Chapter 7
Seven
“Oh, don’t mind me. I am fine, I swear,” Aurelia said, not convincing him, her cheeks going red with embarrassment.
She pressed the back of her hand briefly to each eye in a way that was meant to look casual but didn’t really.
“It is just so unexpected. And it has been a very long day, and I didn’t sleep much last night.
But this room… It’s just a lot to take in. ”
Evander nodded, gripping the candleholder tighter.
He had learned in the past week that Aurelia did not like to be crowded when something had caught her off guard.
So he stayed where he was and let her look at the pianoforte again, and he waited for her to say something that would finally put him at ease.
And then she said it: “It is the most beautiful thing anyone has ever given me,” she whispered to the pianoforte rather than to him.
“I am not accustomed to these kinds of gestures.” She stopped and started differently.
“Don’t mistake me. My aunt is very generous.
And Lydia is generous. And other friends I have had have been generous too, before they married their husbands and got too busy.
But this is…” She gestured, a small movement of her hand that seemed to indicate the room, the instruments, the history of the house, all of it.
“This is something else entirely. Or maybe I am just tired,” she added with a self-depricating laugh, but she was crying again.
He crossed the room. He was not certain when he decided to do this. It was the same instinct that had made him catch her in the church, the same thing that operated before his mind made itself up. He put his free arm around her carefully, drawing her into him. She went very still.
“I am sorry,” he said quietly, above her head.
“If any of this has made you unhappy. I made you marry me. I know that. I told myself it was the only reasonable choice, and don’t mistake me, I still believe that.
But I am aware that reasonable does not always mean easy – and this is my home but it is not yours yet.
” He paused. “I will try to be what Frederick would have been. I know I am not– I know we are different men by a mile. But I have to try for my sake and yours. We will have what we will have, but you will have this room.”
Aurelia pulled back just enough to look up at him. Her eyes were still shining with tears but her expression had changed, from something soft to something more direct. Had he misspoken?
“But I don't want you to be like Frederick,” she murmured.
He looked at her, stepping back slightly but still holding her. And suddenly the inappropriateness of what he had done hit him all at once. But he was holding her now, and releasing her would have been worse than not.
“What Frederick and I had was the worst kind of convenience,” she continued.
“And a much different convenience than what you and I have found ourselves accepting. Your brother… I liked him. He was charming. I was suitable. And we were both sensible enough to know that was enough for a marriage. And Aunt Violet was beside herself. We have never hoped for a marquess. We always thought I would marry down not up because of my circumstances.” She stepped back slightly, out of his arms, and he let her go.
“The night he decided to marry me, there were at least four other women in that drawing room who would have said yes, and likely more than that he could have selected via a letter. He could have chosen any of them, but I think I was nearest, at the right place at the right time, and that was the extent of his consideration of the matter.”
“You cannot say that with any confidence,” he argued.
“I can, actually. I felt it the entire time. And now I know why.” She met his gaze.
“And the thing is, I would rather be chosen by a man who chose me because he had no other choice than to be accepted carelessly by a man who could have chosen out of a hundred different women, and worse still, who loved someone else. Because that’s the truth, isn’t it?
So you don’t need to try to be Frederick.
I did not want Frederick in the first place.
I wanted– " She stopped herself and looked back at the pianoforte. “What I wanted was not to be humiliated. And you helped in that sense. And now you have given me this.” She touched the edge of the instrument lightly, with one finger. “So I am not sad. I’m just overwhelmed and thinking.”
He said nothing. He found there was nothing he could say that would adequately follow that.
“Thank you,” she said a moment later.
“You needn’t thank me,” he said, and he meant it. “Use it however you like… But perhaps tomorrow. Meanwhile, I will fetch someone to escort you to your other rooms.”
She nodded once, although he got the impression she was not satisfied with that answer, and that she had been thanking him for something else.
