Good. There was nothing else to say. Even if there was, Augusta had already expended the entirety of her energy for the day. Wasted it, if Sebastian’s utter lack of understanding were anything to go by.
The walk back to her room felt long, the hallways cold andechoing. When she reached her bed and crawled into it, she felt much like a man crawling back into the bed of a lover after a long time away.
Weeks ago, she had sealed her fate. She had handed her future to Sebastian on a silver plate. He controlled it all, and he did not love her, and he had no incentive to keep that silver plate safe. If he wanted - and, evidently, he did - he could toss it to the side without a glance, and she would have to smile and sit beside him at dinners and practically thank him for the opportunity.
That was the last thing she thought before sleep overtook her. Her dreams were troubled, and she felt throughout them that she was being crushed by a heavy boulder until all the life force within her had leaked away.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The great evil of having a fortune once more was that Sebastian no longer had any work to throw himself into.
Up north, when he had spent his time running the Derbyshire estate, he’d always had problems to address. Georgiana and his mother always wanted something, the grounds needed new work, and the meager budget his father had afforded him required attending to.
Now, his debts had been paid, his mother was successfully running the estate, and he had more money than he would need in the foreseeable future. Everything was marching forward smoothly, and he had nothing to do but sit in his study and stare at the god damned window and wish that it was raining so that something, anything could feel as awful as he did.
Instead it was a clear autumn day. If his wife were speaking to him, he would have asked her to go on a walk in Hyde, and she would have said yes.
As it was, Augusta was on day six of remaining in bed. The few times he had sneaked in to check on her, she had been as soundly asleep as if it were the middle of the night. When he asked his housekeeper - newly hired with the dowry money - if his wife had eaten or roused or done anything at all, she simply gave him a sad smile.
He hated this feeling of impotence which her spell had brought upon him. It was like fighting a ghost.
Not that it would have done much if he were to vanquish it; the issue, at its heart, had nothing to do with her melancholia. Her spell was a terrible deviation from the great problem at hand, which was that both of them had gravely lied to one another. Worse than being improper, it was embarrassing to be caught in such a grand untruth. He found it exceptionally difficult to distance himself from that embarrassment enough to properly apologize to Augusta.
That was what all this boiled down to: embarrassment. His father had shamed him, and now his wife was threatening to shame him, and worse than the two of them combined was the fact that he had so terribly shamed himself. The weight of it all was so crushing that he did not see a way to climb out from underneath it.
With a wry, unfeeling smile, he wondered if he ought to see an alienist. Perhaps that god damned Pinkton fellow was taking new patients.
He could positively kill the man. It seemed to him that Pinkton had taken his proper, fine wife and turned her into a radical before his very eyes. He’d given her so false a hope that now nothing Sebastian did would ease the pain of her loss.
Still…he would do it, wouldn’t he?
Yes, he would. Once he got himself out of this chair, he would go about the dirty business of winning back his wife. He knew, instinctively, that it was going to be the most grueling, self-flagellating task he had ever undertaken.
Which was why, in the end, he decided to put it off until tomorrow.
*****
At the breakfast table the next morning, Sebastian inquired of Augusta’s state. Milly, the young lady who attended her, gave a full report.
“She has eaten some toast and jam,” she said brightly. “And she even roused long enough to bathe last night. I believe she might be feeling more herself today.”
That was all Sebastian needed to gather the courage to go to her room as soon as his breakfast had been cleared away. Standing outside her door, he paused, wishing that he could feel her presence within. Wishing that he could know what she was thinking. Wishing that she could know him in that moment - not as the villain in her story, but as the man who had sat up with her the morning after their wedding.
An ache built in his chest as he thought of those moments. Fleetingly, it occurred to him that he might never know them again.
Then he knocked, and her weakened voice called out, “What?” with no small amount of annoyance.
He cleared his throat. “It is me.”
A long silence stretched out. He wondered if she would respond at all, or force him to make the choice between walking away or pushing inside uninvited.
Finally, she spoke. “Come in.”
He pushed inside before nerves could get the better of him. There he found Augusta sitting at her desk, tucking something away in the top drawer and slamming it shut before turning around to face him.
Her expression was unreadable. She had always been serious in her features, but he was used to seeing some spark in her eyes that told of underlying cogs turning. Now, she was as blank asfresh snow, something inside of her snuffed out.
Only then did it occur to him that he had no idea what to say to her.
