Chapter 13
“I did not know you knew Shakespeare so well,” mused Celia as she lay naked in Dominic’s arms. Oh how she loved the feel of her skin against his. In all her life, she’d never imagined she could feel so happy, so free, so content.
He stroked his hand down along her back. “Doesn’t everyone?” he asked.
“No,” she exclaimed, leaning up and propping her chin upon her hand as her hair tumbled over her shoulders.
“Well, of course, I know not everyone,” he begrudged as he adjusted his shoulders on the lace-edged goose down pillows. “But anyone who has access to him, shouldn’t they know him? It is such an incredible privilege.”
She clucked. “Most people who have privilege don’t even realize it, and they don’t exercise it in helpful ways. They exercise it in buying more things.”
He groaned as he took a lock of her hair and stroked it between his fingers. “How true that is.”
“Don’t you think it would be wonderful if people read more Shakespeare?” she exclaimed.
“Or any of the greats,” he said, “whether it’s Aeschylus, or Sophocles, or the great Roman writers. Yes, I think it’d be better if people did read more, if they understood what humanity is really all about.”
“And what is it about?” she asked playfully.
He stared at her for a long time, growing more serious, and then he said with utter conviction, “Loving our fellow man. It is the great tenet of everything. Not passion, mind you,” he said, “but love. From the very beginning of time to the end of time, it shall always be true. The only answer to all things is to love your fellow man. Because if you do, you’ll take care of him. ”
“And her,” she teased, unable to resist.
He groaned, pulling her up before kissing her thoroughly. Their lips tangled as easily as their limbs. “Of course,” he breathed against her mouth. “It is a misfortune that the word man encompasses everyone, but it is our language. At least for now.”
She propped herself up, looking quite delicious after their kiss. She touched her swollen, pink lips and breathed, “How true that is. Oh, Dominic, what a surprise you’ve been in my life. I did not think this could ever occur for me.”
“What?” he asked, his brows shooting up. “Wanting to be with a man? I feel very special.”
She punched him lightly on the shoulder. “You should. You are unique and singular to move me from my solo life.”
“You’ve never had a solo life,” he said softly.
“What?” she gasped.
He hesitated, a muscle tightening in his jaw as emotion shadowed his face. “You have Emilia and your family. You have never been alone.”
She nodded. “You are right, of course. I have always had the friendship of my cousins, of my sister and brother, and the love of my parents. I have been surrounded by the love of my fellow man, which is perhaps why I’m so determined to spread it as far as I can, and especially to those who have the least.”
“It is why I think you are so wonderful,” he said without hesitation. “I think when we met that night, I could feel it in you, that you were not like everyone else.”
“Oh, yes, I remember when you said that,” she said ruefully, “and I grew very suspicious indeed that you were going to say that I was not like all the other girls.”
He grinned. “I remember, but the truth is you’re not. You’re not like anyone,” he said. “None of the Briarwoods are, but not in some silly way,” he said. “It’s the way you all see the world.”
“You see it that way too,” she protested, her heart pounding in her chest, because somehow the way he felt separate from them, from her… It worried her.
“No, that’s not correct,” he said gently, holding her gaze. “I don’t see the world the way you all do. You have a capacity for suffering and for devotion that I simply don’t have. It was broken from me.”
She peered at him, dreading his next words. “What do you mean?”
“Celia,” he ventured, leaning his head back and casting his gaze to the ornately plastered and painted ceiling of his guest chamber, “you are a wonder, and I am so glad that you are mine, and I want you to be mine forever and always.”
She swallowed and before she could stop herself, she blurted, “I want it too.”
“You do?” he gasped.
“Yes, I think so,” she rushed, half hoping they could forget the words he’d spoken that had caused the dread to pool in her stomach.
Love solved everything after all. That was the lesson she had learned since childhood.
“After all of this, after all this time, I never thought I would want to wed. I’ve been trying to push that away and convince myself these last weeks that all I wanted from you was a bit of fun and a good time.
But I cannot imagine my life now without you in it.
