31
“But that is ridiculous, Jo,” Robert exclaimed.
He had been pacing the floor of the small study after she left, anxiously waiting for her to return, to sit him down and calmly explain her reasoning to him, like she had the first day in the house. But instead, he had heard her walk up the stairs and into the bedroom they had been sharing.
Robert had waited, wanting to give her more time, but when he had realized she would not be seeking him out, decided that he had to.
They should be able to find an amicable solution together.
He had perhaps overstepped a bit by speaking to a solicitor without her, but her desire to leave was completely out of proportion with what he had done.
Distance was the last thing they needed.
Jo’s jaws clenched as well as her fists when she stared back at him and Robert instantly started regretting his hot-headed comment.
“It is not ridiculous, Robert,” Jo told him coldly. “Don’t call me ridiculous.”
She turned toward her portmanteau to throw her nightgowns into it.
He had dismissed Miss Fisher and the maid when he entered the room, but of course it did not deter Jo from continuing packing.
The room was full of dresses slung over chairs and the bed and open valises as well as the large portmanteau.
“I was not calling you ridiculous. I was calling the fact that you are leaving ridiculous, and you know that,” Robert argued hotly, angry that she would dismiss him by turning her back to him.
“Please look at me, Jo,” Robert pleaded when she did not respond.
Jo looked briefly over her shoulder for a second. Her hair and clothes were disheveled from the wind at the beach. Robert itched to step close to her and dishevel her even further right on top of the piles of her clothes on the bed.
“Jo,” he repeated, and her name was a plea this time.
“I looked,” Jo snapped, as she stuffed her stockings down beside the nightgowns.
The haphazard packing was nothing like the analytical and collected woman he had come to know.
It seemed unfathomable that Jo would pack without creating a list first, but it only spoke to the urgency of her desire to leave.
“Now, tell me what you wanted to say,” she demanded. Her shoulders were rigid and her back tense as she was poised over the portmanteau.
Robert gritted his teeth. This relationship was supposed to be calm.
A giving partnership, a fun friendship, satisfying bed partners.
This was nothing like it. Instead, it was very close to a lovers’ quarrel, with them so angry and frustrated at each other that they might start screaming profanities at each other at any moment.
Cold fear ran down Robert’s spine at the thought that Jo was falling in love with him. He could not live with such an imbalance. He could not forgive himself if he had misled her and ended up breaking her heart by being unable to reciprocate her feelings.
“I meant look at me for longer than a second so that we can speak as adults rather than you behaving like…” Robert abruptly cut himself off when he realized what he had been about to say. His temper had gotten away with him.
“Oh, I would love to hear you finish that sentence,” Jo seethed, throwing her gloves down on top of the nightgowns.
Robert turned toward the window, watching the day outside.
He needed to calm down. He needed his wits about him when he spoke to Jo.
But his entire body was screaming for him to hold her tight.
To never let her leave the house, let alone this room.
All the while, his anger was very thoroughly working against him.
“What?” Jo demanded and turned with a pair of slippers in her hands. “What were you going to call me, Robert? A spoiled child? A silly woman?”
Robert gritted his teeth. He was not going to finish the sentence. He was not. It would not be conducive. It would only ensure that he drove her away; he should never have said it, never even have thought it. It was not true, and yet it was all he could think.
“A foolish, na?ve, incompetent, ridiculous…” Jo goaded him to confirm the words.
“A recalcitrant adolescent girl,” Robert almost bellowed to stop her rambling.
He could not bear to hear her talk about herself in such a manner. He hated that her cousin, even for a moment, had made her think so of herself. And that he, Robert, had not done a good enough job of ensuring that this was not the way she saw herself anymore.
“But I didn’t mean it. I don’t mean it,” he hurriedly assured her and gripped her hands that were still holding the pair of slippers, while he bent forward to be able to look into her eyes. “Jo,” he pleaded when she would not meet his eyes.
She glanced at him briefly, then gently pried her hands out from his grip.
“I think you do,” she told him quietly and placed the slippers in the portmanteau with meticulous and measured movements.
Robert plunked down on the bed beside her, his body suddenly heavy with the feeling of defeat.
