Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
When words will not suffice, deeds alone will.
As Ian left Felicity’s bedchamber, her parting words echoed sweetly in his mind. I’m done fighting you ... I mean to be your wife in every way from now on. At last he’d won her, and without relinquishing his secrets.
But later, as he lay in his cold bed alone, he examined her words more closely, and they struck him with foreboding.
She hadn’t said, I’m done fighting you because I want you, though he knew she desired him.
She hadn’t spoken of wanting to be his wife in every way.
She’d spoken of her will—I mean to be ...
As if acknowledging her duty. Or her weariness of fighting him.
That wasn’t what he wanted—a wife by default. He wanted her to care for him freely, to be his wife because she desired it, not because she felt trapped into it. He’d gained her acquiescence at a great price to his own conscience.
The following morning, he sent a servant with his excuses for canceling their visit with his tenants. He could no longer bear to face her. She’d said too much last night, revealed just enough of her past to make him see his behavior in a new light.
And examine his own behavior—or rather, contemplate his many sins—was all he did for the next three days.
He certainly didn’t go anywhere near his longsuffering wife.
For God’s sake, what could he say to her that would excuse his earlier arrogance?
The very thought of her tortured his conscience.
So what would the sight of her do to it?
Now it was late afternoon on the day before New Year’s Eve, and he was in a quandary. Day after tomorrow, they’d return to London. What was he to do about Felicity?
Pacing his study restlessly, he paused to glance out the window, then started when he saw the object of his thoughts standing in the garden below and jotting down notes in a tablet. What was she planning? To improve the garden? Or level it and put in a pond? Hard to know with his darling wife.
Regardless, it was such a domestic action it briefly salved his conscience. Too briefly.
He turned from the window to stare blindly about the impressive study, a veritable bastion of masculinity, thanks to Father’s decorating preferences and Ian’s own lack of time to oversee its redecoration.
Mahogany furniture and velvet hangings and ancient bronze lent it a dark, almost gloomy air. He hated it.
But not only for its appearance. My God, that massive, ugly desk—how often he’d hunched over it while Father laid into his backside with a cane.
Not that the canings had hurt his ass any more than those he’d routinely suffered at Eton.
But they’d tortured his pride. He’d hated having them administered by the man he wanted most to please.
He’d despised being forced to submit against his will.
Most of all, he’d been humiliated the few times Father had wrung tears from him.
Ian had always regarded it a matter of pride not to cry, and Father had always regarded it a matter of pride to make him do so.
No one understood their private duel. His mother had wanted Ian to shed fake tears to end the caning.
Jordan had said he was insane to hold back the real ones.
But every time Ian had outlasted his father’s whipping arm without crying, he’d considered it a triumph over the whole degrading process.
From that he’d learned that physical force didn’t work, that manipulation and strategy were the keys to getting what you want, because his father’s canings had never done anything but stiffen his resistance.
Now Felicity had taught him something else—there were more kinds of force than physical, and they were just as destructive.
Unwittingly, she’d taught him that in countless ways.
Her tears in front of Sara, which had apparently been genuine.
Her horror at his threats to make her marry him.
Most of all, the way she’d refused him her bed after the wedding.
If you force this upon me, you’ll have to force the other upon me as well, she’d said, and he’d been so arrogant he’d ignored her legitimate complaint.
Instead, he’d acted exactly like the long string of so-called gentlemen before him, the Pelhams and the Faringdons and all the other bastards. He had browbeat her. Taken advantage of her. Seduced her. The list of his offenses was so long, he choked on them.
He’d still succeeded in making her willing, or as willing as a woman can be whose pride has been trampled on, whose energies have been exhausted by the fight. He’d won without giving in one whit to her simple request for the truth about his past.
How hollow was his triumph.
Because eventually she would learn the truth, if not from him, then from another.
Someone would make a random comment or Uncle Edgar would tell her just to spite him.
Then she’d have reason enough to leave him, since the truth would surely break any bonds of duty he’d managed to make her feel for him.
He gazed out the window again. She looked so fetching in that gown, so perfectly at home in his garden.
