Chapter Two #2
Good Heavens. Were they discussing the ceremony?
She feared not.
Would every discussion with him be this fraught?
Because the conversation was embarrassing, and the weight of everything they weren’t saying was bearing hard against her chest.
If this was to be her conversational lot, she would be taking breakfast in bed for a lifetime.
*
Lud.
While Harbury knew he’d never been the best of conversationalists, he hadn’t felt this inept in decades. He felt as if he were shrinking back into the child he’d once been.
He may be sitting at the table’s head, but, if he glanced down, he half expected he’d see short pants hugging legs too small to reach the floor.
Reflexively, he wiped the back of his knees, surprised when his hand met leather.
He could have sworn sweat was making them stick uncomfortably to mahogany.
His mind spasmed with the same old disorientation, just as if he were a boy again and the other empty chairs contained his mother, his father and his sister Sarah.
He felt the resurgent, maddening inability to enter a conversation flowing as smoothly and naturally as the stream cutting through the home wood’s northwest corner.
How had the rest of his family always known just what to say to one another, just when to drop in the amusing anecdote, while he had never been able to form the proper words?
Whenever he’d tried to venture something important—birdsong he’d identified or a passage in a book he’d enjoyed—his father had scowled. In fact, he’d never had a conversational ally at the table until late adolescence, when Adrian had come to live in the household.
But Adrian was no longer here, neither in the distant past, nor as he had been just yesterday.
Harbury’s own fault, too.
He’d planned everything so all their guests would leave just after the celebration. Without the Wainwright girls’ incessant, mystifying chatter, he’d hoped a comfortable pattern of civility might slide into place between himself and his wife.
After all, Cassandra had been easy to talk to when they’d been “courting,” even if the “courtship” had, at the time, been a pretense to satisfy her godmother’s concern for her reputation.
Had her gentleness then also been pretense?
Or was her awkwardness now the anomaly?
He’d wager his last pence her gentleness had been sincere. Before, she’d had no expectations of him. But now…
Well, if she had expectations, he’d clearly failed to measure up.
He’d thought marriage would make him feel like the man he should be.
Instead, his current experience was quite the opposite.
And he’d no idea how to go about building a bridge between a present he hadn’t expressly wanted and a future in which he might take pride.
Every future he’d imagined had always contained Viv.
Vivianne’s first marriage, he’d forgiven. His father had been at fault, then—no one ever defied the prior duke, least of all a penniless governess turned companion. But the man his father had forced her to wed had been of his father’s generation, and he’d thought…
Well, it didn’t matter what he’d thought now. Everything had changed.
Who was this lady sitting across from him?
Somewhere beneath this cold, prickly version of Cassandra, the girl with the gentle, lulling smile must still exist, unless last night had altered the terms of their “marriage in name” agreement in a way that made her impossible to reach.
Last night…
A subtle shudder sped down his spine.
Last night the pleasure—no, the ecstasy—had been beyond anything he could have imagined…certainly beyond those occasions when he’d been brought to release before by his own hand, or even Viv’s.
The profound impact of his first complete carnal encounter had been almost enough to counterbalance the humiliation of being ordered from his wife’s chamber. He couldn’t bring himself to be angry. After all, he’d made her cry. But before…
Ah, before.
He closed his eyes, remembering the feel of her hands against his back, light as a swarm of summer butterflies. Her curves had been soft wonder, the tickle of her breath against his neck, sublime, and entering her welcoming heat, indescribable bliss.
He nearly groaned aloud.
He opened his eyes to find she’d stopped chewing. She pursed her lips and swallowed roughly. Her cheeks rosed.
She must have read his naked want, the residue of recollections making him both uncomfortably warm and halfway to being hard.
Good.
Despite her anger, she was not immune to him.
And he wasn’t going to let her forget the part she’d played in the events that had landed them here.
She could have found another man to marry after his “interest” repaired her reputation, but she had proposed to him.
So, some small part of her must have wanted him—even if, like himself, she hadn’t anticipated the consequences of her decision.