“I want you to stay, Jo. I don’t want you to leave. I want us to talk it over. To go back to how everything was before,” he told her quietly.
Jo paused for a heartbeat, then quietly continued packing.
“I need to be alone,” she told him quietly. “I can’t think here.”
“Then spend a day by the beach again. Or somewhere else. You have the carriage at your disposal. You can go anywhere. As long as you come back here in the evening and tell me what you have figured out.”
Jo finally stopped packing to look him in the eyes.
“But I am not the only one who needs to figure something out, Robert,” she told him in a low voice.
“I… Jo, I told you that I was sorry for calling you ridiculous,” he pleaded.
“It’s not just that, Robert.”
“What then? I told you I didn’t mean it when I called you recalcitrant – or an adolescent.”
“I know.” Jo was biting her lip as she looked at him. He could see the deliberation in her face, her trying to decide whether she should tell him or not.
“Please, Jo, don’t hold back. Say whatever you want to say. I don’t want this to stand between us. I wanted to help solve the matter with your cousin quickly and instead it has escalated into this farce of a fight…”
He saw the words hit Jo’s face. How her expression close off, and she turned toward her portmanteau once again, shoving slippers and a couple of reticules into it with more determination than ever.
“No, Jo, please, I didn’t mean that,” Robert hurriedly assured her and reached for her arm.
Jo froze; Robert snatched his hand away, and she immediately resumed packing.
“You are entirely entitled to feel the way you do…”
“Why, thank you,” Jo drawled.
“What I am trying to say is, why do we have to fight about it? Why can’t we have a level and honest conversation like we could the other day?”
“I don’t know, Robert. Why can’t we?” Jo asked, her anger rising again, although Robert could not fathom why.
She paused only briefly, barely allowing him time to speak before she continued: “Because you refuse to see matters from my perspective. You say you wanted to help me by speaking to the solicitor, even though you knew it would go against my wishes. And when I try to have a fight about it, you call me ridiculous and recalcitrant and then immediately retract the statements, trying to act calm and superior…”
“Because we don’t need to fight!” Robert exclaimed. “That is not us. We are not people who fight.”
“Perhaps we are!” Jo shouted at him, then added in an only slightly lower voice: “There are still so many aspects of each other’s personalities we know nothing about.”
“But that is…” Robert swallowed as he thought of all the fights he had had with Lucretia. The relief he had felt in the past ten days with Jo when he realized that it would be different with her.
“What? Ridiculous?” Jo demanded with her hands on her hips but did not let him finish. “But that is not even the worst of it.”
Robert closed his eyes and cursed inwardly. Fuck, there was more. Of course, there was more. Something he had been completely oblivious to, yet she would be able to pinpoint exactly. Lucretia had been the same, never telling him what he had done wrong, but demanding that he apologize for it.
“What is the worst?” he asked through gritted teeth, not expecting an answer. Lucretia would never have answered him.
But at least Jo was different in this matter, because she took a deep breath and then said:
“The worst is that I am not certain you know what you want out of this marriage.”
She was holding another pair of slippers. Her index finger was running over a loose thread in the embroidery on it, almost on its own accord, while she stared into his eyes. He could see the fear in them but did not know how to appease it.
“I do know, Jo,” he told her, his voice going hoarse. “I told you; I want a partnership, a friendship.”
Jo blinked, and quick tears ran down her cheeks.
“I am not sure you do,” she told him quietly and placed the slippers in the portmanteau. “If you did, you wouldn’t have spoken to the solicitor.”
She plunked down on the bed with a heavy sigh.
“You are a duke, Robert. You could have married any woman at the Thistleworth ball. Why choose me if you wanted to control everything?”
All the wrong answers flooded around in Robert’s mind: Because you were the easy choice.
Because I did not have the energy to court anyone else.
Because I had given up on love but wanted to start a family soon.
Because you seemed competent and capable.
Someone who would make a good duchess and mother.
At least now he knew not to voice any of them.
“That is what I thought,” Jo said quietly as she looked at her hands. “I think it will be good for both of us if we spend some time apart.”
And even though he already hated the idea, Robert nodded.