Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Mark had just dismissed the housemaid and sat down to a breakfast of sausage, eggs, toast, and tea when the whitewashed door swung open again.
Ellen strode into the room in a charcoal gray dress.
The cuffs and collar shone deep maroon, and the onyx buttons down her bodice gleamed in the electric light.
Although her skirts were gathered and pinned at the back, she wore no bustle.
Her hair curled in a low chignon, and her eyes brightened at the sight of breakfast already on the sideboard.
Mark’s heart thudded as he blinked, staring at his wife. A pang of pleasure shot through him as he realized this was his wife, and he was a lucky bastard who somehow had one last shot of fixing this. If she’d let him. It was torture, falling in love with one’s own wife.
Heir, that awful voice in the back of his mind reminded him. You came for an heir. Don’t lose track of the end goal.
Ellen’s gaze fell on him, and hesitation mixed with wariness clouded her eyes.
Mark stood abruptly, realizing he’d delayed too long. “Good morning,” he got out, his throat tight.
“Good morning,” she said, hands smoothing a nonexistent wrinkle along her bodice.
They’d done this for ten breakfasts, a week and a half living in the same house, seeing one another at breakfast—and only breakfast—and muddling through conversations as if they could ignore the eight years of history between them. Mark hated it. He loved it, too.
He fell asleep each night dreaming of breakfast, eager to see her face in the morning.
He wanted Ellen more and more. He wanted her to speak to him about her patients over breakfast. He wanted her in his study, helping him organize, in the evenings.
He wanted her beside him when he eventually visited his family.
He desperately wanted her in his bed, wavy hair all tangled on his pillow, whispering his name as he made her his over and over again.
An heir could wait a while.
Ellen cleared her throat, bringing him back to the present. She glanced around the room, cataloging the pale green walls, the landscape paintings, the heavy green draperies framing the broad window, and the sideboard filled with food. Like she always did, as if to delay the inevitable.
Look at me, Mark wanted to tell her. His hand clenched the table’s edge, puckering the starched white tablecloth.
Only conversations about her medical observations ran smoothly.
Which he enjoyed learning, but it wasn’t personal.
As much as they tried—and succeeded—to be civil, it was awkward and stilted between them.
And he hated it, as much as he knew he'd caused it. Please look at me. And oh, he burned for her. Yearned for her, as if he was a courting lad again. He’d dreamed about that dress she’d worn, how he’d pulled the neckline low and licked those breasts.
“Please, take a seat.” Mark gestured to the seat nearest him. He was at the head of the table, but she could take the chair just to his right, if she so chose. Yesterday she’d chosen a seat halfway down the table. The first time they’d done this, she’d sat at the foot of the table. So…progress.
Ellen’s glance flickered to the seats, the choices before her. For a heartbeat she glanced at the foot of the table.
Mark’s breath caught in his throat.
She walked slowly forward until she rested her hand on a chair two down from him.
His gut clenched. He’d thought about moving away from the head of the table, somewhere in the middle, but didn’t know if he would be welcomed.
If it would seem aggressive and demanding.
So instead he stayed at the head, body tense and hand pulling at the tablecloth, praying his wife would pick a different chair.
Ellen’s fingers curled around the back of the chair and she bit her lip, looking at the sideboard.
“I’ll get you a plate,” Mark offered, unable to watch her choose to leave a single empty chair between them again. He forcibly released his grip on the table, one finger at a time, and turned on his heel. He picked up an empty china plate and filled it with her favorite foods.
The teacups clinked behind him, evidence of Ellen sitting and pouring herself some tea from the shining silver teapot on the tray in the middle of the table.
When he turned, his stomach plummeted in disappointment. She sat primly, stirring cream into her tea, sitting right where she had yesterday: two chairs down from him.
Frustration ripped through him at the sight. You have no one to blame but yourself, he thought savagely. You did this. You made her not trust you enough to even sit beside you. Your own wife. Frankly, he was lucky she submitted to being in the same room as him.
Pasting a smile on his face, he passed her the full plate and sat again at his place.
For a moment, all was silent except the sound of silverware against porcelain.
They moved around one another cautiously, he knew.
