Page 31

“ I ’m going out,” William said.

Arabella looked up. “Out where?”

It was the morning after their argument.

After a night of tossing and turning, barely sleeping at all, Arabella had dragged herself to the breakfast table.

Her hopes that William wouldn’t be there had been in vain as he’d been seated at the table waiting for her, and she had assumed he meant to dive right back into the conflict she had walked away from.

But he hadn’t.

He hadn’t spoken to her at all for several minutes.

He’d focused on his meal instead. Arabella had sensed she ought to do the same, but between her sleepless night and her nerves at coming face-to-face with William once more, she’d found herself with no appetite to speak of.

She sat rigidly in her chair, her back straight, waiting for him to break the silence.

And now, he had—by telling her that he was leaving.

Going out wasn’t the same as really leaving of course. It implied that he would be coming back. And yet, Arabella couldn’t help feeling uneasy about it. The way he had announced his departure was so cold. So gruff. She needed to know more.

“Just out,” William said.

“But why?”

He made eye contact with her for the first time since she had come downstairs. “Surely you don’t mean to tell me that you want me to stay,” he said.

“I suppose I’ve asked you for enough unreasonable things for one lifetime, is that it? Asking you to remain in the house would simply be too much.”

She immediately regretted the words, but it was too late to take them back. His face darkened, and she couldn’t even blame him.

“I think perhaps you ought to use the time while I’m away to think about what it is you truly want,” he said. “You should try to have an answer by the time I return.”

“I’ve told you what I want.”

“And suppose I say that isn’t an option? Then what?”

She couldn’t even look at him.

“Think things over,” he told her. “I’ll be back tonight, and you and I will come to a decision about what’s next.”

The words struck fear into Arabella’s heart.

She wished she could hear them as a promise, a suggestion that something good might lie ahead for the two of them.

But if that had been the case, he would have given her some hint of it before now.

He wouldn’t just now be telling her that there was a decision to make.

And he wouldn’t have run away from her every single time they had come close to finding peace together up until now.

She would never forget that kiss—the first one she had ever received.

And she would never forget the fact that he had run from her afterward.

If only she could still force herself to believe that he’d only felt awkward because the kiss had been bad, she could have lived with it.

It would be all right to be a bad kisser.

That was something a person might fix, given time and practice.

But that wasn’t the problem. There was something else that made her unworthy in his eyes, and he wasn’t going to let her know what it was.

How could she figure out what she wanted under those conditions?

Why should she have any faith that, if she did figure it out, she would get it?

He hadn’t shown himself willing to give her anything she really wanted.

For a man who was so determined to give gifts, he didn’t seem to care very much how the recipients felt about them.

Who wants an emerald pendant? What I need is a man who is willing to give me a real marriage, and William is not that man. He never was.

“Tell me where you’re going,” she said.

“I don’t have to tell you anything of the sort.”

“Which means you’re going somewhere you don’t think I’ll approve of. Have you changed your mind about another part of our arrangement, then? You told me you would have no women on the side, but perhaps?—”

“That’s enough!”

She stared at him in shock. He had never spoken to her so forcefully before, and she had to admit that she hadn’t been expecting it.

It had sent a shiver down her spine, like a sudden burst of thunder—but the thunder was coming from inside the house, so close to her that she felt as if it could actually do her harm.

He could.

He’s near enough and strong enough that he could do me harm if that was what he wanted.

She didn’t believe he would. Even now, she knew the kind of man he was, and he wouldn’t hurt someone. Not even when he was as angry as he was right now.

Still, she took a quick step backward without meaning to, without thinking about it. A little extra distance between the two of them felt sensible right now.

His scowl could have wiped the smile from the face of the sunniest person in the world.

“I won’t have you standing there making accusations against me in my own home,” he snapped.

“I have done nothing to make you think I would betray you. I have done nothing but welcome you and treat you as an honored?—”

“Guest,” she interjected. “You treat me like a guest, not like your wife. Always so careful. Always so mindful of what I might need, what I might be feeling, what I might want. Always giving me gifts and going out of your way to demonstrate to me that I belong here—but you never simply let me in . Even now, you call it your home, not ours, and you tell me how I must behave when I am in it. Am I the Duchess of Redmayne or not?”