In our society, marriage is essential for someone like me for ongoing intimacy.
I suppose we could have a long love affair, it happens, but what if I was to become with child?
I could go to Europe and have the child there, but then that would become incredibly complicated.
” Her heart wrenched at the idea of what would then come.
“I would likely have to give it to one of my cousins to raise as their own, and the baby would never know I was his or her mother.” She shook her head passionately. “And I cannot bear that idea.”
During her speech, he had lowered his gaze to her face and a fiery glint now shone in his orbs. He stroked her cheek. “Marry me,” he said. “Make all of this easy.”
She scoffed. “It will not be easy. Most people say I’m too old to be your duchess.”
“Yes, you are very decrepit,” he teased. “Thirty and three whole years.”
She punched him in the shoulder again. “Oh, to most people, that is decrepit, and it’s certainly late in our time to start having children, don’t you think?”
He smiled. “I like the idea of our children. Our children will not suffer. Our children will not be like me.”
“I hope our children are very much like you, if we have them,” she insisted, hating that he thought such things about himself.
“Thank you,” he said, though the words were slightly hollow as his thumb skimmed along her lower lip. “You have a belief in me that I don’t in myself.”
She took his hand in hers and pressed a kiss to his palm. “Another reason to have me about,” she said, winking at him.
“Yes,” he growled. “You are essential, I think, to my dream and my cause, and I want you as my wife. So marry me.”
She drew in a long breath. “I don’t know if I should be tempted to do it. I have been alone, and single, and in charge of my own life for so long that it terrifies me that I could give you that sort of power over me.”
“I won’t have any power over you.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, you will. By the law of the land, you most definitely will have power over me. Everything that I own will become yours. All of my monies will become yours. My property will become yours, and you will even own our children. So, Dominic, please do not be cavalier in this.”
He nodded. “Forgive me.” He sat up straighter, taking her hands into his. He grew serious, almost as if he was about to make a vow. “I should not have made light of your circumstances. Is that why you never married, because you were afraid of being someone’s possession?”
“No,” she said honestly, sitting up before him, not caring that she was nude. She reveled in how free they were together. “I am far too outspoken, blunt, and I am impertinent. No one has ever wanted me because I don’t have time for the silliness of most men.”
“Not want you?” he snorted. “You have been the most incredible of guides.”
“Yes.” She laughed. “I’m actually quite surprised how good I am at this.
I never thought I’d want to do it, to be a hostess or to go by some man’s side and make the room approve of him.
I am quite good at it with you. I set up every conversation so you will succeed.
But I don’t think I would want to do it for anyone else. ”
“And I am deeply grateful,” he said earnestly. “You have made it possible for me to be surrounded by your family, which has made my cause even more attainable. But being a man’s support wasn’t what you ever wanted, was it?” he said carefully.
“That’s correct.” She paused, trying to gather her thoughts.
“That life, going from ballroom to ballroom, to dinner party to dinner party, wearing different frock after different frock, swaying wives so they would sway their husbands? It has never interested me, but there’s something that has struck me, Dominic,” she said.
“I have changed people’s lives, it’s true.
I have changed many children’s lives, and what I do is important.
I will never give it up. But what you do?
It could genuinely change the whole world.
It could change the fate of so many. If you but get your way, the world will shift.
So much suffering will end, and that is worth the swaying of any wife, any ball, any dinner.
That is the best reason for me to be in society. ”
He stared at her, his face warm with wonder, but there was something else too.
“I have seen a great deal of suffering,” he began.
“I know you have too, because you have done so much work in the East End, but I can’t explain to you how terrible the suffering I’ve seen is in the English colonies, in the Caribbean, and in the current United States, where people ignore what creates their abundance and wealth.
That’s why I’m tearing down my grandfather’s house, you see.
I cannot walk through those halls and not hear the crying, the suffering of the slaves who toiled and died and were separated from their families to make that house possible. Do you understand?”
She nodded, her insides twisting with the monstrous nature of it all. “I’m very grateful that my family somehow managed to make their money in other ways.”
