Chapter 23
For two days, Maria had not seen her husband.
Breakfast trays came and went, yet Stephen did not. The servants said he had taken his meals in his study; the footmen, when questioned, looked politely ignorant. It was as though the duke had dissolved into the house’s silence.
How odd.
By the evening of the second day, her patience cracked.
She dismissed her maid once, then called her back.
“Elinor,” she said, pacing, “is it customary for a husband to vanish into thin air?”
Elinor folded a gown over her arm. “Some gentlemen prefer solitude, Your Grace.”
“Prefer it?” Maria stopped. “For two days?”
Elinor hesitated. “Men often find marriage…a change. Perhaps he is only busy.”
Maria gave a small, incredulous laugh. “One can only wonder how busy he can be.”
“I would not know, Your Grace,” Elinor murmured, “but the duke has his ways. He is not an unkind man.”
“No,” Maria said, “Only absent.”
She sank onto the edge of the bed, clutching at the embroidery on her sleeve.
“When I was younger,” she said softly, “absence was the kindest thing one could hope for. But now, it feels like punishment that I do not even deserve.”
How odd was it that he could be perfectly warm one moment and then vanish the very next? It gave her a headache.
Elinor set the folded gown aside and went to pour tea.
“You must give him time. Gentlemen have peculiar notions of duty.”
“Duty,” Maria repeated. “I married him for duty, and he married me for honor. If one more person tells me to be patient, I may very well scream.”
“That would be most unladylike,” Elinor said gravely, setting the cup into Maria’s hand.
Maria laughed despite herself. “Perhaps I am tired of being ladylike. Ladylike women are left waiting in rooms while their husbands find something more interesting than conversation.”
The maid did not say anything.
She stared into the tea’s pale swirl. “Do you think he regrets it, Elinor? The marriage?”
The maid hesitated, then said carefully, “I think regret is a luxury. The duke does not seem a man who indulges in luxuries.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the only honest one I have.”
Maria sighed and set the cup aside. “Two days. That is all it took for me to become invisible.”
“Not invisible,” Elinor said. “Only unseen for the moment. He will come round, I am certain.”
“And if he does not?”
Elinor smiled faintly. “Then you will make yourself impossible to miss.”
Maria blinked. “How does one do that?”
“By being what you are already, Your Grace. A woman worth noticing.”
The words, simple as they were, reached a tender place. Maria looked toward the closed door and straightened her spine.
“Very well,” she said. “If he will not see me, he will at least hear me.”
Elinor’s brow lifted. “In what manner, if I may ask?”
“He shall find out,” she muttered. “Do you know where the Duke is?”
Elinor looked up, careful. “In his study, I believe, Your Grace. He gave orders not to be disturbed.”
“Then it is a fortunate thing that I have never been very good at following orders.”
“Your Grace….”
But Maria was already gone.
The study was only a short distance from her bedroom. She paused before the door, hand hovering over the latch. There were sounds within.
Yes, he was here indeed.
Stephen. He was not seated behind his desk, as she had imagined, but standing before the great oil painting that dominated the wall.
Maria closed the door behind her. “So this is where you have been hiding.”
“Maria,” He turned, startled at first, then wary. “Is there something I can help you with?”
Trust him to be so all too cavalier about everything, even now.
“You made a promise,” she said quietly. “You said you would dine with me. Yet I have eaten two suppers alone.”
“I have been busy,” he said, shrugging mildly.
It incited a strong reaction out of her. How was he so calm when she had been stuck in her own overthinking mind for the last two days? Was she the only one wounded by his absence?
But there was a crack in his demeanor as well. Something alerted her that perhaps he was not as calm as he appeared. But since she did not have a confirmation for it, she opted to ignore it.
“Yes,” she replied instead, “that is what everyone says when they wish to excuse cruelty.”
“I am not cruel.”
“Then what are you?” she demanded, stepping forward. “Indifferent? Forgetful? You tell me which word fits better, because I am struggling to choose.”
Stephen looked at her, then at the painting behind him. It was a painting of his father, and it felt as though he was still judging.
“There are matters that require my attention,” he said at last.
“And none of them involved me.”
He said nothing.
“You made a vow,” Maria pressed. “That we would dine together. That you would not treat me as if I were invisible. Was that so impossible to keep?”
“Do not speak of vows as though you know what they cost.”
She flinched at the sharpness of it. “And what do they cost you, Your Grace? A half hour of company? A few polite words at dinner?”
