Page 40 of The Duke’s Second Bride (Regency Second Chances #4)

W hile Ava was slightly disappointed that her hopes of being with child had been dashed, she was relieved to make a quick recovery from her mild illness.

Moreover, the incident overall had filled her with a hope she had not thought possible for her.

She wanted a child. She wanted children with Christian. She wanted to give Luke a sibling, maybe two or three.

And for the first time she could remember, that felt like a possibility.

Christian seemed distant for the first few days after her recovery.

At first, she assumed he was similarly disappointed as she was, that there was no baby on the way.

And while she would have liked to commiserate about their disappointment together, she accepted that he had to process his emotions in his own way.

After all, Christian was reticent to express his emotions at the best of times. It made sense that he would need a moment to process the back-to-back shocks of believing there was a baby, and then finding out there was none.

But as the days went by, she stopped reading Christian’s distance as shock and started to view it as coldness. And it was a frost that showed no signs of thawing.

He withdrew from dinners entirely and spent hours at a time in his office.

The day after her recovery, she tried to visit him in his office, as had become her custom. She knocked at the door playfully.

He glanced up. But rather than letting his gaze trace across her body, as she was accustomed to him doing, he merely looked up at her for the briefest moment before fixing his gaze back on his desk and the paperwork atop it.

“Ah. Hello.”

She was taken aback. “Hello, husband,” she said, trying to keep her voice from sounding too stung. She slowly stepped into the office, trying to tempt him to look at her, but he kept his eyes resolutely attached to his work. “I am back in good health, in case you had not noticed.”

“I am glad to hear it,” he said.

She blinked. “I was wondering if you would perhaps like to celebrate,” she tried again.

Christian stiffened at that. It was such a slight motion that for a moment she convinced herself that she had imagined it. “You should not overexert yourself so soon after recovering,” he said shortly. “And unfortunately, I do have quite a bit of work to do this week.”

The papers in front of him were ten at most, not even a full stack. But Ava felt she could not point this out without looking foolish.

She let a moment of silence pass.

Finally, Christian turned his head back in her direction; however, he still avoided her gaze. “I will see you at dinner,” he said, as though to pacify her. For some reason, this stung most of all.

“Very well,” Ava said, bewildered. “I shall see you then.”

“Yes,” Christian said, his voice so stiff as to sound disinterested. He may as well have been talking about the weather.

It became clear he had no intention of continuing any kind of further conversation. Stunned, Ava returned to the hallway.

All their interactions in the days that followed had a similar tone. Christian was present, but colder. At dinner, he was there, but participated in conversations as briefly as he could, focusing on Luke’s studies and their progress with the garden.

He did not visit Ava’s rooms or invite her to his. And when they passed each other in the hallway, he would not so much as touch a hand to her waist, let alone kiss her.

She tried to content herself by spending time with Luke and with Pudding. But after several days had passed, it became clear that Christian was not going to change.

If she wanted to find out what was going on, she would have to go to him.

Late after Luke had gone to bed one night—after another dinner without Christian present—Ava knocked on his bedroom door. She wore the same nightgown she had been wearing the first time they kissed.

When she received no response, she gently pushed the door open … and found it empty.

“Surely he isn’t working at this late hour,” she murmured to herself. But she went to the library all the same.

Sure enough, he was there, bent over a desk. At the sound of the door creaking, he didn’t even look up.

“You are up quite late,” she said, entering the room more fully. “I would have thought you would be in bed by now. I was just about to head to sleep myself.”

“What are you doing here?” he asked brusquely.

As it had been the past few days, his words were neutral, as though he was trying to brush her off. But Ava sensed a nervousness underlying his tone. She stepped further into the library.

“I think we should speak to each other,” she said bluntly. There was no point in beating around the bush, particularly if he was trying to avoid her.

“We are speaking right now,” he replied, still not looking at her, though she noticed he had stopped dragging the pen across the paper.

“Christian,” she said, exasperated. “What is going on with you? What is the matter with you?”

“What makes you think something is the matter?” he asked, trying to dodge the question by replying with a question of his own.

But Ava would not let him get away so easily. Not this time. She had given him plenty of time.

“Christian,” she said, trying to school her tone into being as patient as possible. “You have barely even allowed yourself to be in the same room as me in the past few days since my illness.”

“As you have said, you were ill. I merely thought it prudent to give you ample time to rest and recover,” he said.

“And if you bothered to look at me at all, you would see that I am perfectly fine and have been for nearly a week now!” she exclaimed.

A muscle tightened in Christian’s jaw, highlighted by the candlelight. Finally, he turned to look at her. The motion was slow, as though he were reluctant to do it.

When his eyes met hers, Ava felt as though she was being struck by lightning. The familiar wave of desire crested up within her. But it was soon overshadowed by a deep sadness, mirroring the deep sadness she saw behind his gaze.

