Chapter 11
Eleven
“You didn't have to do that,” Aurelia said once it was over.
Evander accepted two glasses from a passing tray and handed her one. They were cold this time, some sort of punch. He feigned ignorance as they moved to the sidelines. “Do what?”
“Come and collect me like a lost parcel. I thought only unmarried women needed to be escorted off dancefloors,” she replied, taking the goblet with a little more force than necessary.
Heat had risen to her cheeks, and he hoped it was just from the exercise of dancing.
Seven long minutes. The country dance had lasted seven minutes. And each minute had been excruciating.
“I did nothing improper,” Evander said, taking a sip. They were close to the walls now, alone under a stained glass window. A draft came through the crack between the window and the stone and swept over them. He saw Aurelia shiver. “I only wanted to see you again.”
“I didn't say you did act improperly.” She took a sip and looked at the room. “Mr. Aldwick was perfectly pleasant.”
“Mr. Aldwick? Mr. Aldwick did not look interested in letting you go. He would have made you dance with him again.”
“Would that have been so terrible? There are many dances left.”
“And there are many people here who want to speak with you. You cannot allow a single gentleman to monopolise your attention tonight.”
“Single as in unmarried, or single as in counting one?” When Evander didn’t answer, she sighed deeply. “He was just being nice. He said he wanted to introduce us to his brother once the night was over so we could talk about music.”
“Yes, I’m sure that’s all he wanted, this dandy from London. They are known for their good sense and charity, especially when they come to the countryside where most of what they do goes unseen.
She looked at him gravely. And it was such an unusual expression for her that it shook him. “I do not understand you,” she said. “And I stand by the fact that you didn't need to intervene, regardless of what you say.”
A moment passed. Then he stepped back just enough, and the hand that had been at her waist was gone, two feet of air restored between them as though the preceding five seconds hadn't occurred.
Mr. Aldwick was still looking at them across the room, but he withdrew to take another woman onto the dancefloor.
He was light-haired. He had Frederick's colouring, though the resemblance stopped there.
But the height, the ease of manner, the way he had leaned toward her when he spoke.
Was that why Evander had been so unnerved?
He held his glass and said nothing for a time, ruminating about his brother and about the cold knot behind his ribcage – and about the fact that he had crossed a room because another man was making Aurelia laugh and he had not been able to stop himself.
“You should just be more careful, that’s all. What happens with you in these spaces reflects more on me than it does on you.”
Aurelia furrowed her brow and set her jaw. It was the first time he had seen her angry, and he immediately regretted what he had said.
“Do you not trust me, Your Grace, to not make a fool out of you?”
Evander parted his lips to speak, but Aurelia had decided not to let him, storming off toward the doors as another sharp and foreboding gust of wind slipped in through the door and extinguished the nearest candles.
The storm had been building since they left Norwich, the sky turning from clear to committed to rain very quickly. By the time the carriage reached Carrstone the rain was coming down in sheets and the beeches swayed violently in the wind.
Inside, the entrance hall was warm and lit. Mrs. Foulger had left the fire made up in the parlour, and it should have been – it was – a relief after the noise and the carriage-ride that evening.
The door closed. Aurelia turned, trying and failing to suppress her rising anger.
“I still can’t believe you said that,” she said, sitting on the end of the chaise lounge by the fire, halfway turned away from him. “I have been thinking about it the whole way home…”
Evander handed his wet coat to the footman, who read the room and disappeared without asking whether they wanted anything to eat or drink. It was just the two of them then with the wind howling outside. Evander looked like he wished he had been out there rather than in here with her.
“You’ll have to be more specific. I said many things this evening.”
“About appearances. The warning to me about being careful.”
He walked to the fire without looking at her. “I did nothing wrong. It was a fair statement.”
“It was not.” She was still in her evening coat, the rain damp of it was cool on her shoulders.
She didn't care; she had been assembling this conversation in the carriage for forty minutes and she intended to finish it.
“You all but accused me of behaving inappropriately with Mr. Aldwick when all I did was accept a dance. You came and took my arm as though I were something that had wandered away and needed returning – like one of the dogs.”
