a purpose before you married; you never even intended to marry before Marrowhurst came and asked you. So, can you return to that purpose? Your sculpting?”
Thalia put her head in her hands. “I can’t,” she said, her voice muffled by her fingers. “I wish I could, but I can’t. It’s like that part of my brain has just… quit. There’s nothing in me that wants to create. I just feel…”
Tired. And empty. Every day felt like going through the motions; instead of living, she was surviving, and there was no room for art there.
She had no desire to sit in her studio and sculpt. No desire to dip her hands in water and shape clay, or carve wood, or find release in any of the other mediums that had ruled her life for years.
All she wanted was Maxwell’s arms around her, reassuring her, telling her that he would be by her side forevermore, and they could overcome this.
But he wouldn’t say that because he didn’t love her. And he had vowed never to.
She ground the heels of her palms into her eyes until she saw stars.
“That’s all right,” Anna said gently, and Thalia could imagine her widening her eyes at Simon. There was a click as the door closed behind him. “You don’t have to sculpt, not yet. Artists sometimes put down their pen during periods of grief. This is the same.”
“I don’t understand why this has hit me so hard.” She curled into a ball on the sofa. “Why must love feel like this?”
“Oh, dearest.” Anna sank to the floor by Thalia’s side and wrapped her arms around her. “Love can be wonderful, I promise.”
“Then why can’t I have that? I was happy with my life before Maxwell came along.”
“Were you?” Anna asked softly, and Thalia couldn’t bring herself to answer.
Maxwell had taught her what happiness felt like.
And he had also taught her how much heartache could hurt.