“I am well, Christian,” she said softly, approaching him with slow, careful steps, as though he were a skittish horse she was trying hard not to scare away. “I am all right. And I know it is disappointing that there was no baby.”

At the word “baby,” she saw his shoulder stiffen. “That …” He cleared his throat. “There is no disappointment. All I care about is that you are well.”

“Don’t lie to me,” she said, her voice hardening. She shook her head. “You have changed, Christian. What have I done to push you away so? It is as though you are frightened of me.”

“I am not frightened of you,” he insisted.

“Are you frightened of catching sick?” she persisted, trying to figure out how to get him to talk. What could be the reason for his odd behavior this past week? “The doctor himself said the infection had passed?—”

“Fine!” he exploded. “I was afraid. I was terrified, but not because of any bloody infection. I am not afraid of catching ill, and I am not afraid of you—for God’s sake, Ava, I could have lost you!”

Her brows furrowed. “Christian,” she said, trying to keep her frustration out of her voice, though she couldn’t entirely, “the doctor said it was mild, once again?—”

“You could have been pregnant,” he said lowly.

Ava nodded. “So it is about the baby,” she said. “I know this time turned out to be a false flag, but we can try again?—”

He took a step back, shaking his head

“You could have died,” he said.

Ava froze. “What?” she asked. She shook her head. It wasn’t funny, but she felt herself almost laughing with shock. “What do you mean?” she asked.

“Like Isabel,” he said. The look on his face was heartbreaking.

It was as though a dam had broken within him, and all of the emotions he had been holding in poured out alongside the words that spilled from him.

“She died in childbirth. I failed her. I didn’t save her.

I can’t let the same thing happen to you. ”

Ava blinked a few times, searching for the right words. “Christian,” she said gently. “There is nothing you could have done to stop it from happening.”

He grew quiet for a long moment. “Perhaps you are right that there was nothing I could have done,” he said finally, his voice somber and low. “But now I know better, and I can’t put you at risk like that.”

“What happened to Isabel was a great tragedy, but that doesn’t mean it is fated to happen again,” she said. “I am healthy, and I want to try for children. We can build a future together, without fear. We can build a new life full of joy and new beginnings.”

Christian shook his head, his face seized by panic. It was clear he was spiraling too deeply to truly process the words she was saying to him.

“It isn’t worth the risk,” he said. “You cannot promise me a safe outcome any more than I can promise tragedy. But it isn’t worth the possibility, Ava. I won’t go through that kind of loss again. I won’t put Luke through that again. I can’t.”

“Why are you allowing yourself to be ruled by your fear?” she exclaimed.

“I am not being ruled by my fear,” he snapped back.

“I am telling you that I care for you, Ava, and it will ruin me to lose you.” He took a step back, pressing his hands to his face.

After taking a moment to collect himself, he took a deep breath.

“Perhaps this was a mistake,” he said, his voice suddenly quiet and very calm, so much so that Ava felt shocked.

“Maybe what was a mistake?” she asked, trying to keep her voice from wavering. She could not believe how far they had fallen from the closeness and intimacy of the last few weeks.

“Allowing ourselves to overstep the bounds of our initial arrangement,” he said, his tone unflinchingly cold.

“We ought to have continued as we began. Convenient. Practical. We marry to maintain your reputation and financial stability, and to provide Luke with the help and care he needs. He has benefited from that, at least.”

“You truly want that?” she asked, disbelieving.

A silence passed. It was only a few seconds, and yet it felt to Ava like a lifetime.

“I believe it would be for the best,” he said finally. Ava felt as though her heart had fallen from her chest onto the floor and been stepped on.

He hadn’t said it was what he wanted, she understood. But what he wanted didn’t matter, at least not to Christian. No matter how much he might care for her, he would not be willing to build a future together if there was any sort of emotional risk involved.

There was nothing she could say to convince him otherwise, she realized.

For a moment, she had allowed herself to hope that her second marriage might be something more than her first. She had begun to hope that she might finally experience a real love. A real family, the way she had dreamed of.

Christian had offered her stability and respect, more than William had. Perhaps it had been foolish of her to hope for more.

But God, it hurt more than anything to have experienced that happy dream for the briefest amount of time, only to have it torn from her.

“In that case,” she said quietly, “perhaps you are right. We shall return to our original arrangement. We shall be civil with each other, and I shall care for Luke. Nothing more.”

She hoped he might disagree. But of course, he did not. He merely nodded. “I am glad we are in agreement,” he said. He looked away from her, returning his attention to his desk, and Ava felt tears well up in her eyes.

“Very well,” was all she could bring herself to say in response. Any more words, she knew, and she would start crying.

When Christian said nothing more, she gave up, leaving the library and walking down the long hallway to her room.

Rationally, Ava understood that things had come to a clean end between them.

Still, it stung when she made it back to her bedroom and realized he had made no attempt to follow her and never would again.