It was a novel feeling, but not an unwelcome one.
It gave him hope that maybe this whole situation would turn out fine after all.
And that optimism? That was really novel, too.
CHAPTER 19
“He isn’t here, Your Grace.”
Phoebe looked at the butler delivering this news, then at the ice coating the windowpane next to the front door, then back at the butler.
He cleared his throat delicately.
“I do believe the roads are in rather better shape than our windows, Your Grace,” he suggested.
The butler, Phoebe knew, was not at fault in any of this. And it would make her the worst kind of noblewoman to force him to manage the fit of temper that shot through her. It wouldn’t be fair, not when he couldn’t respond or fight back, not without risking his job.
Thus, even though she really wanted to shout several obscenities and stamp her foot hard enough to break straight through thefloor and into the ground, she just clenched her fists and gritted her teeth.
“I see,” she choked out.
He looked briefly sympathetic.
“I could let you know when he returns, Your Grace?” he offered, and Phoebe recognized the generosity of this offer. She was the newcomer—and she wasn’t the one who paid his wages. It would have been more sensible of him to suggest letting Aaron know she’d been looking for him—something that would let her husband continue to avoid her if he wished.
And he wasdefinitelyavoiding her. There really wasn’t any other explanation for why she hadn’t seen him in several days, in which they had quite literally been trapped in a house together, only for him to flee the moment he was able.
“No need,” she told the butler, her nails biting into her palms with the force of her clench. “I will be going out as well.”
She said it on impulse, a sort of irritated quid pro quo, but as soon as the words left her lips, she realized that they were the perfect solution to this… restlessness brewing inside her.
The problem with Aaron’s absence was that Phoebe didn’t know what had caused it. At first, she had thought that maybe there was some sort of unresolved issue with his sister. But she’d spent several days with Clio now, and after a few pokes and prods fromPhoebe, Clio and Aaron had stolen a few moments together, which was more than Phoebe could say for herself.
She should have felt satisfied that she’d managed to make Clio happy, but instead, she’d started to worry.
Aaron had started avoiding her after their… interlude at the ball.
Had Phoebe done something wrong?
Thinking about that made her feel hot and itchy in a very different way than the physical experience itself had made her feel. Instead of making her feel like she was opening, like a flower blooming in the sun, it made her want to shrink in on herself, like a frightened animal seeking protection.
She did not like it, and she did not like the stupid metaphors that kept occurring to her. This was what she got for reading all those salacious poems over the years.
She’d pushed that feeling away, clinging to her irritation instead. It was easier to feel that Aaron was being difficult than to imagine that she had been somehow lacking. She nursed that irritation, clutching it tight to her chest until it became outright anger.
Fine. If he wanted to avoid her, what did she care? She hadn’t even wanted to marry him in the first place!
And if he wasn’t here to ask her to fulfill the stupid agreements that they’d made, then she wasn’t obliged to wait around for him, either.
She could just go back to doing the things she liked to do, like none of this had ever happened.
“Are you sure that you want to go out, Your Grace?” her maid fretted as she fluttered through helping Phoebe get into a gown suitable for an evening out in London. “It’s mighty cold out there, still.”
“I’m sure,” Phoebe said… though she wasn’t quite certain that this was the truth. She felt determined more than certain.
She needed to dosomething. She couldn’t bear to stand around this house, waiting for Aaron to come home. It reminded her too much of her mother, waiting for her father—wasting the hours, days, and weeks of her too-short lifewaitingfor some man who had never cared enough to show up on time, if he had shown up at all.
She had to do something that made her feel like herself.