“You remember our agreement?” Harbury asked, his voice carefully neutral.
Cassie’s cup of chocolate paused halfway to her lips. He didn’t think her deepening blush was the sole result of rising steam.
“Of course.” She set down the drink. “The rest of the summer here in the country, a visit to Ravenswood, then back to London for the little Season.”
He hadn’t been referring to their schedule, as well she knew.
She wet her lips before glancing away. She’d a habit of wetting her lips when nervous, he realized.
She’d no idea her actions just made her mouth more inviting.
He fixed his gaze on the moisture glistening on her bottom lip—a lip still red from where she had just bitten down. Again, he imagined kissing her.
Not chastely or politely, as one would a wife one only respected, but passionately, thoroughly, soundly.
Kissing was one skill he knew he’d honed.
Perhaps, last night, he should have damned propriety and kissed her as he’d yearned to do.
He should have taken her into his arms, claimed her mouth and left her breathless.
Right now, he was feeling a little breathless himself.
So, find a way to thaw this unexpected ice. But how?
The answer came to him like inspiration, like fire shot down directly from the gods—apologize. Apologize…not just for the awkward bedding and the pained conversation, but for his initial rash act, the impetus of her fall from Society’s grace.
His mouth dried.
He’d never apologized for anything. Ever. The closest he’d ever come had been on the morning that he was supposed to ask Cassandra on their first outing. He’d promised Adrian to do better after Adrian had chastised him for surliness.
Only the weak admit they are wrong.
Another of his father’s oft-repeated dictums.
Even when Harbury had been due a thrashing, his father had warned him not to admit wrongdoing, but instead, to simply accept the consequences of his actions with dignity and without any sign of pain. Only if he didn’t cry out would he be forgiven.
But he couldn’t exactly ask his wife to thrash him, could he?
An odd expression must have crossed his face because his wife’s right eyebrow arched, and she cocked her head in impatient, unspoken inquiry. Enough. They needed to speak, and they needed to speak in private. He dismissed the footman.
Silently, she followed the man with her gaze until the door closed behind him.
“Is there something you wish to say?” she asked.
“I got drunk,” he blurted.
She inhaled sharply and then lifted her knife and fork points-up as if the flatware were weapons. Clearly, he’d made things worse.
Why the devil had he started with drink?
“After Almack’s,” he clarified. “I was in no state to accept Asquith’s challenge when he held that loaded flintlock to my head and ordered me to court you or face him at dawn.”
“Well.” She made a huffing noise. “I should think not.”
She hadn’t understood. He tried again. “I was drunk, so I agreed to court you in good faith.”
Her head jerked back, and she blinked. “I suppose agreeing to a spurious courtship would be safer than shooting through the misty morning with an unsteady hand.”
Well, hell. “No. I didn’t mean—”
“What did you mean?” she interrupted, her tone sharper than he’d ever heard it.
“I meant that I knew I was to blame. Even if I hadn’t been willing to admit as much. Adrian set me straight. When I complained to him, I told him you should have refused to dance with me—”
She inhaled in a rush.
“—and he called me an ass.” Heat slowly climbed his neck. “Quite frankly, he wasn’t wrong.” That’s what he had meant to say.
“How magnanimous of you to admit it.”
Why yes.
He’d intended to be generous in taking culpability, though he doubted she understood his bungled words had been his best attempt at an apology. Nor did he think she understood that anyone who knew him well would find an apology from him unusual.
His gaze dropped to the tightly gripped knife in her hand.
Her use of “magnanimous” had most certainly been sarcasm. The realization of her fury’s depth landed like a punch to his sternum, briefly halting his ability to respond. How could he explain his actions that night in a way that would lessen her anger?
He’d been undone with renewed grief over Viv.
Knowing Viv had married another when he’d expected her to return to him had been hard; seeing her flushed and happy in her new husband’s arms had been intolerable.
Then, the patronesses’ disproportionate response to his choice of Cassandra for the waltz in progress had left him flabbergasted.
