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He truly didn’t wish it. He stared down at her hands clasped in her lap, at the skirt of her silk dress, the muted embellishments and trim that suited her station perfectly. With her blond curls and the stylish garments now available to her, no one could fault her appearance. She was more beautiful than Gwen, more beautiful than any of the ladies in her circle, both inside and out.
After a few minutes, he shifted and reached for her gloved hand. “I asked Mrs. Melton to have Cook pack some of those cherry preserves you enjoy.”
“Thank you. How thoughtful of you.”
She pulled her hand away to fuss at the folds of her dress. He wondered if she would ever wear the silver dress again. Of course she wouldn’t. He would order her another one, differently styled. He would make a gift of it to her on their anniversary or some such thing. She really looked stunning in the color, especially with her light blue eyes.
Blast, she was quiet. What was she thinking about? He drew her into a desultory conversation about the weather, about books she’d recently read. When she stopped reading, then he would worry. She haunted his library more than ever, her nose always buried in some book. He talked to her about the St. Alphage ruins, about the old Roman roads and the history of London. She nodded and made interested noises but he realized after some time that she probably knew everything he told her, had probably already read it in the same books he’d read.
By the time they arrived, his good mood had eroded into something a bit more cross. He stuffed down his irritation and gave Harmony a tour of the dry winter park, the stone ruins and reputed Roman burial ground. Meanwhile, modern town life went on around them. There was no grand, great blue sky to gawk at, no expanse of vast moors, but there were old trees and some greenery and wildflowers. They came to one giant stone on their stroll and Court expected her to scramble atop it. When she stood beside it instead, laying her hand upon it, he felt disappointment. Why?
“This is a grand old rock,” she said. “I like it.”
“I wish I could put it away in my pocket for you then.” She gave him a crooked smile. He wished he could keep that in his pocket. “Alas, I cannot,” he said, indicating her rock. “Perhaps a smaller keepsake. A pebble? A winter rose like the one in our garden?”
She blinked and looked down at the ground, then back at him. “I need no keepsake, but thank you for bringing me here. It is a fascinating diversion.”
They spread a blanket and had tea in a circle of shrubs, protected from the bite of the breeze. She perched primly in her dress and ate very little of the fresh bread and ham, though a bit more of the cherry preserves spread on thin biscuits. The conversation was polite but markedly strained. Or rather, he strained not to reach out to touch her, to seduce her back into his good graces. He wished he could lay her back on the thick blanket, roll her up in a bundle and make love to her beneath the afternoon sun.
Instead they packed the food away, took one last look around the historical site and walked a bit farther down the road, viewing more recent landmarks and some ramshackle houses in need of repair. They were not the only things in need of repair.
“Harmony,” he said as they walked. “We must speak of matters between us.”
She took another step and turned to face him. Her expression was calm, inscrutable. “What matters?”
What matters indeed. She would not make this easy. Her eyes were not Harmony’s eyes, bright and inquisitive. They were closed off and emotionless.
“I fear we are not as comfortable with one another as we once were,” he said.
She looked away from him, considering. “Do you think so? I have felt more comfortable these last few days. I feel as though things have…calmed down.”
“Perhaps they have.” What the deuce did she mean by that, “calmed down?” It would be too embarrassing to ask. He felt temper flare, helplessness. He reached to touch her cheek and the velvet curve of her jaw. “I miss you, my love.”
She made a dainty feminine gesture that seemed false in the extreme. “How can you miss me when I am right here?”
Her falseness stoked his temper to ire. “Do not play the chirping ninny with me, for we both know you are no such thing.” He softened his tone as her gaze dropped to his feet. “Harmony. My love. My wife. I will not ask for your forgiveness. If you are waiting for me to prostrate myself at your feet and say I was wrong for giving you a well-deserved punishment, you shall be waiting a long while.”
“I want no apology. I demand nothing from you.” Her tone was not rude, but exceedingly cool. “I expect nothing, and accept whatever I am given. If you are not happy with some aspect of my behavior, then tell me what you wish me to do.”
Smile at me. Love me. Forgive me, damn it.
“I hope you will not object if I come to you tonight,” he said instead in his most autocratic voice. “I have given you time apart. That time is at an end.”
“As you wish. You might have come before,” she added in the same cool manner, as if he were the one being difficult.
He studied her, noting the color in her cheeks. “I warn you, I will not allow you to lie beneath me and be distant.”
“I can hardly imagine that being possible.”
“Can’t you?”
Were they to spar like children? He took her in his arms, in a forceful grip that shook the ennui, at least momentarily, from the depths of her gaze. “You promised once to stand my friend,” he said. “At the inn at Newcastle.”
Her lips tightened into a grim line. “It was not a promise, just naive talk from a silly girl. And that was before…before you ever…hurt me.”
“It was directly after a spanking as I remember, and I was not gentle that first time.” She looked down at his chest, her jaw working against tears. It was as if she would withhold all emotion from him, the very emotion he treasured, the emotion he couldn’t express himself. “Cry, damn you,” he said. “I ordered dozens of handkerchiefs when we wed, expecting to need them.”
He’d teased, made a joke, but she hadn’t even reacted. Her face was a blank mask.
“Where are you?” he asked in despair. Perhaps he shook her; perhaps she only trembled. “Where have you gone?”
“Nowhere!”
“Where is my Harmony? The woman I walked with beside the Roman wall?”
She swallowed hard, going tense but not pulling away from him. “I am right here. I am trying to change for you. If you do not recognize me, perhaps that is why.”
“This cold demeanor is not the change I wanted.”
Tears shimmered in her eyes. He pulled her into an embrace, prepared to produce his handkerchief after all, but she mastered herself before the glittering tears fell. He could feel the tension in her body as he held her. “Look at me,” he said.
When she turned her eyes to his he saw his Harmony there, emotional and conflicted, fighting to get out. What did he want? The wildly unpredictable woman, or the hollow shell of her that made the polished and suitable wife? He took her face in his hands, the beloved face that hid so much anxiety and pain, and touched his lips to hers beside the weed-cluttered road.
“I want you to be happy,” he said when he pulled away. “My punishments, my efforts to improve you, it is all in an effort to make both of us happy. To bring balance and structure to our lives.”
“I find balance and structure very calming,” she replied in a dead-sounding voice.
Court wanted to throttle her, but he kissed her again instead. At least in her kisses he had some sense that she still cared for him. Her fingers brushed up into his hair, her palm hot on the back of his neck.
“You torment me, Harmony,” he breathed against her lips. “You ought to be spanked for it.”
She didn’t deny his words. She didn’t deny any of it.
“Come to me tonight,” she said when they broke apart. “Perhaps you will find I am not so changed.”
*** *** ***
Harmony sat at the escritoire in the dowager’s room. Court’s mother lay i
n her bed as if in state, her expression suggesting great forbearance with Harmony’s faults. Well, that never changed. Harmony had learned, in assisting with the old woman’s correspondence, that her given name was Ermengarde—not that she would ever dare call the woman anything but ma’am or Your Grace.
“Read it back to me, if you please.”
Harmony focused on the letter before her. “My physician says my wrist will be whole in five more weeks at the latest. We will not come to Hertfordshire, though the weather continues dry and mild.”
“Did you spell ‘physician’ correctly?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“It is barbaric, the way you write with your left hand.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Then why do you not improve? It is not enough to merely repeat that you are sorry all the time.”