He turned away. “More than that.”
He was speaking in riddles again, and it was difficult for her to understand.
“Then explain it to me!” Her voice rose before she could stop it. “Because from where I stand, it seems that I have done something to offend you, and I do not even know what it is.”
Her words echoed in the still room. Stephen did not answer. He only stared at the painting again.
She drew a slow breath. “Is it because of the ball?” she asked at last.
That made him look at her. “What?”
“The ball,” she repeated, “You have avoided me ever since. I thought…” she hesitated, twisting her fingers together, “perhaps you found me appalling. In my new gown. It did not fit as it should have.”
His brows knit. “Appalling?”
Her cheeks burned. “I know I am not what society calls elegant. I felt foolish the moment I entered the room. I saw the other ladies whispering. I know you were kind to me that day, but perhaps you were only acting out of pity…. ”
“Is that truly what you think?” he cut her off mid-sentence.
“What else am I meant to think?” she demanded. “You have not looked at me since. Perhaps you just had a realization, and perhaps it was not a flattering one.”
Stephen’s expression shifted, something like disbelief flickering there. He stepped toward her.
“Why are you twisting things into what they are not?” he sighed.
“Because I do not know what else to think,” she said earnestly. “I do not know how else to see things. So please, I beseech you, tell me the honest truth this time. Was it the ball?”
“Yes.”
He had not meant to say it.
He had meant to say some smooth evasion that would see her out of the room. But when she asked again, he answered the first, most foolish thing that rose to the surface.
“Yes.”
She stared at him, the color washing from her face.
“Well then,” she said, voice shaking. “You needn’t go anywhere with me again if it is so troublesome. You needn’t stand by me or dance with me or buy gowns you would rather I never wear. I shall spare you the burden.”
Stephen did not know how to respond. She was clearly wounded, and perhaps he had been crass as well.
“You should not have purchased that dress if the sight of me in it offends you. I will send it back. No, I will have it burned if that will simplify your calendar.”
“Maria…”
But the words were loose now, and she could not seem to gather them.
“Two days,” she whispered, tears brightening her eyes, “and you cannot bear breakfast. Two days, and my husband vanishes. If it is the gown, if it is my… figure, if it is the way I look when I try very hard to please you and fail…then say so and be done. You do not have to…”
He did not know what he meant to do until he had crossed the space and taken her face in his hands. She went still, breath caught, eyes wider than his senses. He bent and kissed her.
For a man who prided himself on discipline, it was an astonishing relief to stop pretending. She was warm and alive and startled, and then she leaned into him. The room narrowed to the press of her mouth. He felt her tremble and felt himself answer, gentling her lower lip with his.
It was not a kiss he had been expecting. But it was one that disarmed him completely.
He drew back a fraction, his thumbs still along the fine lines by her ears, his breath now wild.
“Listen to me,” he said, rougher than he intended. “I said ‘yes’ because I am an idiot. Not because you were appalling, because I am.” He swallowed, the truth sitting thick in his throat.
She looked at him, unable to understand a word of what he was saying.
“I am angry, but not at you. I am angry at myself for the way I feel when you walk into a room. I have not stopped thinking about you for a single minute, and it is an intolerable way to conduct a life that once belonged to me.”
He forced himself to go on.
“You have been haunting my every thought. That dress…” He closed his eyes, saw it again, “That dress was a catastrophe. For me. It made everything worse. I could not look directly at you for fear I would forget myself in front of half of London. I could not look away because you were… good God, Maria, you were radiant.” He managed a jagged breath.
“So, I have been on your mind?”
What a silly question, he thought to himself.
“All I can think about is the way it felt to hold you on a dance floor, and how I have wanted to do it again ever since.”
“Oh,” she said very softly. “Oh.”
“I have been intolerably, childishly distracted. I have been angry, and it has been entirely at myself,” he continued on, “You haunt me. I sit at my desk and you haunt me.”
Color climbed her cheeks.
“Stephen.”
He leaned in, his brow to hers, letting the nearness steady him. “I thought if I kept away for two days, the fit would pass. It did not. It worsened. I abandoned breakfast out of cowardice. I left you to loneliness because I was afraid I would not be able to leave you at all.”
“Then do not leave.”
If only it were so easy. That would make both of their lives much easier. The plea was so simple that it made him close his eyes.
“I have not earned how easily you say that,” he murmured.