“You know you are, Arabella.”

“I know I ought to be.”

“There are many duchesses who don’t have children. You’re hardly the first.”

“There are a great deal more who do,” she said.

“And what I don’t understand, William, what I have never understood is why .

I don’t understand why you don’t want a child.

If you could find it within yourself to be honest with me, to simply give me a reason that I might understand, I could try to support you—but you won’t do that. I know you. You never will.”

The two of them stared at each other for what felt like an eternity. The silence stretched out between them. Arabella couldn’t help it—in that silence, she felt a flicker of unquenchable hope.

Maybe now. Maybe now, he’ll see.

But then he shook his head gruffly. “This obsession of yours with other people’s perceptions must stop,” he said.

“Let that be my reason, if you need one. You only wish for a child because of your fear of what people will say, and that is not a good enough reason to do anything. It’s beneath you. It’s beneath us .”

The indignity of it burned. It was as though he was withholding what she wanted from her out of a desire to teach her a lesson, as though she was a willful child of some sort. Could that truly be the way he saw her?

He strode around her toward the door, and she was so shocked by what he had said—by everything he had said—that she didn’t attempt to follow or call him back.

She sank into her chair and stared at the food in front of her, waiting for her appetite to return, feeling very little hope that it would.

Going out in the middle of the day, unwilling to tell her where he had gone…

a new possibility came to Arabella’s mind, and it made her feel ill.

She thought of his ledgers, which had been so poorly kept and had never added up in a way that made sense to her.

Of the fact that he was so free with his money, always comfortable spending more than he brought in as though such things didn’t really matter.

Was it possible he was off gambling?

The idea made her feel as though she had swallowed a rock.

It was exactly what her father had done when times had gotten hard for their family.

They might have worked their way out of his debts if he hadn’t coped with them by wagering more and more money on bad hands of cards.

If he hadn’t allowed things to go too far in that direction.

Arabella had had many fears when she’d married, but one thing she had reassured herself of was that at least the finances in her new life would not be as bad as those in her old one.

At least, she would live without fear of crippling debt.

But if her husband was going out the way her father once had, if he was drinking and gambling their lives away, then there would be nothing she could do to protect herself.

There would be no way of ensuring he had enough to provide for their future.

What if she found herself living in debt yet again—but this time, married to a man who made her question her own worth at every turn?

Worse yet, what would that mean for her family?

She had agreed to this marriage because she’d believed it would be the best thing for Prudence and Caroline, but maybe that had been a mistake.

Maybe she had simply allowed herself to believe something she’d wanted to be true.

She hadn’t thought to ask the Duke about his habits or his finances before they had married, so in a very real way, it would be her fault if this turned out to be less than what she’d hoped.

Her sisters might find themselves facing hardships all over again.

She closed her eyes, trying to will away that horror. She didn’t think she could bear it if this all turned out to have been for nothing.

But what could she do? She had no power. If he was determined to live this way, she could do nothing to prevent it.

That was perhaps the most painful thing of all. In her parents’ house, she’d had some measure of control, for even though they hadn’t liked it, they had known she was the only one holding the family together.

The Duke would recognize no such thing. There was nothing she could say that would turn his head.

And she was supposed to sit here and eat this breakfast while her life was falling apart?

She picked up a piece of bacon and turned it slowly around in her hands, as if by studying it she could somehow find the answers. The bacon told her nothing, of course, and with a sigh she set it back down and rose from the table.

Her nerves felt ablaze with anxiety, and she wanted nothing more than to get in a carriage and go .

To be anywhere other than here. But go where?

Not back to her mother and father’s house where she would face another lecture on everything she was doing wrong in this marriage.

If she went there, she would only return with more fear and shame, more anxiety than she was feeling right now. That was a dreadful thought.

Slowly, she wandered out of the dining room, searching for anything that would help her feel more at ease while she waited for William to return.

But as she wandered the house, no peace came to her. Nothing seemed to put her swirling thoughts to rest. And at last, Arabella was forced to concede to herself what she had feared all along.

Unless William returned home and resolved this conflict between the two of them, there would be no way out of this turmoil she found herself in.