Chapter Thirty-Eight
Lord Alastair Eden walked into the wedding of the season with a headache so painful that it hurt to blink.
“Stop scowling,” Anna hissed into his ear, pinching the skin above his elbow. “What has come over you? You love weddings.”
Indeed he did, usually. And he was honored to be included on the small guest list for the breakfast celebrating that between Lady Elinor Bell and Jack Willow.
The trouble was that he knew who else was certain to be in attendance here.
“Sorry,” he whispered. He relaxed his face into what he hoped was a less grim expression. An actual smile was beyond him. It had been so long since he’d smiled that his skin would likely crack if he attempted it.
They were greeted by a footman who showed them into a dining room set for thirty and led them to their seats.
Eden was between his sister and Seraphina Arden.
“Good morning, Miss Arden,” he said with a bow. “How do you do?”
She nodded back coolly, then immediately turned her head and began a conversation with the gentleman beside her.
She’d always been cordial in the past. She must know about him and Tha?s.
And if she did, she likely hated him.
And he deserved it.
A month had passed since he’d made his hog-minded proposition at the Institute. He’d spent the entirety of it awash in shame. He was not sure he’d ever be able to regard himself as a gentleman again.
He’d suspended his search for a bride. With Bell dead, there was no reason to pursue Emily Clark, and his feelings for Tha?s made it clear enough to him that he could not devote himself to any other woman. He could not pledge his hand when his heart was pledged elsewhere. And even if he wanted to, he would not trust himself with a woman again.
If he could hurt the one he loved as badly as he’d hurt Tha?s—twice—then imagine what pain he might cause a person he cared for less.
He had proven himself a brute when it came to sentiment—as sensitive as a battering ram. And it was shocking to know this of himself, after a lifetime of thinking he was a relatively gentlehearted man.
Lowering.
He deserved to be a bachelor. He deserved his empty home.
The man across the table from him, who Eden recognized as the bookseller from Jack’s shop, smiled and stood up, greeting someone who’d just walked in.
Eden turned around to see it was Tha?s.
She was dressed in a bright orange gown that popped against her hair. She looked like the feeling of sunshine in a meadow.
He stood so quickly he nearly overturned his wineglass.
“Good morning, Miss Magdalene,” he said to her, bowing.
“Lord Eden,” she said politely. “How nice to see you.” She quickly turned her attention to others around them, greeting them with far more warmth.
It was as though they’d never met. He felt the chill of her disinterest like a lash.
“You’re right here next to me,” Loudon, the bookseller, said to Tha?s, holding up her place card.
This meant she was one seat across the table from Eden. Close enough to touch. If he leaned forward, he could whisper to her.
But what would he say?
I’m sorry. I love you. I’m lost.
She instantly fell into an animated conversation with Loudon, and he was envious. He strained to hear what they were talking about.
The weather, it turned out.
What he would give to have a conversation with Tha?s about the weather.
Jack stood up and clinked his glass at the head of the table, and the buzz of conversation in the room quieted.
“Friends, thank you so much for gathering with us this morning,” he said. “My wife and I are so grateful you’ve come to celebrate with us.” At the word wife, everyone raised their glasses and cheered.
The bride and groom had already said their vows that morning in Jack’s rooms in Mary-le-Bone with just Elinor’s children in attendance.
“I’d like to tell you a story,” Jack said. “I don’t know how many of you know this, but Elinor and I have been friends since we were young, ever since she wandered into my bookstore, not knowing what it was.”
“I knew more than I let on,” Elinor said. “I always loved illicit things.”
The crowd laughed.
“Well, you could have fooled me, for how innocent you looked,” Jack said. “We struck up a conversation, and I was enchanted by her intelligence and beauty. That dry wit that we all love. The sparkle in her eyes and her warmth with everyone she meets.”
“Jack, you’ll embarrass me,” Elinor protested.
“A woman deserves to be embarrassed by her husband on her wedding day,” he said. “My bride here bought a few books to read, and I slipped a copy of the Equalist Society circular inside her bag. I don’t know if I thought it would scandalize her or impress her, but it must have done the latter, for the next day she came back. Her color was high, and I worried I had offended her or gotten her in trouble with my views. But it turned out she was excited by what she’d read. She came back to see if I had older issues she could borrow.”
“And perhaps to see you again,” Elinor said. “See? A wicked girl.”
Jack took her hand and kissed her knuckles. “Not a wicked bone in your whole being, but you were brave. You began to pass whole afternoons in the shop, along with your poor maid—what was her name?”
“Louise.”
“Yes, poor Louise, eighty if she was a day, who always looked bored enough to fall asleep—and thank God, often did, so we could talk for hours. I was a poor man who wrote against the aristocracy, and you were a duke’s daughter, but it never seemed to matter. Ours was the most natural friendship I ever formed in my life.
“I won’t lie that I sometimes wished it could be more. But our Elinor here was like a princess, and I was living on day-old bread and broth in a garret above the shop, using every spare pence to fund the circular. And of course, leaving aside my origins, I was myself, and she was her. She could not match me in charm and looks.”
“I still can’t, sadly,” Elinor sighed.
Everyone laughed, for Jack had a stocky boxer’s frame and a broken nose to match, while Elinor was a seasoned beauty with the manners of a queen.
“So I never told my girl I loved her,” Jack said. “I was too intimidated. Even I, who wrote of the hypocrisy of the social classes, felt I didn’t deserve to cross them. I felt she wouldn’t have me. That she’d have laughed me out of my own shop.”
Elinor shook her head vehemently. “I wouldn’t have. Oh, Jack. Of course I wouldn’t have.”
“Well, it’s best I kept my mouth shut then. If I’d convinced you to be with me and live in poverty, you would not have gotten your two dear children. And the world would be a lesser place without them.”
He smiled across the table at the boy and girl, who smiled back.
“I don’t regret it, for that reason,” Elinor said. “But I hope when it is their turn, my children will choose differently. We must change the world so that those who are meant to be together can feel free to be with whomever they want—society be damned.”
The whole room cheered.
Eden was not among them.
He felt like the earth had turned to seawater beneath his feet.
All of these people were cheering at the concept of being with anyone—society be damned.
How could he sit here, in a room of people he respected no matter their lot in life or class, and make the choices he’d been making?
Why had he insisted to himself for months that certain rules were unquestionable, while others begged for reform?
He snuck a glance at Tha?s. She was smiling from ear to ear at Jack and Elinor, her eyes wet with unspilled tears. She knew the rules were foolish.
There had been that perfect moment when she’d suggested that they marry. He could have taken her hand right then and asked her to be his wife.
She’d have said yes.
He could have had her.
And then again, at the Institute, after they’d made love. Again, he’d had the chance to pledge himself to her, and instead he’d asked only for her body.
He’d put convention above his feelings for her—and for what? Why was he willing to defy so many rules, to push for change in society’s most enshrined laws and customs, and yet too cowardly to apply this spirit to the deepest desires of his own heart?
He’d made himself miserable. And worse, he’d hurt Tha?s so deeply.
All because he’d not seen the simplicity of this truth that Elinor had put so plainly. That you could do what you wanted because of passion, simply because it made you happy.
He’d been so wedded to the idea of being a perfect husband in a perfect marriage. And it had led him to nothing but loneliness and despair. It had made him contemplate marrying women he knew would not make him happy just because he’d convinced himself he was not permitted to marry the woman who did. Where was the perfection in that?
He had certainly not been a perfect man to Tha?s. He had hurt her deeply. Insulted her. Willfully suggested a future he knew she didn’t want because of his own prejudice.
But perhaps she could forgive him.
Perhaps she would let him be her imperfect husband.