Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
Sophia did not sleep, although she attempted to do so with considerable determination.
She removed her earrings, allowed Jenny to unpin her hair, changed into her nightdress, drank half a cup of warm milk she did not want, and lay beneath the covers with her eyes firmly closed as though sleep might be persuaded by good manners. It was not.
The ball followed her into the darkness, only it was not the music, or the chandeliers, or the endless procession of silk gowns and polished shoes. It was Benedict.
You have always known what this marriage was.
Sophia turned onto her side. The room was dark except for the faint orange glow of the dying fire. Beyond the windows, Rivermere slept beneath a moonless sky.
It was an arrangement.
She pulled the blanket higher.
For Amelia and Marjorie.
Sophia closed her eyes more tightly, as though that might stop her from hearing him. It did not. The conversation returned with cruel precision. A marriage in name only, and that she had demanded it. That fact seemed almost absurd now.
Sophia remembered the woman she had been when she set that condition, frightened, defensive, and certain that marriage to Benedict would be a practical arrangement in which she might finally become useful somewhere.
She imagined herself caring for Amelia and Marjorie, managing a household, having books, gardens, perhaps children someday, if she chose it. Benedict had stood somewhere at the edge of that imagined future, stern and dependable and conveniently untouched by all dangerous forms of emotion.
She had never accounted for his smile. That had been her first mistake.
Or perhaps his hands, his dry humor, the way he listened when she spoke as though whatever she said deserved consideration, even when he disagreed with every word, the way he protected the girls, the way fear lived beneath every rule he imposed, and the way he had crossed crowded rooms for her before she understood that anyone could notice when she needed rescuing.
Sophia opened her eyes. The ceiling above her was only darkness.
“I love him.” The words slipped out before she could stop them.
Sophia stared upward. Her heart began to beat harder.
She whispered it again. “I love him.”
Nothing changed. The room did not change. The heavens did not open. No great revelation followed, only the quiet certainty of something she had apparently known for much longer than she had had the courage to name.
She loved Benedict. And he had spent the past week carefully removing himself from her.
Sophia covered her face with both hands. For several moments she remained that way, breathing into her palms. Of all the foolish things she might have done with her life, falling in love with a man who had specifically agreed not to require love from her seemed particularly efficient.
A miserable laugh escaped her. It turned dangerously close to a sob. Sophia pressed her lips together.
No.
She would not cry. She had already spent too many years believing that if she remained quiet enough, patient enough, undemanding enough, pain might pass without troubling anyone. But this was different. She could not remain beside Benedict every day and pretend.
Sophia rolled onto her back again.
He wanted her. Perhaps not in the way she wanted him. Perhaps never in the way she wanted him. But something existed between them, and Benedict had chosen to bury it before it could become dangerous.
She understood his grief, his fear, his determination to protect everything he loved by refusing to admit how deeply he loved it. Sophia once thought understanding someone made pain easier. It did not. Sometimes it merely explained the knife.
She sat up. The room seemed suddenly too small. She pushed aside the blankets and crossed barefoot toward the window. The glass was cold beneath her fingertips.
Outside, Rivermere lay dark and silent. Somewhere beyond those shadowed roofs was Benedict’s room, or perhaps he was still in his study.
Sophia almost smiled bitterly. Of course he might be in his study.
His beloved fortress.
She imagined breakfast tomorrow, Benedict asking whether she had slept well, Sophia saying yes. He would pass her the marmalade. She would thank him. He would disappear into his study.
At luncheon they would discuss the weather.
In the afternoon, perhaps they would encounter one another in a corridor, and Benedict would stand aside with exquisite politeness while Sophia tried not to remember his mouth against hers.
Then dinner, then another day and another.
The thought pressed against her chest until she could scarcely breathe. She could not do it, not tomorrow, perhaps not the next day either.
Sophia turned from the window. The decision came quietly. She needed to leave.
Not forever. Only for several days.
Keswick was close. Her parents would be delighted to see her. She could sleep in her old room, walk beneath the oak tree, read without hearing Benedict’s footsteps in every corridor.
She only needed distance, enough to think, enough to remember who she had been before Benedict occupied so much of her mind that she could no longer distinguish her own thoughts from wanting him.
Sophia lit another candle. Her hands trembled slightly.
She dressed without waking Jenny. She packed very little into a traveling case, just two gowns, stockings, a book she knew she would not read, and the hairbrush she nearly forgot.
By the time she finished, the black outside the windows had begun to soften toward gray.
Sophia sat at the writing table. The blank paper before her seemed far more intimidating than it ought. She dipped the pen.
Benedict,
She stopped. There were a hundred things she wanted to write.
You hurt me.
I love you.
I cannot remain beside you while you pretend nothing has happened.
She wrote none of them.
Benedict,
I have gone to Keswick for a few days. Please do not be concerned. I find I need some time away to clear my thoughts, and I should like to spend a little time with my parents. The girls must not worry. Tell them I shall return soon.
Sophia
She stared at the note. It explained almost nothing. Perhaps that was safest. Sophia folded it and wrote Benedict’s name on the outside. Then she stood. For a brief moment, she looked around the bedroom.
Her bedroom.