But Evander could not be like Frederick and risk doing something that would humiliate her and make things awkward. So he nodded in return and left the room, and made his way up to go to bed for the evening.
Her rooms were at the end of the north corridor. Inside in the darkness, she made out three large windows that faced the park, a dressing room through an archway that was nearly the size of her aunt's entire upper floor, and a bed that had been made up tightly.
Evander's rooms were somewhere through the adjoining door, the same suite separated by a sitting room that was some sort of neutral space between them. She lay in the enormous bed in the enormous room and looked at the ceiling.
Already she could tell that Norfolk at night was nothing like London at night. London was never this quiet. There was always something – a cart, voices, a dog. Here, when everyone went to bed, it was quiet. And the silence was oppressive in a way that made her aware of her own breathing.
It also made her aware of the fact that she could hear him.
Not loudly, but through the sitting room wall and whatever separated them, the even sound of Evander readying himself for bed.
It was a strange domestic thing – more domestic and disquieting than the ring on her finger, and the staff addressing her as Your Grace, and the matching set of keys Mrs. Foulger had pressed into her hand seriously before being dismissed for the night.
Against all reason, she smiled at the ceiling, mind filling with images of what she could make of this place with him. It was better than the alternative, surely? Than being a spinster, alone, with the penance her father had left behind, God rest his soul?
Then she stopped. She was not going to do this.
She had gone into this arrangement with her eyes open and her expectations managed, and she was not going to unarrange them now just because he had given her a music room and touched her.
She couldn’t risk being that foolish and naive.
She had watched women like that all her life from the sidelines, mistaking attention for devotion and kindness for love, and then they learned, usually in public and publicised in the rags, that they had been wrong about everything.
So Aurelia was going to be sensible. She was going to go to sleep, and in the morning she was going to be a duchess – heaven knew she could be nothing else now.
Through the wall, Evander must have closed the door to the sitting room, and it felt strangely poetic.
He had mapped their marriage precisely in his mind.
That seemed like the sort of thing a man like him would do.
She had her domain and he had his. And that empty domain between them that would maybe, in other marriages, be filled with affection and trust, would just be another empty room for them.
And that would be fine.
Breakfast time at Carrstone Manor was very different than breakfast with Aunt Violet.
It became clear the moment she came downstairs at half past seven and found the table in the morning room already set up with plates and tea.
Usually at this time Violet would be half-awake and composing morning poetry in the parlour.
Here, Evander was at the head the table in his shirtsleeves.
He wasn’t undressed exactly, but definitely more relaxed than she had seen him in London, reading a newspaper with his left hand and eating toast with his right.
Both dogs were lying either under or next to his chair, like animals who had obviously been doing this for years but didn’t mind being disturbed by someone new. Evander looked up when she entered, and Aurelia froze.
“Sit wherever you like,” he said casually, returning to his reading.
“Mrs. Foulger will bring whatever you want. She has menus for you to review eventually, but today you will have to take what I usually take.” Then he paused, and arched a brow.
“But you needn’t join me if you don’t want to.
You can take your breakfast in your rooms from now on if you’d like. ”
Aurelia bit her lip and shook her head. She passed a mirror at the entrance to the morning room and assessed her appearance.
The bright blue colour of her day gown made her look more rested than she felt.
She had done her own hair that morning since she hadn’t decided on a lady’s maid. She hoped he would find it acceptable.
But given the look of him, she also thought he probably didn’t care one whit what she looked like, so long as he had his dogs, his Norfolkian broadsheet, and his strong-smelling coffee.
Having probably heard their voices, Mrs. Foulger appeared in the doorway. “Your Grace,” she said to Aurelia, decisively warm and a little out of breath. “Has His Grace told you about the menus? Would you like to see them now?”
Aurelia had barely opened her mouth before Evander said, without looking up from his paper, “Leave her be for now, Mrs. Foulger. She will have whatever is hot. But fetch some tea and sugar, would you? She had nothing on the journey yesterday.”