Page 59 of A Proposition for the Comte

‘You did not sleep, Aurelian?’

‘I watched you instead.’

Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes unfocussed. The late sun slanted in the windows and he could hear all the normal daytime sounds outside.

‘I have never wasted away an afternoon like this before,’ she said.

‘Wasted away may not be quite as I see it.’

‘How do you see it?’

‘Loved away.’

‘Oh, I like that.’

Her hand stretched out and the signet ring he had given her glinted on her thumb. He was glad that she still wore it.

‘Your town house is beautiful by the way. Has it been newly refurbished?’

‘It is rented but I had it done at the same time as Compton Park, my home in Sussex.’

‘So you might relocate to England?’

‘I’d like to after all this is finished.’

‘Then you will leave the game of intelligence?’

He nodded. ‘It is something I should have done years ago. Shay and Celeste have been prompting me to make a decision, too.’

‘What will you do there?’

‘Become a farmer, I think. Ingratiate myself into the local community and have ten children.’

He felt her stiffen and wondered why, her face turned away from his.

‘You did not have children with Harland?’

One tear splashed down on his chest, followed by another and when he tried to get her to look at him she wouldn’t. ‘I can’t.’ Her words were quiet. ‘My husband had offspring with one of his mistresses but not with me.’ She pushed herself away from him, the gap on the bed a lot wider than it looked and though he tried to stop her, she struggled away.

‘It is why only this is left to me, this...lovemaking, for I know what it is like to live a half-life with someone who blames you for all that you cannot do.’

She scrambled from the bed before Lian could find the words to say anything, seizing her clothes and pulling them on, one hand swiping away the tears.

‘There will be nothing left, don’t you see that? Harland tried to break me and he couldn’t but you will and I can’t let that happen because I couldn’t stand it.’ Pulling on the last of her clothes she turned to the door. ‘I need to go home.’

Lian could see she was quite distraught and that any discourse now would be futile.

He had estates that needed tending and the inheritance of a title that was one of the loftiest in France. To abandon the hope of children, of lineage, of the future and of the past was a thing he had not contemplated. The coldness around his heart made him wince but he could not quite find the words to dismiss her worry.

‘This is not the end of our conversation, Violet. We shall speak again when we can both muster our thoughts.’

She nodded her head and pulled her cloak tighter around all the hotchpotch of her garments.

‘I would rather go home alone.’

‘Very well.’

When the butler came at his summons he asked him to have the carriage brought around. He was up dressing as she stood there uncertain in her silence and when he was ready he took her down. They barely spoke and Violet did not glance back at all as the conveyance began to move away, her posture stiff and her hands tight fists in her lap.