Chapter 16 The Art of Wooing One’s Wife
Chapter sixteen
The Art of Wooing One’s Wife
Aubrey sat in the wreckage of Liz's words, his face still red and eyes moist from crying when the door opened.
Eleanor entered with her usual brisk efficiency, carrying fresh linens. She took three steps into the room and froze.
"My lord?" Her voice was uncertain, startled. "What is the matter?"
Aubrey tried to compose himself, but his hands were trembling too badly.
Eleanor set down the linens and moved closer, her eyes wide with concern. "Have you been crying?" She reached the bedside, studying his face with growing alarm. "Are you in pain? Should I send for the doctor?"
"No." The word came out hoarse. "No, I am not in pain. Not that kind of pain."
Eleanor's brow furrowed. She reached for his forehead, checking for fever. Her touch was gentle, and it nearly undid him completely.
"I heard you've been asking questions about me," she said quietly, her hand still resting against his forehead. "Mrs Williams mentioned it. And Liz was here. Was it something she said?"
Aubrey couldn't speak. Couldn't find words adequate to the enormity of what he had learned. So instead, he reached for her—his good arm wrapping around her waist, pulling her toward him with more strength than he had managed in days.
"I'm sorry." The words broke from him like a dam bursting. "Eleanor, I'm so sorry. For everything. For these two years. For being blind and selfish and unforgivably cruel. For not seeing you. For not knowing you. For destroying something precious before I even understood what I had."
Eleanor went rigid in his embrace, her hands braced against his shoulders as though she might push away at any moment. But Aubrey held on, his face pressed against her shoulder, breathing in the lavender scent of her hair.
His arm tightened around her small frame. "I wish I could hold you properly. Wish I could stand and take you in my arms the way a husband should. Wish I could show you how desperately sorry I am for every moment of pain I've caused you."
For a long moment, Eleanor remained frozen. Then, slowly, her hands moved from bracing against his shoulders to resting there more gently. Not returning the embrace, exactly, but no longer resisting it.
When Aubrey finally released her, Eleanor pulled back with an expression he couldn't quite read. Perplexed, certainly. Perhaps touched. But underneath it all, something harder. Something determined.
A wall going up where there had been, for just a moment, a crack.
"I see," she said quietly, smoothing her dress with hands that trembled slightly. "Liz told you about... about before."
"She told me who you were," Aubrey said. "Who you are. What I was too foolish to discover for myself."
Eleanor's jaw tightened. She turned away, moving toward the washbasin with rigid composure. "You're healing well, my lord. Well enough that we need only change your bandages every other day now instead of daily. I'll see to them now, and then we can reduce the frequency of care."
Her tone was professional. Distant. As though the moment of connection had never happened.
"Eleanor—"
"Let me help you turn," she said, already moving to the bedside. "One... two... three."
She manoeuvred him with her usual competence, her hands gentle but more impersonal than she’d been the last few days. Aubrey tried to catch her eye, to see past the stoic mask, but Eleanor kept her gaze carefully averted.
She worked in silence, checking his wounds, applying fresh salve where needed. Her movements were efficient but rigid, her hardened countenance giving him no permission to explain, to apologise further.
When she finished, she pulled the sheet back up and stepped away quickly. "There. That should do. Unless you experience any pain or signs of infection, of course."
"Eleanor, I need—"
But she was already hurrying toward the door, her spine rigid, her movements just slightly too quick to be truly composed.
She pulled the door open and nearly collided with Mr Davies and Steven Kedleston, who stood in the corridor, apparently about to knock.
Eleanor stopped short, staring at them. Then at Aubrey. Then back at them.
"What's going on?" she asked, her voice tight.
"Lord Madeley requested to see Mr Kedleston," Davies said carefully. "I was just about to announce him."
Eleanor's face flushed. "You sent for Steven?"
"I did," Aubrey said from the bed. "I'm trying to understand who you are. To learn what I should have known all along. Your family, your friends… anyone who knows you better than I do. Which, at present, is nearly everyone."
"Why?" The word came out sharp, almost wounded. "Why now? Why any of this?"
"Because I was wrong about everything," Aubrey said simply. "And I need to make it right."
"Stop." Eleanor's hands clenched at her sides. "Don't bother. It's too late. I'm leaving in two weeks. There's no point in any of this. No point in learning about me or apologising. It would be easier if you continued not to care."
"I must for my own selfish reasons," Aubrey said, keeping his voice steady despite the desperation clawing at his chest. "I'm trapped in this bed with nothing to do but think. Humour me, at least. Let me spend this week learning about the woman I married."
Eleanor stared at him for a long moment, her eyes bright with emotions he couldn't name. Anger, certainly. But also, something that looked like pain.
"Fine," she said finally, her voice brittle. "Interview whomever you like. Learn whatever you want. It won't change anything."
She swept past Steven and Mr Davies and disappeared down the corridor, her footsteps quick and uneven.
