Chapter 30
By the time Aunt Tabitha left, the sun was getting low in the sky.
A spark of alarm shot through Norman. He hadn’t realized how late it had gotten, or that it was beginning to get dark outside. Susan should have been back by now. It wasn’t safe for her to be wandering around in the dark. Surely she would have had the sense to come back on her own…
Unless something happened to her.
Fear gripped his heart like a vise. What if something had happened? The very idea was a chasm opening up within him.
I would have failed her. I would have failed in my responsibilities.
That was true. And yet, he realized that wasn’t the main source of his horror at the thought of her coming to harm.
I don’t want anything to happen to her. I don’t want to lose her.
He found Mrs. Hastings in the foyer, crossing toward the kitchen. “Hastings,” he called out, urgency in his voice.
She turned toward him. “Your Grace?”
“Has there been any word of the Duchess? She ought to have been back from her promenade by now,” he said. “I’m beginning to worry. Perhaps I’ll send out a search party.”
“Oh.” Mrs. Hastings’ voice registered surprise. “I thought you knew, Your Grace. She returned a few hours ago.”
“Oh, did she?” That was a relief, he supposed—and yet, for some reason, he still found himself feeling uneasy.
Why hadn't she come to see him? Perhaps she simply hadn’t wanted to socialize with Aunt Tabitha after last time?
And she had been avoiding Norman lately, but neglecting to even inform him of her return home seemed like an escalation. “Where is she now?”
“In her room, I believe. Catherine has been with her since her return—ah.”
Susan had appeared at the top of the stairs. Norman turned to face her, frowning. “Susan. Come down here, please.”
For a moment, he thought she wasn’t going to. Her expression tightened, and she glanced over her shoulder in the direction of her room. He wasn’t sure what she was looking at. Catherine, perhaps?
She came down the stairs, her eyes on the ground, seemingly unwilling to look at him. She stopped right in front of him.
“You didn’t let me know that you’d arrived home,” he said.
She nodded, but said nothing.
He wasn’t sure what he wanted to say to her. “Did you enjoy your promenade?”
“Well enough.” She paused. “I’m going to stay with my sister for a while, Norman.”
He was dizzy. “What do you mean? For how long?”
“I don’t know. For the foreseeable future.”
“Is your sister all right?” Something told him that this wasn’t the real issue. It wasn’t a matter of Lady Marina being unwell. But he wasn’t sure how he knew that, and besides, he didn’t want it to be true.
She looked up at him for the first time since he had called her down.
He hardly recognized her. Her eyes were hollow. It was as if the fiery woman he had come to know was gone altogether.
“I want to annul this marriage,” she said.
For a moment, he was sure he had misheard her. It was his conversation with Aunt Tabitha, he thought, still weighing on him. It had to be. There was no way he had insisted to his aunt that he didn’t want an annulment only to have Susan come home and ask for that very thing.
But no. Those were the words she had said. It made no sense, but she’d said it.
“Why?” he asked. “Why would you want that? We agreed to this marriage—to everything about it. We agreed on what we each wanted. Why would you want to change things now?”
“You’re right,” Susan said. “We did agree on what we wanted. And those things have happened. My sister is happily married now, so I got what I wanted. And as for you—your business prospects are secure. You have shown society that you’re someone who can be relied upon.
My father has gone into business with you. You have my dowry.”
“I didn’t marry you to get your dowry.” He was offended. “Do you think I was just after your father’s money?”
“I think you were after the financial security a connection to my family provides,” she said. “And it’s not out of line for me to say so. You said it yourself on many occasions, Norman. The only reason you wanted this marriage was out of a desire for security.”
“Do you think that’s no longer important to me, then?”
“I think you’re much more secure than you were before we were married. I think there’s no reason for you and me to remain stuck in this marriage that neither of us wanted now that we’ve both achieved our goals.”
No sooner had she said this than a pair of footmen appeared, carrying her trunk down the stairs.
Norman stared. His heart sank. “You’ve moved awfully quickly,” he said. “You’re already packed and ready to leave?”
“I don’t see any point in putting it off,” she said.
“You didn’t even want to discuss things with me first? Shouldn’t I be entitled to be a part of this decision?”
“And what are you going to do?” she asked him wearily.
“Compel me to stay here against my will? I know you well enough by now to know that you won’t do that, Norman.
You would never force me into doing anything I didn’t want to do.
It’s what has made this marriage bearable for me, even when I knew that neither of us truly wanted it. At least I was always safe with you.”
