Chapter Seven #3
It was true. He could not recall the last time his laughter had been so entirely stripped of caution.
Before Henry’s demise, certainly. Perhaps before his father’s passing, when laughter had still been something that came easily.
But somewhere in the intervening years, he had lost the knack of it.
Had forgotten that joy could surprise you, could ambush you when you least expected it, could burst out of your chest because a sharp-tongued woman had said something devastatingly funny about a fictional hero.
Helena was still watching him. Her expression had shifted, the usual sharpness softened into something he could not quite name. She looked almost tender.
The moment stretched between them. The fire crackled in the grate. The books watched from their shelves, silent witnesses to something that felt larger than either of them had intended.
Edmund saw the moment Helena realised the danger. Saw the walls begin to reassemble, the armour settling back into place.
“Well.” She looked down at the book in her hands, suddenly fascinated by its binding. “Don’t let it happen too often, Your Grace. People will talk.”
“Let them.”
She looked up, startled. He had not meant to say it, had not meant to reveal that much, but the words hung in the air between them now, impossible to retract.
Helena’s cheeks flushed. She returned to her book with determined concentration, but he could see she was not actually reading. Her eyes were fixed on the same line, unmoving, and the corner of her mouth kept threatening to curve upward.
She was fighting a smile.
She is fighting a smile because of me, Edmund thought, and the realisation felt like something cracking open inside him. Something long frozen beginning to thaw.
They read in silence for another hour. It was, Edmund realised, the most comfortable silence he had experienced in years.
Not the heavy silence of his lonely evenings, weighed down by grief and obligation.
Not the awkward silence of social occasions, filled with the pressure to perform.
This was something else, the quiet companionship of two people who did not need words to feel connected.
When Helena finally rose to leave, Edmund rose as well.
“Thank you,” she said at the door. “For the conversation. I had not expected.” She stopped, reconsidered. “I had not expected to enjoy it so much.”
“Nor had I.”
She met his eyes. For a moment, her composure slipped, and he saw something underneath, something that looked like longing, quickly buried.
“Goodnight, Your Grace,” she said softly.
“Goodnight, Helena.”
He watched her go. The door closed behind her with a quiet click, and the library felt suddenly empty, the warmth draining away with her absence.
Edmund stood there for a long moment. Then he crossed to the chair Helena had vacated and lowered himself into it.
The seat was still warm.
He sat in her warmth, surrounded by the faint trace of her scent, and thought about the way she had looked at him when he laughed. The wonder in her voice. I didn’t know you could do that.
Neither had he. He had forgotten that he could. Had forgotten that laughter could feel like light breaking through clouds, like the first breath after being underwater, like something essential returning after a long absence.
She had given him that. Without meaning to, without trying, she had reminded him what it felt like to be genuinely happy. Even if only for a moment. Even if only in the space of a single, surprised laugh.
She made me laugh, Edmund thought, pressing his hand against the armrest where her hand had rested. When did someone last make me laugh?
He tried to remember. Searched through years of careful composure and public performance and private grief.
Surely there had been moments, surely Marcus had said something amusing at some point, surely someone had cracked his defences, and surely he had not spent four years in utter emotional isolation.
He could not remember.
The realisation settled into him with the weight of something final.
He could not remember the last time he had laughed.
Could not remember the last time anyone had surprised a genuine emotion out of him.
He had been so busy being the Duke, being composed, being what everyone expected, that he had forgotten how to be human.
And then a vicar’s daughter had walked into his library, complained about his organisational system, and made him feel alive for the first time in years.
Edmund sat in the chair Helena had vacated, breathing in the fading trace of her presence, and he found himself becoming desperately attached to his wife.
It was, he thought, perhaps the saddest thing that had ever happened to him. Because she had agreed to separate lives and separate bedrooms and no pretence of affection. And he had agreed too, because he would have agreed to anything to have her near.
And now he wanted more than he had any right to want.
The fire burned low. The library grew cold. And Edmund sat alone with his heart cracking open, wondering how something that felt so much like hope could also feel so much like grief.