Chapter 28
“You can do this. You can do this. You can do this.”
Mary stood outside Evander’s door in her nightgown and robe, her hair loose around her shoulders, her bare feet cold against the corridor runner, whispering to herself like a woman on the edge of a cliff deciding whether to jump.
The house was silent. Charlotte and William had retired hours ago, Richard was in the guest room, Tommy was asleep in the nursery with Mrs. Bridwell, and every door in the east corridor was shut.
Except for the one Mary was staring at.
She had bathed. She had brushed her hair until it crackled. She had dabbed lavender water behind her ears, which felt ridiculous, and changed into her best nightgown, which felt worse, and stood in front of her mirror for ten minutes rehearsing a composure she did not feel.
This was an arrangement. A transaction. Evander had offered her a child, and she had accepted, and tonight she would walk into his room and they would do what married people did, and in the morning, she would return to her side of the house, and her side of the marriage, and her side of the silence, and in nine months she would have a baby of her own, and Evander would have fulfilled his obligation, and everything would be exactly as he had proposed.
Her hand trembled on the door handle.
She knocked.
“Come in.”
Mary opened the door.
Evander’s chambers were larger than hers, darker in palette, with heavy curtains and a four-poster bed she had never seen. A fire burned low in the grate. A single lamp sat on the bedside table, casting a warm circle of light that reached the edge of the bed and no further.
Evander stood beside the window in his shirtsleeves, his coat and cravat removed, and the lamplight caught the angles of his face and the tension in his shoulders.
He turned when she entered. His gaze moved over her, the loose hair, the nightgown, the bare feet on his carpet, and something crossed his expression that Mary could not name.
“You came,” he said.
“I told you I would.”
They stood on opposite sides of the room. The bed occupied the space between them, enormous and impossible, and the silence stretched until Mary could hear the fire popping and her own pulse beating in her throat.
“I do not know what to do.” Mary’s voice came out smaller than she intended. “You know that. I told you.”
“I know.” Evander crossed the room to her.
Each step was slow, giving her time to stop him if she chose.
He stopped in front of her, close enough that she could smell the soap he had used and the faint warmth of the fire on his skin.
“We do not have to do anything you do not want. Not tonight. Not ever. Do you understand?”
Mary nodded. Her hands hung at her sides, and she did not know what to do with them. The absurdity of that, of standing in her husband’s bedroom after seven weeks of marriage and not knowing where to put her hands, made her want to laugh and cry at the same time.
Evander lifted his arms and drew her against his chest.
The embrace was slow and careful. His arms encircled her, one hand resting at the small of her back, the other cradling the back of her head, and he held her gently, firmly.
Mary’s hands found his shirt. She pressed her palms flat against his chest and felt his heartbeat, steady and strong beneath the linen, and the warmth of him soaked through the fabric and into her skin, and some of the trembling eased.
“There,” he murmured against her hair. “Just this, for now.”
Evander’s hand moved across her back in slow circles, and Mary’s forehead rested against his collarbone, and the room contracted to the circle of firelight and the sound of their breathing.
She could feel his pulse against her cheek. She could feel the rise and fall of his chest. She could feel the restraint in the way he held her, the discipline of a man who was allowing himself to touch her but was also controlling the terms with every muscle in his body.
He drew back enough to see her face. His hand came up and cradled her jaw, his thumb tracing the line of her cheekbone.
Mary’s eyes closed. His touch was gentle, and the tenderness of it ached.
At last, he kissed her.
His mouth found hers with a softness that made her chest ache. Slow. Unhurried. His hand held her face as though she were something precious, and Mary felt the contradiction in every brush of his lips, tenderness offered by a man still trying not to mean it.
His body was warm and solid against hers.
But then, suddenly, without invitation, a word surfaced in her mind, her heart.
And it was the one that undid everything.
Love. I love this man, and this is the last time I will have him.
She pushed him away.
Evander stumbled back a step. His hands dropped. His expression shifted from openness to confusion in the space of a heartbeat.
“Mary—”
“Stop.” Her voice shook. Her whole body shook. She pressed her hands against her stomach and stepped back from him, one step, two, until the distance between them felt survivable. “I cannot do this.”
“If you are not ready, we can wait—”
“I am not talking about tonight.” The words erupted from a place she had not known was full.
“I am not talking about the act, Evander. I am talking about this. This arrangement. This transaction you proposed in my bedroom where you give me a child and walk away, and we go on living in this house like two strangers who happen to share an address and a last name.”
Evander’s face went blank. The walls are rising. Mary watched them go up and refused, for the first time, to let them close.
“You put your hand on my face and kissed me as though I mattered, and you cannot do that.” Mary’s voice cracked. “You cannot hold me the way you just held me and pretend it is part of an arrangement. I will not let you use that word as though it costs you nothing, because it costs me everything.”
“Mary, I—”
“I do not want a child because I am lonely.” She pressed her hands harder against her stomach.
“I loved having Tommy. I loved every midnight feeding and every fussy afternoon and every morning when he grabbed my collar and looked at me as though I were the entire world. But I did not love it only because of the baby, Evander.” Her eyes burned.
“I loved it because you were there. Because you watched from doorways and covered me with blankets and told fox stories in the dark and taught your brother how to hold a baby as though you had been doing it your whole life. I loved it because of you. Because you were in this house, and I was in this house, and for the first time in my life, I felt like I belonged somewhere.”
Evander stood motionless. The fire crackled. The lamplight held them both.
“I cannot be alone again.” Mary’s voice dropped to a whisper.
“I cannot have a baby and watch you retreat to your study and your ledgers and your distance while I raise another child in a house where my husband exists on the other side of a locked door. I did that with Tommy, and it nearly broke me, and I will not do it again. Not for a child. Not for a title. Not for anything.”
She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand. The tears had come without permission, and she did not try to hide them.
“If you want to give me a child, then give me a marriage. A real one. With all the risk and all the mess and all the terrifying, unpredictable, uncontrollable love that comes with it. And if you cannot do that, then do not touch my face as though I am precious to you, and do not make me believe for one single moment that you feel something you refuse to name.”
The room was silent. Evander’s hands hung at his sides. His face was pale in the lamplight, and his expression held nothing, and Mary stared at him and waited for the walls to hold or to fall, and the seconds stretched, and neither of them moved.
He opened his mouth.
He closed it.
Mary pressed her lips together. She pulled her robe tighter around herself and walked past him, toward the door. Her hand found the handle. She turned it.
“Goodnight, Your Grace.”
She closed the door behind her and walked down the corridor to her room.
She did not run. She did not cry. She walked with her spine straight and her chin level and her heart hammering so hard she could feel it in her fingertips, and she reached her room, and she closed the door, and she sat on the edge of her bed in the dark.
The tears did not come. Something worse came instead. Clarity. The bone-deep, unforgiving clarity of a woman who had just told a man exactly what she wanted and watched him stand there, silent, unable to give it.
She loved him. She loved him with the full, unreserved, terrifying weight of a heart that had spent twenty-one years waiting for something worth opening for.
But the man she loved could not love her back.
She lay down. She pulled the coverlet up to her chin. She stared at the ceiling, and the house was quiet, and somewhere on the other side of a wall, Evander stood in his room with the wreckage of his careful plans scattered around his feet.
Mary closed her eyes and let the silence take her, and she did not sleep for a very long time.