Chapter Twenty-Six
WHAT COULD ONE SAY WHEN CONFRONTED WITH ONE’S WIFE packing up and leaving?
“Please, don’t go! I beg you?” Or perhaps: “I’m a fool.
Stay with me always.” Alexander had somehow done far worse than either of those admittedly pathetic options: He’d instructed Harriet how to reach her peak without him.
The only thing she’d ever needed from him.
The only use he’d had in her life. And he’d given it away.
For the second time in his life, a woman had left him for good. He had no intention of going after her and begging for affection as he had with his mother.
He needed to move on. Forward movement was the only cure.
Throwing himself into business hadn’t worked as well as he’d planned.
A meeting with Lord Holden had proven particularly unproductive, as the man had spent a good half the time congratulating him on marrying such an agreeable woman, praising him for settling down, and threatening him not to “muck things up” with Harriet.
He refrained from telling the man that he already had.
Alexander was miserable, wretched. His insides were made of either fire and glass or the cold damp of a remote cave, shifting back and forth between the two constantly.
He was irritable at best and irate more often.
Nothing tasted good, sounded good, felt good.
He was livid and bored and couldn’t see an end to these emotions, which frustrated him even more.
He went for a bracing swim in Peerless Pool.
He rode his favorite mare across Hyde Park to their mutual exhaustion.
He drank at White’s. He fenced at Angelo’s School of Arms, which ended with him yelling at an opponent for not trying hard enough to kill him, really kill him.
He attended three balls in one week—rather a lot, even for him—simply for the sake of doing something that wasn’t prowling around his house.
It didn’t do a damned thing for him, not the dancing or the many beautiful ladies.
Nothing did.
Harriet had spent a week at her father’s house, and the pain had not abated.
She’d expected to be quite over the man.
As it happened, she thought of him between every breath and twice as often when she was falling asleep.
One thing that she was morbidly thankful for was that she was too upset for lustful thoughts to visit her at those hours.
She’d taken to sleeping in her father’s study, not because she liked the room, but so her crying didn’t keep Caroline and Frances awake. After a week, which Harriet filled mostly with sulking and sniffling, Philippa showed up at the door, far earlier than she normally paid a call.
“Philippa, good morning, is something wrong?” Despite her insistence that tea tasted better at someone else’s house, Philippa did not visit unless something was dire.
“Apparently,” Philippa grumbled. Mornings were not her preferred time of day unless they were carried over from the previous night. She pushed her way inside the house and into the kitchen.
“What is it?” Harriet asked as she dutifully started making tea.
“Frances wrote to me about your weeping.”
“I have hardly been weeping!”
“Why are you still here, Harriet?” Philippa asked, pointedly. Then she leveled Harriet with the type of stare only an older sister can give.
“My marriage has … reached its natural limits. We will maintain appearances in public, should we encounter one another, for the sake of Caroline and Frances’s reputations.
I can chaperone Caro this season. Well, maybe not the entire season.
But on occasion. Perhaps my proximity to the duke might even help.
Crass as that is to say. Regardless, I thought it best to stay here instead of … with Lord Alexander.”
“Oh dear, bring that tea to me in the sitting room. I’m far too vertical for this conversation.”
Harriet smiled and did as she was told. Minutes later, Philippa was recumbent upon the stiff divan that they never used and Harriet brought in her tea. No cream, no sugar for her, which did not seem to match Philippa’s ordinary inclination toward extravagance.
Philippa sat to take a bracing swig of tea and then leaned back. “All right, now tell me the truth about why you’ve left his home. If you lie to me, I shall know it.” That was probably true.
Harriet cleared her throat.
“You’re going to think I’m a fool.”
“I vow I shan’t.”
“I haven’t actually … shared his bed. Not entirely. Not—We haven’t precisely …” Philippa sat halfway up. “Consummated our vows.” Harriet winced.
“Harriet Eugenia Bancroft.”
“Do you truly not know my middle name?” Philippa waved the question off without answer.
“I daresay I must break my vow. I now think you’re the silliest girl I’ve ever heard of, being here and not in that man’s bed.”
“Philippa!”
“There’s no denying his … positive attributes.” Harriet did not want to be reminded of this.
“I’m aware of how enticing you two find one another.” Philippa made a face—the same face Harriet made when tasting kippers. “Oh, don’t look at me like that! I know how much he’d like to meet with you.”
“What moonshine!” Philippa shouted, startling Harriet. “Here I thought you were the cleverest of my sisters.”
“He’s made it clear that he wanted to return to his old life.” Harriet kept her eyes trained away from Philippa at the embarrassing admission. “His life before me. His life of carousing and philandering.”
“He said that? I haven’t seen him so much as glance at another woman since he’s been with you.”
Harriet felt her entire body flush with heat.
“He just confirmed to me that he’s been seeing his mistress, Philippa, and he would gladly take you to bed if you were amenable.”