He had just gotten around to drunkenly pondering what reparation honor would demand when he’d felt the cold barrel of Asquith’s firearm against his temple. Asquith, Cassandra’s guardian, who, though capable, was younger than himself and almost always quiet, reserved and serious.
But the point he’d wanted to make was, even though at the start, Asquith had forced his hand, he had enjoyed Cassandra’s company.
He’d found her more desirable than he’d ever anticipated.
And, if he could manage to make things right between them, he thought they might become friends. And hopefully…eventually… even lovers.
He attempted to salvage the conversation. “I’m trying,” he managed with difficulty, “to tell you I’m…not…” How should he say this? “…displeased by the turn of events.”
She smacked the knife against the table so hard he thought she might have bent the tip.
“That’s silver!” he exclaimed.
Her scowl suggested he was lucky said silver had not been energetically inserted into his chest. She took three deep breaths, each one further smoothing the blotches beneath her skin. When she looked up again, her face was a mask—one even more indecipherable than the one she’d worn when he began.
“Harbury—”
For the first time since his father’s death, he’d the urge to ask someone to call him by his given name. In fact, his eyes burned at the mere thought of asking her to call him Edward.
“—I neither expect”—she threw down the spoon—“nor require you to explain your actions to me.”
“I wasn’t trying to explain myself, I was—”
She waved her hand as she interrupted. “Oh, just go, would you? Right now, you appear to have lost the ability to converse.”
He blinked, feeling as if the backs of his knees were again sticking to the chair.
He reminded himself she could not know how deeply he’d be wounded by such an accusation.
“Your presence could never be something I wish to escape.”
His raw, honest admission surprised him but earned him nothing greater than another supercilious lift of her right brow. Perhaps he should retreat.
Retreat and regroup. He focused on the cutlery. Live to fight another day.
“There are, however, some estate matters I should attend.”
“Estate matters?” she queried.
For the first time, she appeared genuinely interested in what he might have to say. Briefly, he imagined sharing his concerns over the anonymous letter, but no.
She was unhappy enough with him already. If she believed he couldn’t control unrest on his own estate, her frustration with him would only increase.
Best to take care of the situation on his own. “I’ve, ah, letters to write.”
“Then, by all means, go. I trust you will enjoy yourself.” She pursed her lips, as if holding something back.
He nodded once before rising.
“Or make yourself miserable…”
He cocked his head.
“…Repeated indulgence of misery is a kind of joy, wouldn’t you say?”
This time, there could be no mistaking her verbal dart’s poison.
“Cassandra?” he asked, unsure if he could be addressing the same woman he’d courted.
“I—I beg your pardon.” She dropped her gaze. “I spoke unkindly just then.”
“Perpetually miserable.” Absently, he rubbed his chest. “Do you see me as someone who is perpetually miserable?”
She glanced up, startled. A pained expression flashed in her eyes. “I don’t know you. At present”—again, she wet her lips—“I’m not sure I know myself.”
“I’d like for you to know me,” he replied as gently as he could.
Though he clearly had not yet learned to communicate well, instinct told him if he didn’t keep a steady, skilled hold of the reins during this run-away conversation, they’d both end up in a ditch.
“And I’d like to know you.” Even now, even hurt, this was still true.
In her eyes, the smallest hint of hope lurked behind a great haze of suspicion. A hint would have to be enough, for now. She didn’t trust him at all.
Then again, why should she?
“Shall I expect you for tea, then?” she asked.
An olive branch?
“Certainly.” He folded his arms behind his back to prevent himself from reaching out. “If you wish.”
“Yes, I wish,” she replied with the merest flash of a tentative smile. “Good day.”
“Good day.”
She rose, offered him an awkward curtsey and then turned away.
Everyone had called Cassandra the gentle one. The sweet one. The biddable one.
Everyone had been wrong.
Or, perhaps, in yoking her to him, he’d damaged her sweetness.
He’d married, in part, to distract himself from his unhappiness. Now he feared, in fateful irony, he had, instead, sentenced Cassandra to dwell with him in misery, too.
If he was going to reorient them both to a more promising future, he’d need to gather his wits and form a plan.