“What do you think you’re doing?” he asked, and the words were too harsh, the tone too harsh. He was meant to be making amends, not… this.
Phoebe turned to him, her face still as impassive as that of a statue.
“I needed some of my things,” she said as though this were any sort of explanation worth hearing.
The intelligent man in Aaron exhorted him to fall at her feet. To plead with her for forgiveness.
But the stupid man had spent years equating sternness with safety, and for much of the time, he’d been right. In the Navy, showing weakness meant that his orders might not be followed, and that would get good men killed. And in his childhood home, any faltering would be taken out of his hide by his father.
And God, it was so wretchedly hard to change.
Which meant that the ice was still in his voice as he raised his chin and glared down his nose at his wife, the woman who had not erred in this situation.
“You’ve decided to leave for good, then?” he asked.
There was a flicker of something in her expression. Aaron hated himself for the likelihood that it was hurt.
“I don’t know,” she said. He was so goddamned jealous of that honesty of hers. How did she do it when she, too, had been so regularly kicked down and cast aside by her family? “But, right now, I need to be around people who love me.”
He knew he flinched outwardly at that, but for some reason, the weakness he showed seemed to make Phoebe soften slightly rather than pounce upon him as others would have done—as othershaddone.
“Plenty of dukes and duchesses keep separate households,” she said tentatively, and the reasonable side of Aaron was practically screaming inside him now, shrieking with fury at how much he did not want that. “It won’t be a scandal.”
As though the scandal was his concern. It should have been, perhaps, but it wasn’t.
He remained silent, and after a beat, it was clear that this was a failure of some kind. Phoebe’s expression hardened again.
“If I learn that I am increasing, I will let you know,” she said icily, and this was another knife to the chest, the idea that she might be carrying his babe,theirbabe, and he would not be there to see her grow round, that he would not be there to comfort her through any illness that may arise, that he would not be there to hold her and marvel at the life they had created together.
Still, he could not find the right words.
She sighed, then lowered her gaze briefly before stepping around him to the carriage, which was now packed and ready. Through the noise in his skull, Aaron noticed that it was the Duke of Wilds’ carriage, and despite everything, he felt a flicker of relief.
At least she would be safe. Ariadne would take good care of her—maybe better care than Aaron could, given how wretchedly he was failing her right now.
As the footman handed her up, Phoebe looked over her shoulder at him. She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again without speaking. As the door closed behind her and she rode out of sight, leaving Aaron there like the complete wastrel that he was, standing blankly on his own doorstep, he found himself wondering furiously what it was that she had been going to say.
He probably would have taken himself inside to mope for a few days more—he was starting to truly believe that as far as civilian life went, moping might be the only thing he was good for—except the moment he crossed the threshold, he found his sister, standing in the foyer, her arms crossed and a ferocious scowl etched across her face.
“What,” she demanded in that needling sort of tone that only little sisters could ever access, “is wrong with you, Aaron?”
Aaron’s head was spinning so desperately that he could no longer tell if he was meant to be the knowledgeable elder brother in all this—if he was meant to pretend that everything was fine, that he had it all under control.
But everything wasnotunder control, and he suspected that if he tried to play it off as such, Clio might kick him in the shins like she’d done when she was a child, and it was all justtoo much.
So, he answered honestly.
“So much.” He let out a bitter laugh at the relief of just telling the truth for once. “I’m… Christ, I’m not doing well at all.”
And finally—bloodyfinally—this was the right thing to say, because Clio stopped looking angry and started looking sympathetic. She crossed to him and then must have accessed some sort of heretofore undiscovered feminine witchcraft because the next thing he knew, Aaron was sitting in his parlor with a cup of tea in his hands while a fire crackled merrily behind him.
“Right,” Clio said briskly. “Tell me what’s happened.”
So, for the second time that day, Aaron found the story spilling out of him.
“And now she’s gone,” he concluded when he got through the whole wretched ordeal. “And I feel… I feel?—”
“I know exactly how you feel,” Clio interrupted quietly, “because it’s exactly how I felt when you sent me away.”
