Chapter 16 #3
When they arrived at their town house, he followed her into her room.
She turned around sharply. “What do you want, Lord Wrenworth?”
The formality of her address—the depth of the chasm that separated them—made him dizzy.
“Louisa—”
“There is a time and place for that name—and the time is now behind us,” she said, chilling him to the bone.
“Don’t say that. We have taken vows before God. We have committed to a lifetime together. And I know it does not mitigate everything, but part of the reason I offered you marriage in the end is that I did not wish your life diminished by the lies I told.”
“So if I had become your mistress instead, disqualifying myself to ever become another man’s properly wed wife, you would not have considered my life diminished?”
“I…” He felt like a man who had been pushed off the edge of a cliff, arms flailing to catch anything that might stop his free fall. “Louisa, please listen to me. What I’ve done, I’ve done—I cannot go back in time to make changes. But I’m not the same man I was.”
“How have you changed? And if you have changed, why did you not come and tell me yourself what you had done? Instead, you made up fresh nonsense concerning Lord Firth fastening his trousers as he came out of his sister’s room in the middle of the night.
Then whisked me away from Huntington to avoid discovery.
And that’s why you have been so nice and sunny to me since, to distract me from all the clues to which I should have paid better attention. ”
“I didn’t want you to think ill of me. I…” He almost could not bring himself to say it. A lifetime of worshiping at the altar of strength and he was very nearly too weak to move the words past his lips. “I love you.”
She stared at him. For a moment hope spread unchecked in his heart that perhaps those very words, those sentiments that had been so difficult for him to express, would make her understand how important she was to him, how he could not possibly have brought himself to admit to his misdoings for precisely the fear of this rupture between them.
“I am not particularly altruistic,” she said quietly.
“But between the time I turned sixteen and the time I became your fiancée, I did not spend one penny of my allowance. That and whatever I could strip from the household budget went to the emergency fund I’d set aside for Matilda.
And when I went to London, I was fully prepared to marry a man I did not love, so that I could care for her as long as she lives.
“I daresay romantic love isn’t the same thing as sisterly love, but all love should meet a minimum standard.
A lover should take my wishes into consideration and have a care for my well-being.
When have you ever thought about me, except so that you may better gratify yourself—either to make you feel more powerful or to make you feel less out of control? ”
He could say nothing, could feel nothing except an ever-rising panic.
“I’m weary,” she said. “Please grant me some privacy.”
He did not want to be banished. Even if he didn’t know how to plead his case, even if—
He closed the distance between them, pulled her into his arms, and kissed her on her cheek, her jaw, her lips.
She struggled. “What are you doing?”
But he was much stronger than she. He maneuvered her backward until she was pinned between his body and a longcase clock. He would not let her dig a moat around herself and keep him out. He would not accept that she no longer wanted him to touch her. And he would not—
A resounding thwack. A burning sensation on his cheek.
He stared at her in incomprehension.
“Get out!” she shouted.
“I don’t want you to be angry,” he said dumbly. “You said that when we are in direct physical contact, you cannot remain angry at me.”
“I don’t care what you want,” she answered, her teeth gritted. “I deserve to be angry and you do not deserve anything. Now get out.”
* * *
Louisa did not go down for dinner that evening. When her supper was delivered, along with it came a vase of golden tulips, which in the language of flowers meant, I am hopelessly in love with you.
When the footman who brought the tray had left, she shoved the vase behind a wardrobe, where it could not stray into her line of sight.
Five minutes later she moved it into the wardrobe.
After another three minutes she yanked it out of the wardrobe and opened the window to defenestrate the whole thing.
She recovered her self-control just in time—the vase was costly, the tulips probably just as costly this time of the year, and the gossip generated by such a wanton gesture of rage would dog her for years to come.
Taking a few deep breaths, she walked out of her room, marched the tulips to a room at the end of the corridor, and left them on the mantelpiece.
Coming back into the corridor, she stopped. Lord Wrenworth stood outside his door, watching her. He would have seen the exile of his flowers—the exile of his sentiments.
She returned to her room without another glance at him.