Sometimes there were moments that reminded Mark of when he’d courted her, like when he’d burnt his tongue on scalding tea yesterday and she’d laughed at his expression.
Then the moment broke, and Ellen had stared at him, as if wondering how she could laugh freely with someone who’d hurt her so deeply in the past.
The eight years piled up around them, suffocating them, filling the air until Mark was nearly dizzy with lack of oxygen. They hadn’t spoken of the past again, even though it echoed in every glance, every accidental touch, even every sharp, inhaled breath. Mark couldn’t take it anymore.
“I am a blackguard,” he blurted in the silence.
Ellen paused, cup halfway to her lips. Her eyes darted to his, wary. “Pardon?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. And he’d meant to stop there, to give her time to allow him to proceed or shut him up, as she’d done in the past, but the words spilled forward despite himself.
“I’m sorry you don’t feel safe enough to sit beside me at breakfast. I’m sorry you feel the need to keep the door between our chambers locked, as if I wouldn’t respect a closed door.
I’m sorry I made you think I would try to shut down your work at the dispensary.
I’m sorry you don’t visit my study at the end of the day.
I’m sorry I didn’t write, or visit, or do anything you wanted or deserved.
I’m sorry I left you with three hours’ warning.
That I didn’t respect you enough to be forthright about my mind and heart.
Or that, when you said you didn’t want to see me again, that I didn’t realize it was spoken in anger and pain.
I should’ve listened to your voice, not your words.
And I’d desperately like to be your companion again.
” Your friend. Your husband. Your lover.
He pulled those words back from the edge of his tongue just in time. It would be too much for her.
Ellen opened her mouth, setting her cup back in the saucer.
But he had to get in one more thing. “I’d like to clarify.
Although I desperately would like intimacy between us, the relationship a husband and wife can have, I know everything falls to your discretion.
I was the one who hurt you, so your safety and concerns take priority now.
As much as I desperately want you, I shan’t pressure you.
I just…I want to be honest this morning. ”
Ellen closed her mouth and stared at him, eyes bright with some unknown emotion.
Mark shifted in his chair, staring right back.
Had he ruined everything? Had he forced a conversation that she should’ve broached instead?
But he was so tired of the polite awkwardness in the mornings.
So tired of pretending they were acquaintances when the history festered between them like a boil that needed to be lanced.
Ellen’s brow furrowed as she clearly thought through his words. And then her forehead smoothed and she picked up her knife and fork and turned back to her plate.
Mark’s heart sank. He’d ruined it. He’d gambled and lost everything, and there would be no third chance. His vision swam and the back of his throat burned.
“It occurs to me,” Ellen said suddenly, not looking up from her plate, “that we have discussed my occupation at length. But I haven’t asked you anything about yours.
” She glanced up, and Mark caught a glimpse of her wide, vulnerable eyes.
“I confess I don’t know anything about the Navy.
” Ellen wrinkled her nose. “I heard someone call you a captain. Did you command your own ship?”
Hope fluttered in his veins. He straightened in his chair, threading his fingers together in his lap to hide his trembling hands. “You…you want to know?”
She speared a sausage. “Yes.”
Mark cleared his throat as the hope grew a little larger, blowing into his chest. “I was going to command my own ship. My commodore had an unrated vessel, a small brig, chosen and I was going to take charge in a few weeks. Instead, I left.”
“Did you go in as an officer?” Ellen inquired.
“No one goes in as an officer,” Mark explained, butterflies in his stomach. Here was his chance to reconnect with her, and he couldn’t break it. “But there are…hmm, officer-in-training tracks, and I was put on that.”
“Due to your age?”
Mark smiled. “No. Due to the fact that my father was a lord.”
“So how does it work, exactly?”
“At the bottom are the seamen, men from the lower classes, often without education. After several years of service and gaining technical skills, a captain can promote some of them to petty officers: the quartermaster, the sailmaker. Then there are the cockpit mates, the low positions for the officer-track. I joined as a midshipman, the oldest of my rank on the ship by nearly five years. We were all young gentlemen, and we ate, slept, and drank in the cockpit, separate from the main sailors’ berth.
Eventually, after six years in the Navy, you can take the lieutenant exam to become a commissioned officer. ”
“And did you?”