Chapter 25
MARIANNE
Marianne rushed into the maze, her spirits lifted as they had not been in a long time.
The air was cool and crisp, but inside she felt warm and contented.
They had kissed. They had lain together, arm in arm.
He had felt what she felt — she was sure of it.
And this was not what she had intended. This was not what she had planned.
But perhaps it was what she needed? Becoming a mother to another woman’s child had never been something Marianne had considered.
Yet now it seemed the most natural thing in the world.
And being a wife—his wife? She could picture it.
Yes, he was at times changeable, but who could find fault with him?
After all he had endured? To have had a difficult childhood with a father who was not the most loving, and then to have had a wife with whom the relationship seemed to have been difficult as well.
But now she felt all of that could be behind them. She could help him get over the lingering grief, or whatever it was that remained on his mind.
She thought back to Juliet’s words. What had she said? About the rumors below stairs?
She shook her head. Well, Juliet was her friend, after all. But she didn’t know Lucien. She didn’t really know anything about life among the Quality, and the way people could talk. She’d never had servants. She had never been a servant. She didn’t know the tattle below stairs.
“Marianne,” Lucien called behind her, and she turned.
“Pray take care not to lose your way. My grandfather designed rather a labyrinth of a maze.”
“Henry has already run inside. I can see him nowhere.”
He had caught up to her and took her hand. “Do not fret. Henry has grown up running around in this maze. He knows his way better than I do.”
“My sister mentioned something along those lines. That he knew his way very well. But that he was not very much help for her to get back out.”
He laughed. “Yes, he likes to do that. Henry is an expert when it comes to finding his way through this maze, but he will not help others. He enjoys getting lost and asking for help. He possesses a mischievous nature.”
“A trait inherited from his father, perhaps?” she asked, curling her fingers around his as they walked the maze together.
He shrugged. “I confess to my own share of mischief.”
His hand was warm in hers, and she realized that once again she had forgotten her gloves. Back at the convent, she hadn’t worn them because it was not customary, and she had gotten used to the feeling of her hands unencumbered by cloth.
“Thank you for all you did for him,” he said, his voice tender. “These last few days, and since you’ve arrived here.”
“I do not think I have done very much for him. At least not before he took ill. Yes, I played with him, but I think I was rather difficult. I was excessively reserved.”
“You were, but you persevered. That is all that matters. That is all I wanted—for him to see you as a friend.”
A friend. The words gave her pause, for surely now they were more than that.
They had slept together, though not in an intimate way.
Yet, it had felt intimate to her. Not the way a husband and wife would be intimate, of course —her cheeks burned at the thought.
But there had been an intimacy between them, a connection.
Something that united them. At least she had felt that way.
But now he was speaking of her as though she were a friend.
“I want to be what is best for Henry. I want him to feel comfortable.”
“He does. He likes you very much,” Lucien said.
“I am glad. He asks a lot of questions, though,” Marianne admitted. “A couple of days ago, before he got ill, he asked me why humans don’t leap like frogs. I was quite at a loss for a reply.”
Lucien laughed. “He has a way of posing such queries. The good thing is that he usually forgets them. So if you can distract him from whatever the question was that you do not know the answer to, then he will forget. Although I must say, I have learned a great many things since he got to the age where he will ask questions. I find myself perpetually hastening to the library to read through various encyclopedias to find the answers. Why is the sky blue? Why are there oceans between the continents? Why do birds fly?”
She chuckled. “I remember asking many of those questions myself when I was a child. Although I do not recall the answers. My mother had a way about her that was always similar to your approach. She would tell me stories, and they would make me forget the question I had asked. My father never had time to even listen to questions.” She shrugged.
That emptiness within her whenever she spoke about her father had returned.
“I always vowed not to be like my father,” Lucien said. “I wanted to be better than him. I wanted Henry to have a father who cared and a mother who loved him.” He shrugged. “But that wasn’t the case.”
“His mother never had a chance to care for him,” she said quietly. “I’m sure if she had lived, she would’ve been wonderful.”
Lucien looked at her from the corner of his eye.
“I think not. She possessed no warmth of heart. She was very much wanting in kindness.” The hardness in his voice struck her.
Once again, she thought back to Juliet’s words and what she had discovered about their marriage. Had it really been such a bad one?
“But surely she would’ve discovered tenderness within herself for her own child?”
Lucien’s head whipped toward her, and she saw that she had said something that upset him.
“Your father showed no tenderness towards you. You told me as much.”
Marianne swallowed down the lump that had formed in her throat. “That is true. But I always assumed that for a mother, that would be different.”
“That is a mistaken notion held by many,” Lucien told her.
“It is always believed in our society that mothers are tender and kind and caring, no matter what. That is thought to be their natural disposition. And it is thought, too, that it is hard for fathers to have the sort of love and affection for their children that is usually supposed to come from the mother. But that is not the case. I know full well my numerous failings, but I know I am a good father, and I know that Henry’s mother would’ve been a terrible mother. Just as she was a terrible wife.”
Marianne inhaled sharply. She’d been a terrible wife? It was true. Their marriage had been bad.
“What do you mean by—” He turned to face her, but when they were face-to-face, the harshness left his visage, and the softness returned. He cupped her face with his hand, and she pressed into it.