It had become hers so quickly, with books beside the bed, a ribbon Amelia left upon the dressing table and a small drawing Marjorie had made of Admiral attacking what appeared to be either a dragon or a cabbage.
Sophia touched the edge of the paper. Her throat tightened.
She was not leaving them. She was only going away for a few days.
That distinction mattered.
She repeated it all the way downstairs.
The carriage crossed through the gates of Keswick shortly after sunrise. Sophia watched the familiar house emerge through the morning mist.
Home.
She had spent years looking at Keswick, imagining another life elsewhere. Now the sight of it made something inside her collapse with relief… and grief.
The carriage had scarcely stopped before the front door opened. Her father appeared first. He stood upon the steps in shirtsleeves beneath his morning coat, looking thoroughly confused.
“Sophia?”
She stepped down. “Good morning, Father.”
He stared at her, at the carriage, then behind her, as though Benedict might emerge from it.
“Sophia,” he said instead of a greeting. “What are you doing here?”
Before she could answer, her mother appeared behind him. She was dressed for breakfast and had evidently been informed that a carriage had arrived at an unreasonable hour. Her surprise was considerably less discreet than her husband’s.
“My goodness, Sophia?”
“I hope you do not mind an unexpected visitor.”
“Mind?” Her mother descended the steps at once. “You are our daughter.”
Then she stopped. Her gaze flickered toward the carriage.
“Where is His Grace?”
Sophia’s chest tightened. “Benedict remained at Rivermere.”
Her father’s brows drew together. “Is anything wrong?”
“No.” But she said it too quickly. Sophia softened the answer. “No. Nothing is wrong.”
Her mother examined her face. Sophia knew that look. It had discovered muddy hems, hidden novels, tears after disappointing balls, and every childhood illness Sophia had attempted to conceal.
She looked away.
“Benedict has a great deal of estate business this week,” she explained. “And I realized I have hardly spent any time here since the wedding. I thought I might stay for a few days.”
Her father’s expression eased. “That is all?”
“Yes.”
It was not precisely a lie. Benedict did have estate business. She had hardly spent time at Keswick. And she did wish to stay.
Her mother remained unconvinced. “At dawn?”
Sophia attempted a laugh. “I woke early.”
“You have never voluntarily woken early in your life.”
“That is unkind.”
“It is accurate.”
Her father smiled faintly. Her mother still watched Sophia.
Sophia slipped one arm through her mother’s. “I missed you.”
That, at least, was entirely true. Her mother’s suspicion softened instantly.
“Oh, darling.” Her mother kissed her cheek. “You might have written. We could have prepared your room.”
“I did not decide until this morning.”
“Then of course you shall stay.”
Her father took her traveling case from the footman despite having several servants whose entire employment appeared designed to prevent viscounts from carrying luggage.
“Your room is exactly as you left it.”
Sophia followed them inside. The entrance hall smelled exactly as she remembered. Everything familiar. Everything unchanged.
For one strange moment, Sophia expected to feel restored merely by entering it. Instead, she immediately felt the absence of Benedict. He was nowhere here. That was why she had come.
The realization hurt.
Her mother began discussing breakfast. Her father asked whether she wanted coffee. A footman carried her case upstairs. Sophia answered every question. She smiled. She allowed herself to be fussed over. And all the while, somewhere inside her, misery settled deeper.
She imagined distance might make breathing easier. Instead, she discovered that Benedict’s absence occupied space just as completely as his presence.
At breakfast, her father complained about the weather. Her mother complained about a neighbor. Sophia stirred her tea until it went cold. At one point, her mother asked whether Rivermere’s cook prepared kedgeree differently.
Sophia stared at her. “I beg your pardon?”
Her mother frowned. “The kedgeree.”
“Oh.” Sophia looked down at her plate. “Yes. Slightly.”
Later, she escaped upstairs. Her old room received her with quiet familiarity. Sophia sat upon the edge of the bed. For several minutes, she did nothing. Then she looked around.
This room had once been the safest place she knew.
She spent years retreating here whenever the world became too loud.
Her books waited for her. Silence comforted her there.
Nothing had ever been demanded. Now the room seemed strangely small.
It was not wrong in any sense of the word, simply no longer entirely hers.
Sophia lay back upon the bed. She stared at the canopy overhead. Then, a memory came without permission. Benedict was standing beneath the ballroom chandeliers. His hand was around hers.
You have always known what this marriage was.
“Yes,” she whispered into the empty room.
She knew what the marriage had been meant to be. That was the problem. It had become something else to her. And she had no idea how to make it smaller again.
Sophia turned onto her side and curled beneath the familiar quilt, still wearing her traveling gown.
She told herself she only needed a few days, a few quiet mornings, a few nights without hearing Benedict’s voice in the corridor and a little distance in which to clear her head.
Then, she would return to Rivermere sensible again.
She would remember the arrangement. She would find some way to live beside Benedict without wanting what he could not give her.
Sophia pressed her face into the pillow. It smelled faintly of lavender, exactly as it had when she was a girl. For the first time since arriving home, tears finally slipped free. She let them.
And somewhere beneath every sensible assurance she had made since leaving Rivermere lay a truth Sophia could no longer deny. She had not come home because she needed to remember who she had been before Benedict.
She had come because loving him had begun to hurt too much to stay near him.