“Youwillanswer me,” Matthew ordered, and Diana could not hold back anymore.
“I do not know that I wish to be a mother!” she all but shouted.
“I beg your pardon?” He was… confused, staring at her in wonder.
“I do not know that I wish to be a mother,” she repeated, though slightly more calm and collected this time.
“But of course, you will be a mother,” he replied, as though that were the silliest thing she could possibly have said.
“It is not a guarantee. If I do not wish to be a mother, there are ways to avoid it.”
“One being not sharing a room with me,” Matthew answered, and she simply inclined her head. “You did not think that you should share these thoughts with me?”
“I did not know that I had these thoughts!” she cried out. “Before you, I had never wished to be a wife. Had never expected it to happen. And then you came and changed all of that. And now you wish to change everything yet again. To make me a mother… to take away all sense of myself in this new change… Just as I am starting to understand who I truly am, just as I am starting to feel freedom, you wish to strip me of all of my individuality and all that makes me who I am!”
“If you had no wish to become a mother, it is something you should have told me before we got married. It is an important thing to consider.”
“You had no desire to get to know the woman to whom you would be married before our wedding. What need was there for sharing anything about myself with you?”
“A duke is expected to have an heir,” Matthew retorted. “If you had no intention of providing me with an heir, you should have informed me of that immediately.”
His voice was sharp and hard. His expression closed off. And she knew that any rapport and any goodwill that they had built up over the last several weeks had immediately vanished.
He stood at a distance from her, his back ramrod-straight.
“If you had known that I was unsure of having children, would you have married me?” She asked, raising her head.
“No,” he replied abruptly.
Diana felt her heart squeeze painfully in her chest. It felt like it was breaking as she looked at him. At the expression on his face that she had not seen before. At the way that all of her hopes and dreams seemed to be crashing down around her, and in this very house where she had hoped everything would be so perfect.
Without thinking, she raced out of the room and into the gardens.
There was nothing in the house.
Nowhere for her to go. But in the gardens, lost in the flowers, perhaps she could feel somewhat better.
Though even the beautiful petals and delicate scents of the flowers could do nothing to erase the sting of his rejection and her embarrassment. The fact that Matthew did not want anything to do with her now… it was too much to bear. Just as with her family, her only value was in being a wife and a mother and not in just being herself.
The moment he had said it, he knew he had made a mistake. Knew that it was the wrong thing to say and that he should take it back. But the words would not come out.
Watching the way her face crumpled and tears sprang to her eyes… and then the way she ran out of the room, ran away from him… Something in him had kept him from moving. Kept him from speaking. And he knew exactly what it was.
Even as his heart constricted and he wished with everything in himself that he could take away that pain he had caused her …
His father’s voice echoed in his head. He felt the cane hitting his back when he was too kind, too emotional. It was too much to overcome.
This was his punishment for wishing for more. For hoping that he could have a happy future and feel truly alive with this woman rather than suffering a mere existence. This was his punishment for loving her when he should never have allowed himself to do so.
His father would tell him that he deserved it. That this was his punishment for being so foolish as to fall in love. So foolish as to allow any form of emotions in his heart…
But another part of him told him that he was foolish not for loving her, but for speaking so abruptly. For allowing the words to spill out of his mouth without a second thought. For not giving both of them time to think about what they wanted to say and to discuss the situation more calmly.
But in the moment, he had been hurt, and he had been angry. He had been unable to stop himself from speaking, and now…
He feared that things with Diana were damaged beyond repair. The way she had looked at him before she fled…
He walked out of the house, instructing his footman to remain there with the carriage until Diana was ready to return home. He would leave on foot.