“It’s singular,” he admitted. “There are families in England who have done it and there are others who have greedily made their money on the backs of others without looking back. It is the nature of empire. It is inescapable sometimes, but we don’t have to choose that sort of cruelty.
We can be better. I insist that we do better. ”
“And so do I,” she exclaimed, rising onto her knees. “So perhaps we should ally. Perhaps us marrying would be the best of both worlds. Imagine what a force we could be together.”
He smiled. “Yes, a force, you and I together! So you will marry me then? You’ll be the duchess that I need and want, and together nothing will get in our way.”
She swallowed. “What if I’m not the duchess you need and want? What if I can’t have children? What if…?”
He cupped her face gently. “Shhh. We shall not worry about that now. We shall take one thing at a time. As it comes. You are who I want. And that is all that matters. I couldn’t bear to marry anyone else.”
She swallowed, stunned by his impassioned words.
“Will your sister be angry with you?” he asked suddenly.
“Emilia?” she exclaimed, frowning.
He nodded.
“Not at all. She will crow with triumph.”
“What do you mean?”
She lowered herself to his chest, savoring the feel of his heartbeat beneath her palm. “She wants me to be happy. All she wants is for me to grow. She’s the reason I’m with you at all right now.”
He blinked. “I beg your pardon.”
“She said that I was getting into a rut and that I needed to be with you so that I could…”
“What?” he asked, pressing his cheek to the top of her head.
“Well, honestly, to simply do better, and I am doing better. I had my head down. I was doing my job. I was doing what needed to be done, but it wasn’t enough anymore because I wasn’t growing.
And frankly, I was beginning to feel worn out, worn down, the tragedy of it all was stealing my joy.
And to teach Shakespeare to the children I do?
One truly must have joy. But now that I’m with you, I think I can help those children in ways that I did not before. ”
“I want to see,” he said. “I want you to take me there.”
“Good,” she said, her heart aflutter, glad that he wanted to be in her world as much as she wished to help him with his.
“Because we have been working daily on Hamlet, the play that you so admire, and soon there will be a performance. I want you to come and hear the children, hear how they interpret the words, because they know suffering too.”
He nodded. “They know suffering in a way that I cannot ever understand,” he said, “because even though I was hurt by my father and my mother’s death, I never ever knew a hungry night. I knew cold, I knew loss, I knew strain, but I never had to be afraid, not like those children have to be.”
She bit her lip. “Sometimes it’s hard to sleep at night,” she said.
“I don’t really know how I do it, when I come back from the East End to this house, and I eat my dinner, and I put on my fine dress, and then I go to sleep in a soft bed, and now here I am in the comfort of your arms. Those children leave the school and they go home.
We do the best we can for them, but we cannot control how their parents behave, or what happens to them, or if their parents lose work, or if someone loses a limb working in the factories, or goes blind because of the things used in the various shops they work in.
There’s so little that I can control, there’s so little that I can change, and all I can do is pray that Shakespeare will be there and sustain them when things are awful and hard, because we must have beauty in our lives to combat that suffering.
That is the only tool I think I have, to give people beauty. ”
He held her hands. “And you do.”
She nodded, wondering if it was enough. If it would ever be enough. “Well, I think I can do more now by being at your side.”
He kissed her softly, as if he could will her to be at ease through his kiss, and whispered, “You think somehow that my cause is greater? It is not,” he said. “Any life saved, any life liberated from hell, any hell, matters,” he whispered. “I know. Because you have liberated me from mine.”
Tears stung her eyes at those words. He did love her.
And all would be well because of it. There was no reason to fear or dread.
“Then let us open the gates of hell and free all those who are in it. Let us do it together. Let us do it day by day. I will with the children and you will force England to change, and the world shall forever be altered, and there will be no more prisons of our own making.”
His face was a mask of feeling, feelings she could not name, but when he kissed her again, his lips chasing away all thought, and she surrendered. To him. To love. To anything that life might bring.