“I do not wish to discuss my former marriage anymore. It is long since passed, and it is not a topic I enjoy discussing, especially not with you. Not when we have only just come to have—” he shrugged, “an understanding?”
“Do we have an understanding?” she asked.
He smiled and raised his other hand, cupping her other cheek, so her head rested entirely between his hands.
“I dare say I think we do.” He leaned forward and kissed her.
Marianne’s lips parted at once as she returned the kiss, rising up on her tiptoes to be more on the same level as him.
He wrapped his arms around her back and drew her close, his kiss warm and tender.
Although unlike the kiss the night before, when they had been lying in bed together, this kiss was more insistent. There was a desire in it. A want.
She drew him closer so their bodies were pressed against one another.
He pushed her gently until her back was against a hedge.
She felt the branches and twigs poking at her.
Still, it hardly bothered her. Her focus was on him.
His hands were racing up and down her back and down along her spine before coming to rest at her hip.
They grew warmer and more ardent with each passing second, and she had already forgotten they were in a public place — albeit a hidden one.
But then Lucien stepped back.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I fear I have quite forgotten myself. It has been a long time since I kissed anyone in such a manner.”
“I have never kissed anyone in such a manner,” she said bluntly.
“No?” he replied, tipping his head to one side, that roguish gleam she had seen there early on in their arrangement returning.
“And have I ruined you for any other man in the future?”
“I would hope that there would be no other men in the future,” she said. “Considering we are wed and given that we have come to an understanding.”
“Yes,” he said. “Our arrangement. Which is filled with unspoken understanding. One of which I take it includes you never kissing any other men again? Is that understood?”
“It is,” she said, smiling. Although she noticed that they were talking around the issue. They hadn’t yet said out loud that they were going to be more than just an arrangement now.
“Lucien,” she said, her hands resting lightly on his hips on either side.
“Yes?”
“What is our arrangement now? What shall our future be?”
He blinked, his eyelashes fluttering.
“What do you want the future to hold? Do you want to give up on your plans for freedom and for exploring the world with your maid at your side?”
“No,” she said. “I do still want that. I want to see the world. I want to experience things. Although I had hoped that perhaps now there might be somebody else at my side alongside Juliet. I should like the three of us—you, Henry, and I—to explore the world together with Juliet as our companion as well. And perhaps your valet, and Mrs. Greaves...”
He let out a laugh. “We shall be rather a large band of travelers.”
“We shall,” she said, “but it would be wonderful. We could go to Rome and see the Colosseum, and we could go to Greece and see all the ancient temples. And we could go to the Holy Land and see the artifacts from long ago and the pyramids in Egypt.”
Lucien chuckled. “You have been reading rather a lot of books on distant shores, haven’t you?”
“I have,” Marianne replied with a smile. “Ever since you showed me the ruin and we explored together, I have thought about where I wanted to go, and my heart swells with anticipation for it. I yearn to see the world. With you and with Henry. He would like it so very much.”
“I am sure he would,” Lucien confirmed. “Perhaps we ought to do that. Travel. See the world, although I do not think that Mrs. Greaves is very seaworthy. I once took her on an afternoon boat ride down the River Thames, and she grew rather green and spent the rest of the time lying on the floor.”
“Very well, perhaps she’ll have to mind the household. Come to think of it, I do not know if Juliet is fit for sea travel. I don’t think she ever has been on any moving body of water.”
“And she may not wish to travel with me. I fear I am not in her good graces,” he said.
“That is because she does not know you.”
He tipped his head to one side. “Do you know me? I know that we have been swept up for these last few days in events that were unforeseen—between Henry’s illness, and now—” he raised his hand from her hip and swirled it in the air as if to indicate all of this, “but we do not truly know one another.”
“But we shall have our lives together to figure out who we each are.”
His eyes flickered, and she saw something creep in that filled her stomach with dread.
Doubt. He was doubting her words. Did he worry that if he really got to know her, he would not like her anymore?
That she would be someone he would regret being with?
It wasn’t what she wanted. It wasn’t what she had intended with her words.
She had thought her words romantic. That she had painted a picture of the future that he would enthusiastically want to take part in, but it seemed that he was worried, more than she was.
Had she been foolish? Had she allowed love to carry her away on its imaginary wings while he remained with his feet upon solid ground?
Whatever it was, she did not have a chance to resolve the matter because Henry’s clear laughter came down from one of the passageways, and then he burst around the corner.
“There you are,” he said. “I already made it to the center and back. You are both very slow,” he informed them.
Lucien had dropped his hands already, so they were standing side by side so as not to alert Henry to their changing circumstance.
“Well, Henry,” Marianne said, “you are quite the explorer, aren’t you? What shall we do now? Shall we go to the center of the maze together?”
“No,” Henry replied. “I have already been and returned. It should be boring to go back again. I should like to see the squirrels. Papa, can we go see the squirrels? Can we show Marianne?”
“Of course,” Lucien said, and he nodded forward.
He placed his hand on the small of Marianne’s back, gently guiding her forth.
Henry ran out of the maze, and the two of them followed.
She felt his fingers on her back, and it was a comforting sensation, and yet at the same time, she couldn’t help but feel that something was still very wrong.