Chapter 19
“You really don’t think marriage is a good thing, do you?”
Susan looked at Norman. The two of them were in the carriage now, on their way home from Marina’s wedding breakfast, and the sun was high overhead.
Susan had been enjoying the view, allowing the countryside to distract her from her worries about her sister, but now it seemed her husband was going to insist upon a conversation.
An odd occurrence. He never wanted to talk to her.
She could count on one hand the number of times they had even been in the same room since their own wedding.
In fact, it seemed a fair assumption that he was only talking to her now because they were stuck in the carriage together, and it was more difficult to avoid conversation.
“What do you mean?” she asked him.
“I understand that you didn’t want to marry,” he said. “But in all the time leading up to our marriage, you told me over and over that you wanted to do this specifically so that your sister would be free to marry the man she loved. I thought you wanted her to get married.”
“I did,” she said sharply. “Why would you suggest otherwise?”
“You didn’t seem very happy about it today,” he pointed out.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she told him. “I was perfectly happy for her.”
“You don’t have to lie to me,” he said. “And in fact, I wish you wouldn’t. You and I don’t give each other very much, but we’ve always been honest with one another, haven’t we?”
Her temper flared. “I’m not lying to you.”
“Aren’t you?” He fixed her with a steady gaze. “I heard you, you know. When you and she went out of the dining room this morning.”
That hit her like a bucket of cold water over her head. She sat up straighter, staring at him. “What do you mean, you heard us? We were in the coat closet.”
“So that’s what that room was?” He shook his head. “I heard your voices coming from a door off the foyer, but I didn’t know what was on the other side. You made her talk to you in a coat closet?”
“I didn’t make her do anything, and what business is it of yours?” Susan snapped. “I’m aware that you’re my husband, but can a lady not speak to her sister privately once she’s married? Were you eavesdropping on the two of us?”
His mouth twitched.
“Oh, you think that’s funny?” Susan demanded, her rage spiking even higher. “It’s incredibly invasive, Norman. You shouldn’t spy on me when I’m trying to have a conversation with my sister. That wasn’t for your ears.”
“All right,” he conceded. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have done it.”
She settled back in her seat, slightly taken aback. She hadn’t expected him to give in that quickly. She’d anticipated an argument—a claim that he hadn’t done anything wrong, somehow.
But the conversation clearly wasn’t over. He was still leaning forward, as if waiting for her to say something more.
She looked back at him.
Finally, he spoke. “You haven’t answered my question.”
“What question?”
“Why do you hate marriage so much?”
She gritted her teeth. “Do you really think you’re entitled to ask me questions when you’ve just admitted that you shouldn’t have been listening in on my conversation?”
“I think if my wife admits to despising the idea of marriage, I have the right to want to know why,” he countered. “That seems like something that is inherently my concern.”
“You always knew that I didn’t want to get married,” she said. “Don’t tell me you’re going to pretend yet again that I was unclear about that.”
He sighed and sat back in his seat. “And don’t tell me that you’re going to sit there and act like you haven’t been unclear about your feelings,” he said. “Yes, you told me that you didn’t want to get married. But you got married anyway. And why did you do that?”
“Because my father forced me,” she snapped. “You know all this.”
“Except that that isn’t true at all,” he said.
“You and I were not going to marry to please your father. We had every intention of not going through with it, and you know that as well as I do. And then, out of nowhere, you changed the plan. You had me meet you in the park, and you begged me to marry you after all. And why? Why did you do that? You know the reason, but I want you to say it.”
She stared at him, taken aback. “Are you angry with me?”
“I’m frustrated,” he said. “Anyone would be. I’ve uprooted my whole life on the premise that you wanted your sister to have the right to marry, Susan.”
“Don’t act as if you didn’t get anything out of it,” she shot back. “You wanted to marry too, and you had your own reasons. You and I both know that you wouldn’t have agreed to this arrangement if there was nothing in it for you, just for the sake of what I wanted for Marina.”
“What you claimed you wanted. After what I heard today, it doesn’t sound like you even want her to be married.
Even she said that you’re making it hard on her.
She said you need to back away from your concerns and allow her to enjoy her happiness.
And this can’t be about the man she married, because he seems like the most harmless person alive. ”
Susan sighed. “There’s no chance you’re going to let this go, is there?”
“I have a right to know, Susan. I married you because you wanted her to have this, and now you’re saying you don’t want that at all.”
“I’m not lying,” she said. “It just… it isn’t simple.”
“Well, I’ve gathered that.”
