Except maybe Phoebe was braver than he was, because she didn’t hide her feelings for long.
“Are you ashamed of me?” she asked in that same way—defiance, brazenness, and real worry beneath. “Do you wish that someone else was your duchess?”
“No.” The answer left him too quickly to be anything but the truth.
“Then let me come with you.” Her answer was predictable, and Aaron was braced for the words, but he had no way to brace himself for the soft earnestness in her gaze.
Aaron had stood before a wall of cannons aimed directly at him and not flinched. But now, in the face of his wife’s desires, he felt cracks begin to form.
“I’m trying to protect you from something… painful,” he said. It was more vulnerability than he’d ever given anyone, and he felt it stretch something inside him.
And Phoebe bent with him; he could see it in her face.
“I’m made of sterner stuff than you think,” she said, no longer pushing for what she wanted but rather extending an invitation.
He didn’t know how he knew what she meant, but he did. He’d never been good at reading people like that. Scenarios, yes. Battle plans, very much so. But he’d never been able to understand his older brother, had never been able to predict when his father’s temper would boil over, had never known what his mother meant when she just gave him one of those distant, cool looks.
But Phoebe? He saw her more clearly every day.
That must have been the thing that made him agree.
“Very well,” he said. “How soon can you be ready to go?”
It arose that, when properly motivated, Phoebe could move very quickly indeed. She was back down in the foyer within five minutes, dressed, coiffed, and wearing her warm winter clothing.
He must have looked surprised at this swiftness because she gave him a withering look that somehow managed not to be unkind.
“I didn’t want to give you a chance to change your mind,” she explained with a cheerful shrug.
And, despite the grim duty ahead of him, he found himself smiling at her again.
He couldfeelthe effort it took her not to ask questions as they climbed into the carriage and began rolling down the streets of Mayfair. The freezing temperatures had finally abated, and the roads were rapidly melting, leaving a layer of dirty sludge atop the cobblestones. It was hardly a winter wonderland, and Aaron had a strange pang of fondness for his country estate, where there would be nothing but white for months to come.
Phoebe fidgeted significantly.
“You’re really being very patient over there,” he remarked slyly, not looking away from the window.
“Don’ttease,” she said, kicking lightly at his ankle. She was hampered by the skirts, her carriage, and the sturdy leather of his boots, though, so it was not terribly effective as a deterrent.
He was glad to have her with him, he realized.
“We’re going to a home for men who have been injured by their time in the war,” he told her.
“Like Jacob?” she asked, immediately following his shift in tone, matching it with her own sobriety.
He shook his head.
“No,” he said. “Jacob’s body was harmed, and some of these men… Yes, they’ve been harmed physically, most of them, but many of them have been injured in other ways. They cannot live independently, and that is another wound in itself.”
She considered this, then nodded.
“I understand how that could be,” she said. “To go from a soldier—a man who knows himself based on his might, his ability to protect—to someone without autonomy? I understand that would be painful.”
“Yes,” he agreed, impressed with the ease with which she had understood. Most people who hadn’t fought didn’t get it. They either expected a man to be merely happy to be alive or treated him like an object of pity.
“And so, getting visitors helps?” she asked.
“Getting visitors helps,” he agreed, nodding. And then, because it was hard to have her see him so clearly, he added as a distraction, “And having a pretty woman come to visit will help even more.”
