Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
One would think that given how long Edward had been alive, he would know more better than to overindulge in brandy.
The headache that greeted him as he gained consciousness served as proof that age did not equate wisdom and further showed that his foolishness might be never ending if he continued down this path.
He stirred in bed, raising his head off his pillow slightly, only to lower it again with a hiss of pain.
The curtains in Thomas's guest room were apparently decorative in nature – large, heavy and expensive-looking, despite being entirely useless as they did nothing whatsoever to prevent the sun from making his current predicament even worse.
He pressed the back of his hand against his eyes and lay very still, as though his lack of movement might convince his skull to reconsider.
It, unfortunately, did not and things got worse as soon as his uninvited company arrived.
“Good morning,” Came his friend's voice, far too enthusiastically than any decent person had a right to speak before noon. “Or perhaps not particularly good, given your current pathetic state.”
“Close the curtains,” Edward groaned.
Thomas paused in deliberation, then he shrugged. “I will not.”
“Ravencroft.”
“Montford,” Thomas teased, clearly enjoying the spectacle that was Edward’s suffering.
Edward considered asking if he had nothing better to do but as he watched his friend lower a cup of – hopefully strong – tea on the bed side table, before he settled into a chair close to the bed with an expression of ease, he quickly realized this was the most unoccupied he had ever seen Thomas, much to his own detriment.
“You have been sleeping in my guest room for quite a few days now,” Thomas pointed out, as though Edward had lost his concept of time at some point recently.
“Have I?” Edward questioned, with an attempt at detachment that was somewhat undermined by the fact that he had not yet managed to sit up.
“I am certain that I know when you arrived and what day it is today – though I doubt the same can be same about you,” Thomas paused, looking displeased as he added, “Your wife has been told you are occupied with business matters in the city.”
“That is accurate enough.”
“Is it?” Thomas queried dryly, the lack of amusement in his tone advising Edward to brace himself for what was to come.
“Because from where I am sitting, what you appear to be busy doing is avoiding your wife, drinking a considerable quantity of my finest brandy – which I will have to ask that you reimburse me for at your earliest convivence – and spending an unusual amount of time staring at various ceilings in my home. We have seen more of each other in the last week than we had in the last three months. I am sick of your face.”
Edward exhaled deeply, pursing his lips momentarily before stating, “I have been thinking.”
“Oh really? And here I thought you were perhaps admiring the stunning designs on the ceiling,” Thomas sighed as well, before he sat up straighter. “What are you thinking about, Edward? And does it have anything to do with why you have been acting so out of character?”
Edward did not answer immediately, attempting to buy himself some more time by entertaining the distractions that surrounded the environment around him.
He could hear the distant sounds of the household – footsteps, voices, the unhurried rhythm of ordinary life being lived without particular complication.
He found it both restful and faintly maddening.
He had not slept well in days. Whenever he closed his eyes, he longed for Phoebe in his arms again, quiet and warm against him, her breathing slow and even, as he stroked her soft hair.
He had lain awake and watched her sleep during their last night together with a feeling in his ribcage that he could not name but knew without a doubt that it was the most frightening thing he had ever encountered in his life.
So much so, it proved him to be the coward he had always known himself to be, because in the morning, he had risen and ran away to the house of his closest friend. It had been a moment he had not been proud of in the slightest.
“I kissed her,” he said.
Thomas frowned in confusion at the sudden confession. “Who? Your wife?”
“Yes, my wife, Ravencroft, who else would I be kissing?”
“I – I wasn't entirely certain, given the gravity with which you said it. I thought perhaps you had begun living a separate life we've never discussed.” Thomas settled back in the chair with a sigh that spoke in volumes about how little he cared for Edward’s theatrics.
“But I confess I do not understand why kissing your wife has driven you to take up residence in my house. You are married. I had assumed kissing was... involved in some capacity.”
“It was different,” Edward groaned, feeling more and more as though he was losing his mind with every breath he took.
“Different,” Thomas echoed in the same dry tone he had used earlier.
“Yes.”
“Different how?”
Edward stared at the ceiling, realizing with slight alarm that he had familiarized himself somewhat with the pattern that it bore.
He had spent four days trying to locate an alternative explanation for what he had felt – or rather, what he had been feeling for some time, which had taken shape that night into something he could no longer reasonably ignore.
He had examined it from several angles. He had tried to attribute it to proximity, to physical compatibility, to the stress of the evening and the relief of finding that there was no other man involved with his wife.
None of it had held. Not if it explained the devastating crack in his chest that only ever seemed to be satiated when she was by his side.
“I am in love with her,” he whispered.
The words came out plainly and without any fanfare, as though he was speaking of a mere change in the weather.
It made the admission seem closer to the truth than if he had put it any other way, and he felt justified, stating it so plainly.
It was not a happy announcement. It was an accounting of something that had happened to him – like an injury he had failed to notice until he tried to move and found he could not.
This... disease had consumed him slowly, eating away at his insides, making its way upward as it devoured his heart and was now headed for his mind.
Thomas was quiet for a moment, then eventually, he gave the reaction that was befitting of a man of his status.
“Ah. I see.”
“Yes.”
“And this is,” Thomas tried, picking his words with precise care, “A problem?”
“It should not be. And yet...” Edward closed his eyes for a moment, willing himself to put thing to bed as soon as possible.
