Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
ONE WEEK LATER
“Lucien.” Annabelle rose from the settee. “I was not expecting you.”
“Helena wrote.” His riding coat was still buttoned. He had not removed his gloves. He watched her without moving.
“Well.” She crossed to the bell pull. “You have come all this way. Sit down. I’ll ring for tea.”
“I don’t want tea.”
“Lucien—”
“You are composing your face again,” he said. “You have been doing it since you were twelve, and it has never once deceived me.”
She turned to the fire instead. Took up the tongs, added a coal that did not need adding, and set them down again without turning around.
“There is nothing to discuss,” she said. “I am perfectly well.”
“You are standing with your back to me.”
She turned. He had not moved from the middle of the room. His gloves were still in one hand, and he was watching her.
“Annabelle.” His voice was even.
She had been careful all week. She had been scrupulous: the salt passed at dinner, light conversation in the mornings, the quiet sustained performance of a wife with nothing to report.
She had sat across from Dominic at every meal and met his eyes when required and said the correct things in the correct register, and done it well enough that James almost noticed nothing.
She pressed her hands flat against her skirts.
“I told him,” she said. “That I wished to try. That I wanted our marriage to be something other than arrangement.” Her throat tightened.
She went on. “He said it was for the best. That we continue as we are. As carers for James.” She crossed to the window because the room was too small to stand in, and looked at the street.
Grey afternoon, a coal cart turning at the corner, a woman in black moving quickly past the railings.
“He does not do it cruelly. That is what I cannot settle. He thanks me and closes the door, and while he does it, he looks as though it costs him something. I cannot decide whether that is better or worse than if he simply felt nothing at all.”
She pressed her hands to the sill.
“I told him I cared for him. He said: I am sorry. It’s for the best. And then he went to the window and stood there until I left the room.”
She turned around.
“He has done it twice now. I am beginning to think he means it.”
Lucien had not spoken. He was in the middle of the room with his jaw set and his eyes on her, and he did not offer a word.
“Go on,” she said. Her voice came out flat. “I told you so. You told me this was how it would be, and I insisted I knew better. You have earned it.”
He looked at her for the count of several heartbeats.
Then he crossed the room in three strides and put his arms around her.
She had been afraid of this all week. She had kept herself tightly stoppered against exactly this — someone being kind to her, someone looking at her plainly enough to see what was there — because she had known what it would cost. But there was no preventing Lucien once his mind was made up, and the moment his arms came around her, she stopped trying.
It was not what she had expected. Not tears first, though those came eventually.
It was the thing beneath: her shoulders dropping, the full week of careful effort leaving her at once, the sound she made against his coat that she had not planned and could not call back.
Her hands came up and gripped the front of his jacket, and she put her forehead against his shoulder and let it go.
He held her still. One hand at the back of her head, one at her shoulder.
He did not speak. He did not try to explain anything or offer any comfort that required her to agree with it.
He stood there and let her be held, and after a time her breathing came even again, and the cold space in her chest did not fill, but it changed — became simply emptiness rather than the braced anticipation of more hurt.
She pulled back. His face was not easy.
“I am not sorry I tried,” she said. Her voice was steadier than she expected. “I want you to know that. I went in with open eyes.”
His jaw worked once. He lifted a hand and pressed the back of his fingers briefly to her cheek, then lowered it.
“I know,” he said.
They stood in the room together while the fire built and the street outside went quiet with the change of the hour.
“How is Elinor?” she said, after a time.
The line between his brows eased. “Expecting me to return having spoken plainly, or not come back at all. She said before I left: if you return having been diplomatic, I will not speak to you for a week.”
Annabelle pressed her lips together. “She is a very sensible woman.”
“She is.” He was still watching her face. “Will you be all right?”
She considered it honestly. “I don’t know,” she said.
He nodded. He did not tell her she would be. He simply collected his gloves from the settee, took her hand, squeezed it once, and let it go.
She heard the front door close from the hallway below, and then the sound of the street, briefly admitted and shut out again.
The drawing room was quiet.
From directly above her, from the study overhead, came the slow scrape of a chair against the floorboards; the sound of a man standing from his desk.