It felt terrible to say, but in another way, it felt good, too. Her family never really spoke of it.
And wasn’t that just another form of pretending?
But Aaron didn’t try to stop her, didn’t try to interrupt.
He just watched as she continued.
“Before she died,” Phoebe went on, “she told me to not pretend to be something that I’m not. She said that she’d done that, and she regretted it. And I’ve tried. I’ve really, really tried.”
Her eyes fluttered closed for a moment as she thought, but didn’t speak about how it was an effort, despite all appearances to the contrary—maybe evenbecauseshe made it look as though there was no effort involved at all.
No, she didn’t want to be the picture-perfect Society lady that her father obviously wished her to be. She didn’t want to frantically follow every rule or to make herself smaller and smaller until she all but disappeared. She liked who she was, liked trying the things that she wasn’t meant to try, liked feeding the curiosity that had always brimmed so full inside of her.
But the world wasn’t built for someone like her. And resisting, always resisting—it was hard.
She was very tired sometimes.
And her failures—the times when she gave in and did as she was told just because she was so weary of fighting, the times when she was not true to herself, no matter that that was hermother’s dying wish—those failures weighed heavily upon her.
Often, they felt as heavy as her grief.
She kept her eyes closed because she feared that if she opened them, they would sparkle with tears.
Aaron began to speak.
“I’ve seen a lot of death,” he said, and she couldn’t resist looking at him then because there was a heaviness in his words that matched the hard rock that she felt inside her own chest.
“More than most. More than I would hope for anyone. And I’ve seen a lot of loss. Soldiers losing comrades. Families losing sons, husbands, brothers. Sometimes, I was the one who had to tell them, had to go to them and give them the very worst news they had ever received.”
He was looking at her, but he was also looking through her. She could see, somehow, in that faraway look in his eyes, the journeys he’d been forced to make, the people he’d been forced to face as he broke their hearts.
Phoebe practically held her breath, afraid to break whatever spell he’d woven around them.
“I told them, time and again, that the best way to honor the deaths of those who had gone was tolive. Live because those sailors had died to protect and safeguard that life in one way or another. And perhaps a mother is not exactly the same as a soldier, but…” His eyes refocused on her, then, and he was here in this room with her. “But I still think, even without knowing her, that she probably was telling you the same thing. To live and to live well.”
She stared at him. She stared because it sounded so right when he said it like that. Because her clogged throat wouldn’t let her say anything else.
And she stared because was this the same man who had all but blackmailed her into a marriage? Was this the man who had thrown their guests out on their heels because he’d decided his duty had been discharged?
No, she thought, this was the man who had kissed her in the gazebo. The one who had bargained with her like an equal. The one who had seen her in a way that nobody else ever had.
But she stared too long because the openness in his expression disappeared. It was like a shutter slamming down, leaving only sternness behind, and Phoebe felt something like a pang of panic as she realized that she’d lost her chance.
“Aaron—”
“I offer my sincerest regrets that you are upset,” he said icily. “But I must insist that we attend a Christmas charity tomorrow.It benefits a good cause, and it presents the image of the kind of duke and duchess we are going to be. I shall free you from any other duties between now and then, such that you may prepare yourself as this is not an instance in which you can afford to fail.”
“Aaron, listen?—”
He did not listen. He stood, his back as stiff as the soldier he had been for so long.
“Now that it has come to attention that you are acquainted with my cousin Ariadne, I gather that I do not need to remind you the stakes of such a first appearance. No doubt, due to that association, you understand that marrying into a ducal family—into the broader Lightholder family in particular—you are not just entering a marriage. You are entering a public role. You will need to brace yourself accordingly.”
“Aaron, can you please just?—”
He could not. He offered her a decisive nod.
“Good evening, Phoebe.”