She sighed. “Of course I wanted Marina to marry,” she said. “You’re right about Gilbert. He seems like a good man. And the two of them really care for one another, and I want them to have that. What kind of sister would I be if I felt any differently?”
“But?” he prompted.
“But I don’t know how much I can really trust that situation,” she confessed. “I don’t know if I can count on Gilbert to take care of her—to go on loving her the way she deserves to be loved.”
“You just said you thought he was a good man,” Norman pointed out. “And it’s clear that he does care for her deeply. I saw the way he was looking at her over breakfast today. She means the world to him. If I had a sister, I would want to see her married to someone who looked at her like that.”
“Yes,” Susan agreed. “But today is the very first day of their marriage. There is plenty of time for things to sour between them.”
“What makes you think that’s going to happen?” he challenged.
“It’s not that I think it is going to happen,” she said. “I just know that it could.”
“And that’s why your sister told you to stop worrying about her,” Norman concluded. “It bothers her that you would assume the worst on the very first day of her marriage.”
Susan bristled. “I’m more realistic than she is.”
“You think that’s realism? Assuming that things are going to go bad? Is that what you think will happen for the two of us as well?”
“It’s entirely different,” Susan said. “You and I don’t care about one another in that way.
There’s nothing that could get ruined between us.
The only thing I hope for from you is that you don’t turn violent with me—and no, I don’t believe you will, because that doesn’t seem to be in your temperament. ”
His jaw worked. “Of course I wouldn’t be violent toward you,” he said at length. “I don’t know why you would even think of such a thing.”
“It happens,” Susan said. “It happened to my sister.”
Norman frowned. “You’re not saying this man has been violent with your sister already?” He sat up a little straighter.
Susan felt a sudden rush of warmth at his reaction.
He was giving her a hard time about all this, but at the mere suggestion that someone had been cruel to Marina, he had reacted defensively.
He does understand.
He thought she was overreacting, but that was because he didn’t understand why she was reacting.
And it was that realization that made her feel, at last, that she could tell him the truth.
“No,” she said quietly. “Not Marina. My other sister, Leah.”
He was quiet for a moment. “I hadn’t realized that you had another sister,” he said.
“She was married a few years ago. The first of us to marry,” Susan said.
“And her husband, George—the Earl of Tropshire—he was cruel to her. At first, everything seemed perfectly fine. He was sweet. He courted her, said all the right things, and Leah was enamored of him. Everyone was excited the day they said their vows. I was the only one who had any inkling that something might be wrong—but everyone told me that I was being silly. Leah sat with me and held my hand and reassured me. She told me that it made sense for me to be fearful of marriage after my parents’ marriage dissolved the way it did, but that things would be different for her.
That she and George really loved one another. ”
“So what happened then?” Norman asked quietly.
Susan sighed. How long had it been since she had said any of this aloud?
“He was never a good man,” she said. “As soon as he had Leah in his home, he changed, He gambled away her dowry. He was cruel to her and refused to let her come home to visit us. He…” She swallowed. “He forced her to have his child.”
Norman stiffened but said nothing.
“And then, after a couple of years of this, he went off to war,” Susan continued.
“I suppose he thought he would win himself some glory, but I don’t care what his reason for going was—only that he was gone.
Leah took her son and fled to Scotland, and she’s there still, hiding at one of our father’s estates.
But we all live in fear that he might return from the war and come to find Leah.
That he’ll resume his abuse of her, and of her child. ”
Norman nodded slowly. “And that’s why you don’t want Marina to marry.”
“I do want her to marry.” Susan’s eyes filled with tears.
“Of course I do. I think Gilbert loves her, and I want that to be true. I know she loves him. I want her to be able to have that happiness in her life. It’s not right that George should steal that from her.
But at the same time… as kind as Gilbert seems, everyone thought that George was kind at first. And he turned out to be a monster.
What if we’re wrong this time too? I just couldn’t bear it if anything were to happen to Marina. ”
The first few tears spilled down her cheeks, and she turned away from him, staring hard out the window.
She couldn’t believe she had told him all that.
Even with Marina, Susan never spoke about what had happened to Leah. It was too painful. Most days, she couldn’t even bear to let herself think about it.
And now she had told Norman everything. He knew the whole excruciating story. Finally, he understood why she hadn’t wanted to marry him.
He didn’t speak another word to her for the rest of the journey home. But he didn’t take his eyes off her, either. He watched her quietly, softly, and in his gaze was something more tender than Susan had ever seen there before.