Page 17 of The Duke's Sister's Absolutely Excellent Engagement (The Notorious Briarwoods Book 11)

“W hy did you marry me?”

Nestor blinked, slowly emerging from a fitful sleep. He’d been sitting beside the bed, his head resting on his hands, which were pressed into the goose-down mattress.

Dawn pooled through the tall windows of the bedchamber, spilling its soft light over the woven rug, onto the bed, and over him. Her voice, his beautiful, heroic wife’s voice, slipped through that light and penetrated his heart. But there was no light in that voice. That voice was full of darkness.

Despite this realization, he was so grateful that he was hearing it.

“You’re awake,” he whispered, his hope growing. “You’re awake.”

She had finally drifted to sleep late into the night, when Hannah had deemed that it was safe for her to do so. The bleeding had stopped. The universe, the creator God, had shined its light upon Margery and kept her in this world. And his gratitude was so strong that as he lifted his head from his arms and looked at her, he did not at first see how she truly was.

No, he was full of such intense happiness to still have her here that he rushed, “I love you.”

“No, Nestor. That is not what I asked,” she said, her voice deep with shadow. “You need to answer my question.”

He frowned, his own mind muddy with lack of sleep and fatigue from the events of the night.

She was pale and weak upon the bed. Her hands were limp. Her hair dark with sweat that had dried long ago.

“Your question?” he prompted.

“Why did you marry me?” Her eyes were two dark pools, not of sorrow but of emptiness. The pain had transformed into something else, and for a terrifying moment, he feared that though she had not died, her spirit had departed.

“I married you because I wanted to make you happy,” he admitted quickly.

The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them, but something about her had compelled him to speak the utter truth.

She narrowed his eyes then, her face hardening like a steel blade. “To make me happy?” she echoed. “And why did you want to make me happy?”

A hard edge tinted those words, and he felt a wave of trepidation.

“Because I saw how much you had suffered,” he confessed. Whatever he had hoped those words would instill in her, they did not.

Her mouth turned into a straight line, and she looked away from him. “You pitied me,” she spat out.

“What?” he gasped.

“You pitied me,” she repeated. “That’s why you wanted to marry me. You felt sorry for me. You didn’t love me, Nestor, not like I loved you. From the moment that I saw you that day at Heron House, my heart fell in love with you, not with some version that I thought you could be. I knew at that moment that you were the best and most beautiful man in the world, and I knew you were too good for me, too much, but I still longed for you.”

“And you have me, my love,” he insisted, a sort of frantic panic welling up inside him, but he willed it down. She needed him.

“Cease,” she said. “Cease saying that.” She was silent for a long moment, but then, like a judge reading out a death sentence, she intoned, “The ton was right. Lady Magnolia’s mother was right. Lady Wilhelmina and Lady Annabelle were right.”

“What do you mean?” he gritted. “They weren’t right about anything.”

She whipped her head back to him. “Yes, they were. You married me because you felt sorry for me, and you pitied me, and you thought you could transform me like a savior, a white knight on a horse. And I should be grateful. I am grateful. But you didn’t want me. You wanted who you thought I’d become if you saved me. And you did save me…” Her lips trembled and her eyes turned darker. She wound her hands into the sheets, gripping tight. “Nestor, I had only two tasks, to be happy for you and bear a child. I have failed. Failed you. Failed myself. Failed…”

At her words, his entire body railed at the heavens. “It is I who have failed you,” he countered.

She blew out a harsh breath. “You can’t make me happy, Nestor. No one can. Not ever again. Not after this.”

She sobbed softly. “Not after this. I want you to go now. Leave me. You never should have married me. This was always going to end in tragedy. My life is always going to be full of tragedy. I don’t deserve happiness. My mother knew that. My father knew that. I am not worthy of it. They saw it from the moment I was born as a baby. They must have known. They had to scold and struggle and force me to be good, force me to be worthy of what I was born to receive. Which was a title and wealth. They must have looked at me and been ashamed, for that’s how they treated me. Shame… That must be all that I’m worth. And you? You tried to give me joy and happiness and acceptance, and look what has happened? Our child…” Her voice died off and she turned her face to the wall.

“Go,” she said.

There was a dark, frightened part of him that wanted to run, that wanted to leave her, to head out into the hall and escape the gnashing, ugly pain of the moment. Her rejection of all that he had hoped for, of her twisting of his intentions. But he refused to go.

“I can take it,” he said firmly.

“What?” she whispered, confused.

“Your pain,” he said gently but without relent. “Unleash it upon me, my love. I don’t care what you need to say to me. I don’t care how much you need to hurt me. I will not leave you. I am here for you. I will endure it. I am strong enough. I promise you.”

Her shoulders began to shake then, and he climbed up onto the bed and pulled her into his arms. “I will never leave you. I will never leave you,” he chanted over and over again. “I love you. I love you,” he repeated.

He willed her to accept the truth, willed her to know that she was indeed worthy of love. He willed that the old story her mother and father had instilled in her from birth did not pull her back into that hell she had escaped from over these last months.

He kept waiting to feel her spirit again, to feel the Margery that he loved so well. But it felt as if he was holding a husk.

“I will never be worthy, Nestor,” she stated, her voice empty. “And I want you to go.”

But he could not, and he never would. But even as he held her, he knew that she might never come back. The Margery that he loved, the girl he had seen and had been determined to set free? Perhaps she had gone away over this hellish night, never to return.

And the thought terrified him more than anything in the world. He thought that the night had been the darkest time, but it seemed the morning was fraught with peril.

He would be patient. He had to be. They had time. They were young, weren’t they? They could survive this, couldn’t they? But for the first time in his life of being a Briarwood and an optimist, he felt doubt.