She stared at his back, trembling despite the intense heat from the fire.
“I am trying to make a good impression on Norfolk society because we intend to live here. I thought I had been doing a decent job of it so far. But the task will be much more difficult if my husband appears beside me every time a gentleman speaks to me for more than three minutes and makes it seem like I cannot be trusted to be on my own.”
Evander turned brusquely. “He was—”
Aurelia shot to her feet. “No,” she protested, raising a hand.
“You are going to say he was doing something wrong, because he wasn’t.
He was friendly and entirely appropriate, and he was talking to me about music, which I happen to care about, and you ended it. And I still don’t even understand why.”
The storm picked up in intensity, battering the windows on the north side. Evander seemed like he was miles away, looking at her, dazed with anger. It frightened her, but mostly it made her feel ashamed of her actions. And she hated that, because she really hadn’t done anything wrong.
“I was ensuring you were not put in an uncomfortable position,” he said.
“I was not uncomfortable.” She took a breath. “I am capable of managing myself. I have been managing myself since I was seven years old more or less, and I am rather good at it.”
“I know you are.”
“Then don’t ever try to control me like that or treat me like a child again.”
He was quiet for a moment. She was aware that she was angrier than the situation strictly warranted.
The anger had nothing to do with Mr. Aldwick.
It had more to do with Evander's hand at her waist in the middle of a crowded ball, when it had done something to her equilibrium that she had still not recovered from.
And that she was furious at herself about letting him have that effect on her, especially given how confusing he was.
“You told me,” she said, “that I could be any kind of woman I chose to be in the sense that this was not London so I could choose my own life. Surely you must see that what happened tonight contradicts that?” She looked at him. “I am sorry if I overreacted, but–”
“I am responsible for you,” he said suddenly, cutting her off.
“What?” Aurelia leaned back. Before she knew what she was doing, she pulled on the cuff of his shirt to force him to turn and look at her.
“No. You are responsible for my welfare as my husband. I know that. But you are not responsible for my choices.” She lifted her chin. “That is not what I agreed to.”
He stepped back, but she was still holding him.
“There are many things we agreed to that are no longer working. We should not have tried to program such a fragile thing as a marriage in the first place. That was my mistake,” he said flatly. He looked down to where her hand was wrapped in the fabric of his shirt. “Do you not agree with me?”
“I…” Aurelia paused, lost for words. How could she agree when she didn’t know what about the marriage he thought had gone wrong? Were they too close – or not close enough? She didn’t have the courage to ask him. “I don’t know.”
Her answer visibly displeased him. He said, “You are free to do as you wish completely. I will not interfere again. But you are also still my wife.”
“I am aware of that, yes.”
“I wonder sometimes whether you are.” He said it without heat, which was somehow more difficult to receive than the alternative.
He looked at the fire, then through the windows.
“We agreed on a practical arrangement. And I am finding the practicalities more complex than I anticipated. These paradoxes between us… That is all. But perhaps that has something to do with tonight. I don’t know. I don’t care to know.”
She looked at him and felt weak, her grip slipping from his wrist. “How I am as your wife, you mean?” she heard herself say. “And how we take breakfast together in the morning and spend much of the day together and laugh, but we don't sleep in the same room? That sort of paradox?”
The silence that followed had a different weight from the silences before it. Evander looked at her and she forced herself to hold his gaze. The storm made itself known in the windows and the fire made itself known in the grate, battling for her attention which was really only his.
“Goodnight, Aurelia,” he whispered, walking away from her slowly.
He left the room and she heard him turn toward the stairs. Aurelia knew she shouldn’t have followed him but she did. With his hand on the banister, he stopped, having heard her. And turned back.
“What?” he asked, smiling sadly now. “There is nothing else to say tonight. Only that if you meant what you said… you know where my room is.”
He had not expected to sleep. Despite this he had changed and put out the lamp. The dogs were in their baskets in the sitting room next door. He had been lying there for perhaps twenty minutes when his door opened, and he sat up.