The silence that followed was profound.
Steven Kedleston stood in the doorway, watching Eleanor's departure with an expression of deep concern. Then he turned to Aubrey, his pleasant face harder than Aubrey had ever seen it.
"Well," Steven said quietly. "You've certainly made a mess of things, haven't you?"
"Yes," Aubrey agreed. "I have. Which is why I asked you here. I need your help."
Steven moved into the room slowly, studying Aubrey with the careful assessment of a man deciding whether to help or hinder. Finally, he sat in the chair beside the bed, the same chair Liz had occupied less than an hour ago.
"Why should I help you?" Steven asked. "I care about Eleanor. Deeply. I have for years. And I've watched you hurt her over and over again. Why would I assist you in worming your way back into her good graces?"
"Because she still loves me," Aubrey said. The words felt like both a gift and a burden. "Liz told me. Which means there's a chance, however small, that I might earn her forgiveness."
"And if you can't?" Steven's voice was cool. "What then?"
"Then she leaves. Lives her life at the orphanage. And perhaps, eventually, finds someone worthy of her affection." Aubrey met Steven's eyes directly. "Someone like you, perhaps."
Steven's expression flickered with something. Surprise, perhaps, or pain. "Is that what you think? That I'm waiting in the wings to sweep her away the moment you fail?"
"Aren't you?"
A long silence stretched between them. Finally, Steven sighed.
"I would have been married to Eleanor by now," he said quietly, "if she hadn't loved you for so long.
I've known her since we were children. I've loved her almost as long.
And I've asked her to marry me. Twice. Once on the day of her debut, and once after your wedding when it became clear you had no intention of being a real husband. "
Possessiveness and regret knotted painfully in his chest. "What did she say?"
"That she cared for me deeply, that I was one of her dearest friends, but that her heart belonged to you.
" Steven's smile was sad. "Even after you abandoned her, even after you made her life a misery, she still loved you.
It's the tragedy of Eleanor, really. She loves with her whole heart.
And once she's given that heart, she can't seem to take it back, no matter how much pain it causes her. "
The words settled over Aubrey like a physical weight. "I know I don't deserve that kind of love."
"No," Steven agreed. "You don't, but she gave it to you anyway. The question is what you intend to do with it now."
Aubrey leaned back against his pillows, exhaustion and emotion warring in his chest. "I want to court her properly. The way I should have from the beginning. The way she deserved. But I don't know how. I don't know what she wants or needs or dreams of."
Steven was quiet for a long moment, clearly wrestling with whether to help the man who had hurt the woman he loved.
"She wants to be chosen," he said finally. "Truly chosen, not obligated or forced. She's spent her entire life being overlooked—by her father, by Society, by you. She wants someone to look at her and see her. All of her. And choose her anyway."
Aubrey nodded slowly. "What else?"
"She wants to be courted," Steven continued, his voice softer now.
"Properly courted. With romance and thoughtfulness and genuine effort.
Eleanor is practical by necessity, but in her heart, she's a romantic.
She's read every novel in your library with a love story.
She dreams of grand gestures and thoughtful tokens and someone pursuing her the way heroines in books are pursued. "
"She never got that," Aubrey said quietly. "From me."
"No. You gave her obligation and resentment.
You made her feel like a burden rather than a prize.
" Steven leaned forward slightly. "But here's what you need to understand about Eleanor.
She shows love through service. Through care.
Through the thousand small ways she makes life better for the people around her.
And she deserves to receive love the same way. "
Aubrey thought of the past two weeks. Eleanor's competent hands tending his wounds. The books she'd brought him. The way she'd adjusted his pillows without being asked. The tea prepared exactly as he liked it, remembered from their wedding breakfast.
Acts of service. Acts of love.
"She's been showing me love all along," he whispered. "And I never saw it."
"No." Steven's voice hardened slightly. He then stood, preparing to leave.
"Thank you," Aubrey said quietly. "For helping me, even though this must be difficult for you."
Steven moved toward the door, then paused. "I'm helping you for Eleanor's sake. Because if there's even a chance that you can make her happy, then she deserves to have that chance."
He opened the door, then looked back one more time.
"But if you hurt her again? If you fail her after all of this? I'll be there to pick up the pieces. And this time, I won't take no for an answer."
Steven left, closing the door behind him.
Aubrey lay in the silence, his mind spinning with everything he'd learned.
He reached for the letter on his bedside table, the letter he'd written to his wife. He looked at it now and realised how inadequate those words were. Eleanor didn't need his apologies written on paper. She needed them demonstrated in action.
She needed to be courted. Properly. The way she should have been from the beginning.
And Aubrey had exactly twelve days to figure out how to woo his wife while trapped in a bed, unable to walk, with a household full of people watching his every move. He picked up his pen and began to write his plans.
Twelve days to show Eleanor she was seen, valued, chosen.
Twelve days to convince her that her home was with him.
He would make every single one of them count.