He could grow used to having her always in his sight.
Which made the thought of her leaving him all the more terrifying.
What good was winning the fight against his uncle if she weren’t here?
Or worse yet, if she stayed, despising him with every breath? The very thought made him ill.
No, he must heed the call of his conscience. He’d made a mistake by forcing her into this marriage—he saw that now. But Fate had kept her from bearing his child just yet, thus handing him the chance to undo his mistake.
So he must seize that chance and offer her back what he’d taken from her—her pride, her independence, and yes, her freedom. After all the indignities she’d suffered at the hands of men of his kind, she deserved that much from him.
Even if he had to cut out his heart to do so.
“Good evening, milady,” Ian’s butler, Spencer, greeted Felicity as she entered the dining room and took her usual place.
Milady. She always wanted to look around for the stately and elegant personage to whom they surely referred.
Spencer bent over her place to pour her a glass of burgundy. “His lordship sent word that he will not be dining this evening, milady.”
A keen disappointment seized her. She’d dressed with such care, looking forward to telling Ian that her courses had ended. “Oh.”
The elderly butler hesitated. When she glanced at him, he said, “If you should need the master, however, he’s in his rooms.”
She brightened. “He told you to say that?”
“No, milady. I merely thought you might find the information of interest.”
Her spirits fell once more. “I do. Thank you.”
He motioned to the footman to serve her the first course—a consommé.
She stared into the bowl, but her mind was elsewhere.
Ian’s absence at dinner for the past three nights had garnered even the servants’ attention.
No doubt they’d also noticed his avoidance of her.
The promised visit to the tenants hadn’t materialized.
He’d sent word that he would be too busy with other affairs to carry her round and introduce her.
She detested that phrase—“send word.” Ian forever “sent word” to her.
That he couldn’t accompany her into the village.
That he would be out all day inspecting his properties.
That he wouldn’t be at dinner. She only wished the wretch would “send word” about why her behavior the other night had made him avoid her.
“Milady?” Spencer asked.
She looked up to find him at her elbow. “Yes?”
“Is there ... something wrong with the soup?”
She’d been staring into it for several minutes. “No.” She shoved back her chair. “I’m not hungry, I’m afraid. I believe I’ll do without dinner tonight.”
“Yes, milady,” he murmured, bowing.
She stood abruptly, took a fortifying gulp of wine, and then set the glass down and headed for the door.
She’d had enough of this nonsense. She’d seen less of Ian in the past three days of married life at Chesterley than she had in one day of unmarried life in London.
It wasn’t like Ian to sulk simply because her courses had prevented him from bedding her. But why else could he be avoiding her?
Well, she would find out. They were married, for pity’s sake, and if he thought being married meant ignoring his wife when he couldn’t bed her, he was very much mistaken. It was time she informed him of that fact.
When she arrived at Ian’s bedchamber, she was relieved to find the door open and Ian clearly visible inside.
He must have just come from his bath, for his hair was still damp and he wore a dressing gown of figured silk tied at the waist with a sash.
He stood at the foot of the bed, directing his valet who was ...
Packing an open trunk.
“Where are you going?” she asked sharply from the doorway.
His valet looked up in surprise, but a quick nod from Ian toward the door was all it took for the servant to slip past Felicity and off down the hall.
“To London,” he answered.
Her heart skipped a beat. She entered the room with unsteady steps, closing the door behind her. “I thought we weren’t returning to London until day after tomorrow.”
He continued where his valet had left off by tossing a pair of drawers into the trunk. “There’s been a change of plan. You’ll want to attend Lord Stratton’s New Year’s Eve ball, won’t you, so you can write about it in your column? That means leaving tomorrow. I’d planned to tell you this evening.”
“Oh.” She wished he’d asked her about it first. The ball wasn’t nearly as important to her as consummating their marriage, and now there would only be tonight before her brothers were with them again.
Still, she only needed one night. Feeling a bit nervous, she strolled to the bed and sat down on the edge. “I ... I came to tell you that my courses are finished.”