She must have been thinking of the sister she had told him about, the one who had been so badly mistreated by her husband. “I would never force you to do anything,” he said, gritting his teeth. “Of course I wouldn’t.”
“Then you won’t force me to stay here.”
“Stop it.” He was irritated, he found. “No one is trying to force you into doing anything against your will, Susan. No one is trying to make you stay. If you want to go, I think you should go. I won’t even try to persuade you otherwise.”
Her face fell ever so slightly.
That was not what he had expected. He had thought this was what she wanted—to be granted permission to go.
And he couldn’t deny that a part of him was satisfied at the realization that something he’d said had affected her.
It had been starting to seem like she was going to be able to walk out of the house without so much as a backward glance.
I shouldn’t care. She’s right. I only got into this because I wanted to secure my place in society, and I’ve done that. I don’t want her to leave now—I’ve grown fond of her—but in the end, does it really make that much difference?
He couldn’t explain, even to himself, why the situation felt so dire. Why the sight of her trunk being carried out the front door felt like an awful problem, one that he had no chance of solving.
It was disorienting that she was making the same argument as Aunt Tabitha had just finished making. Was it really so apparent to everyone that this marriage didn’t stand a chance? Was he the only one who had ever believed that it was going to last?
“No,” Susan said. “Of course you won’t try to persuade me.”
“Did you want me to?” She sounded like she did, but it didn’t make sense. She hadn’t given him so much as a conversation about any of this. Could she really say now that she had wanted to be talked into staying?
“I knew you wouldn’t,” she told him. “I never had any expectations about it, Norman. I never dreamed that you would try to change my mind. I thought you might be angry with me for going, but you’re not even that. I can see you’re surprised, but that’s as far as this goes.”
“You’ve just been saying you didn’t want me to force you to stay,” he pointed out. “And I wouldn’t do that.”
“If this had been a different kind of marriage,” she said, “you would fight. The fact that I was leaving would distress you so much that you would try to stop me. No, I don’t want you to do that, because it would be exactly what everything between us has always been—an act.
A show. And the one thing you and I have never done was lie to each other.
I don’t want you to lie to me. You don’t want me to stay, so don’t ask me to stay.
” She sighed. “But I am sad about it, and I won’t say otherwise.
I do wish we’d had the kind of relationship where you wanted me to stay with you. ”
He didn’t know what to say.
I do want you to stay. But he didn’t dare say that out loud.
Her next question would be why? He didn’t have the answer to that one yet, and he didn’t want to guess at it.
It would make him look disingenuous. It would seem like he had only said he wanted her to stay out of a desire to stop her quickly, and not because that was what he truly wanted.
She wouldn’t believe me if I tried to fight for her. She’s already decided I’m not going to.
Susan shook her head. “I thought I could live with it,” she said. “I thought I could accept a loveless marriage. But I can’t.”
The words loveless marriage sank into his heart like stones.
They shouldn’t have. Of course, it was a loveless marriage. That was what they had intended it should be, and that was what it was. Why should it bother him to hear her say it?
Well, he wasn’t going to stand here and continue to debate the matter. “If you don’t want this marriage, perhaps you should go,” he agreed. “I don’t have anything else to offer you.”
“I know you don’t.” It was a sad whisper, full of pain. He couldn’t bring himself to look at her directly, so he strode out of the room instead. He wasn’t going to help her load her things into the carriage that would take her away from him.
He strode out of the foyer and up the stairs to his study.
His head was spinning. Had it really been less than half an hour ago that he had had the debate with Aunt Tabitha?
She had recommended exactly this. She’d told him that he ought to seek an annulment, that the marriage had accomplished all it should…
it was as if Susan had been reading from a script Aunt Tabitha had handed her.
For a moment, he even wondered whether his aunt had spoken to Susan on her own…
but she couldn’t have. There had been no opportunity for that, no time when the two of them had been together without Norman’s knowledge.
No, there was only one possible conclusion—Susan had come to the same opinion on her own, without Aunt Tabitha’s input.
And that made it true.
It meant that Susan was saying things she truly believed. She hadn’t been talked into any of it. She really did want to go. She wanted the annulment.
Norman slammed the door of the study, hoping that she would hear it and know how angry he was.
He fell into his chair and looked over at his bottle of scotch, but he didn’t reach out for it.
Not yet. He would drink later and ponder what he might have done to get her to stay, but for now, he stared out the window and imagined that he could hear her carriage pulling away from the house, and her pulling out of his life.