“I had the arrangement clearly established from the beginning. There was a specific and necessary purpose to what I was doing, Thomas – I required a wife for the sole sake of birthing an heir, a continuation of the line. That was all. I told her as much. I told myself as much, consistently and at length. And then she–”
He stopped suddenly, wondering if he could attribute what had happened solely to her efforts.
“She what?” Thomas asked, looking as though he was greatly concerned for Edward’s wellbeing.
He thought of the afternoon she had taken his shaking hands in hers without being asked, without making any particular thing of it, simply because she had noticed and had wanted to bring him some sense of comfort.
He thought of her laughing at his aunt's table – genuinely laughing, as though there was nowhere better, she could have been. He thought of the way she spoke about her sister, about her family, regarding their wellbeing as a responsibility as natural to her as breathing. He thought of every small smile he had seen slide across her face, how her eyes sparkled every time he complimented her even though she doubted him, how her lips were the sweetest things he’d ever tasted.
He thought about all of that and felt utterly sick.
“She simply kept being herself,” he huffed tiredly.
“She made no particular effort to charm me. She did not try to win me over or to manage me. She was simply... herself. Consistently and entirely herself. And somewhere along the way she dismantled every last wall I had put in place, and I genuinely cannot identify the precise moment it happened.”
Thomas said nothing for a moment, watching him with an expression that was carefully neutral. Then, very slowly as though he was worried that he might scare him, he questioned,
“Why is it a problem, Edward? Being in love with one's wife is, by most accounts, a desirable thing.”
“Because I held her at arm's length for a reason.” Edward’s voice came out quiet and strained. “Because I did not want to love her or to receive her in return. That was the whole point of the distance.”
“I see.” Something sharpened in Thomas’ tone. “And why is that?”
Edward fell silent then, the guilt gnawing at him.
“Edward.” Thomas leaned slightly forward. “Why would you not want your wife to love you?”
“Because I am going to die.”
It was the first time he had said it aloud, to anyone, in years.
It had always been a fact he had known, something that buzzed in the back of his mind quietly, every day he woke up and every night he went to bed.
But saying it out loud was different. They occupied the room differently than he had expected, without drama bur more as though he had simply stated the truth, was in some ways worse.
Thomas's expression did not change, but his body picked a tense weight that told Edward the words had reached where it was meant to go.
. “I have known for several years. I could claim a lot of rubbish about hope and time I may or may not have, but I have seen how it ends. And as such, I have no interest in wasting my time in engaging in needless trivialities. That is the reason I placed the advertisement. An heir, for the dukedom. Someone to carry things forward when I cannot. That was the entire and only purpose. It was meant to be clean. Functional. Free from the kind of entanglement that makes things complicated.”
“And instead, you fell in love,” Thomas noted, his tone empty.
“I never thought of happiness,” Edward sighed, and the frankness of the admission surprised him.
“I did not consider it as something that belonged on my list of concerns. The dukedom, the line, the heir – those were the things I had decided mattered. Everything else felt like indulgence I could not afford and did not require... And then Phoebe arrived.”
“And she made happiness seem possible,” Thomas nodded, as though he had only just understood Edward.
“Made it feel inevitable,” Edward corrected quietly, “Which is much worse. Because now I want it. I want her. I want to love her properly and completely for however long I am given, and I also know, with equal certainty, that when I am gone... it will ruin her. And I cannot do that. Not to her.”
The air in the room was silent for a while, heavy with all that had been said the confessions still sharp as they resonated and cut deeper than most truths had any reason to be. Then finally, Thomas asked gently,
“Is it not her choice to make? Should she not be given a chance to choose whether the love she has found is worth being ruined for? Would you not want the same choice if you were in her shoes?”
Edward did not answer the question, because he did not have the courage to handle the implications of the response.
He knew, on some level – had known it in the dark, with Phoebe breathing steadily against his side and his arm around her and the whole quiet weight of her presence beside him – that Thomas was right.
He had known it. Knowing something and being able to act on it were simply not always the same thing.
“You cannot remain here indefinitely,” Thomas told him, rising to his feet.
“She is at home, very likely wondering what she has done to deserve a husband who disappears without a word. And whatever else you decide, you cannot allow her to carry that, when the fault is entirely your own cowardice. It would not be fair to her.”
Once more, Thomas was entirely right.
“I was so certain,” Edward mumbled, almost to himself. “That she wouldn't get past me. I was absolutely certain.”
Thomas looked at him with something that might have been sympathy, or perhaps a sense of kinship because he, too, might have experienced what Edward was currently struggling with.
“We usually are,” he shrugged eventually.
Edward sat up carefully, reached for the tea, and found that he had, somewhere in the past few minutes, already made his decision. Perhaps he had made it even before he arrived here.
It did not matter when. What mattered was that he was going home.
He was unsure of what he would say when he got there.
He did not know how to explain himself, or undo the silence of the past week, or find a way through the impossible thing lodged in the center of his chest. But he could not remain here, hiding from a woman who had done nothing but try her best in a situation that had never been designed to be fair to her.
After a few minutes, he set down the empty cup, his mind still full of noise but his heart strangely heavy and calm.
“Please give Jane my deepest apologies for the imposition,” he requested blankly.
“She found the whole thing tremendously interesting,” Thomas replied, entirely without sympathy. “She will be disappointed you are leaving. But even more so if you do not act like the good man she believes you to be.”
Edward nodded, then he stood up and went to find his coat.