“Harriet!” Philippa was sitting straight up now. “You can’t think—”
“Oh, I know you would never entertain such a thing. I didn’t mean to accuse you.”
“Harriet, what precisely do you think has happened between your husband and me?”
“He’s … well … hasn’t he … visited you? And settled some money on you?
And of course, he danced with you at the Henderson ball.
I must admit we have an agreement that he can …
do those things. Which is why we haven’t consummated our vows.
Only, we have done … some things. I’m sure you can imagine.
But I fear I had started to want more from him.
More than he’s capable of offering. So, yes, I know about his attempts with you.
I know he wants to be with other women; I only wish it weren’t my sister. ”
Philippa let out a sharp, ironic crack of laughter.
“Your dear husband has less than zero interest in me.” Harriet opened her mouth to contradict this, but Philippa held up a finger.
“Perhaps he did at one point, but I assure you he’s lost any desire he once had for me.
If I had to hazard a guess, that change happened in Lady Dunley’s library.
Since he’s married you, he has only spoken to me of two things.
One: his father, who is going after my estate quite aggressively.
His Grace is convinced I’m being left some property up north.
Alexander has been warning me away from the man—not that I could be induced to marry that gout-ridden old goat.
That’s what he spoke to me about at the ball. And last week when he paid me a call.”
“What was the other thing?” Harriet asked, meekly, rather embarrassed by her assumptions.
“Other thing? Oh. You. You are the only other topic of conversation the man cares to entertain. In faith, I can’t believe the man allowed you to decamp here. He seemed the sort who would have delighted in the intimacy of you running him over with a carriage.”
Harriet stood then and started pacing back and forth across the small room. She wasn’t quite sure what to think.
“You’re making me positively nauseous,” Philippa groaned after a few minutes.
“Nauseated,” Harriet corrected, reflexively. “I am nauseous as I am causing you to feel nausea.”
“Stop saying that word in any form and sit down,” Philippa pleaded. Harriet sat, mostly because the pacing wasn’t fixing anything.
“I am glad to hear that you two aren’t …
That he didn’t attempt anything with you.
Although, you are only one woman. He still has a mistress.
And any number of opera singers and actresses and other widows that he might visit.
I could have lived with that—I planned to live with that, with sharing him—only, I’m afraid I’ve grown to care for him, which is quite inconvenient as he won’t ever love me. ”
“Whyever not?” Philippa asked, and the immediate affront in her voice warmed Harriet more than almost anything ever had. As if it were so natural to love her, so easy and obvious. As if their father hadn’t spent a lifetime trying to convince them otherwise.
“Perhaps because I’m an unfashionably plump wallflower who’d rather be writing a dictionary than training to be a future duchess,” Harriet offered.
“I don’t think being duchess-like is high up on Lord Stirling’s list of requirements.”
“I feel certain I don’t possess any of the other qualities on the list either,” Harriet said, irritably.
“I find myself fascinated to discover what else is on this list.”
“There isn’t really a list! I’m only saying I’m not the sort of woman he wants.”
“I’m aware. I hardly think it’s a prerequisite of his love that you be able to put your leg behind your head.”
“Is … is that … beneficial somehow? To lovemaking? How would that even increase pleasure?”
“Never mind the leg thing! That is not what he is looking for in love.”
“He isn’t looking for love at all! He doesn’t want love! In fact, he promised me he wouldn’t love me. And I promised to be all right with that! So that’s what I’m doing, Philippa!”
“I think it’s because he doesn’t know how.”
“Hogwash. Who doesn’t know how to love?”
“Someone whose father is cruel and whose mother is gone.”
“What a coincidence. Mine are too,” Harriet said, knowing she was being petulant.
“Yes, but you have us,” Philippa reminded her.
“What does that signify?”
“You already know how to love someone. And how to be loved. Does he?”
“I don’t—”
“If you insist you don’t love him, I will scream at you.”
“I—” Harriet chewed her lip, trying to think of something else to say. “I don’t know if he has anyone, actually. Well, there’s his brother.”
“The sick one? Are they close?”
“You know, I haven’t a clue. All I know is he reads poetry and lives outside of London, for the air. I don’t think Alexander sees him much.”
“That seems lonely. They both seem lonely.” Philippa said it offhandedly, but the thought made Harriet’s heart seize.
“I’m not sure he’s ever suffered from a lack of company,” she said, trying to match Philippa’s flippant tone.
“Harriet,” Philippa said then, her tone oddly serious, “I’m only telling you this because you seem in rather a desperate state.
But as someone who also enjoys the presence of the opposite sex, I can tell you—and I’ll deny it should you ever remind me of this moment—it isn’t without loneliness. In fact, it’s usually because of it.”
Philippa stood then and brushed off her skirt, as if the moment of vulnerability had sullied her. Without another word, she left the house. And Harriet was left wondering: Was Alexander lonely?