He’d once known her.
And well enough to believe he wanted to marry her, to have her as the mother to his children, to grow old with her.
But now they’d been made strangers by time and distance, and the animosity boiling between them was thicker than treacle.
“I only mean that the act of encouraging other women—wives and daughters and sisters of fellow peers—is problematic. The reputation that comes with some of this behavior is unflattering for a duchess. I didn’t expect such descriptions to reach me when I’d married a quiet, proper, demure young woman.”
The effect his words had on Alaina was instantaneous. The elegant rises of her lightly freckled cheekbones bloomed crimson, and her fists wound around the plum fabric of her skirts so tightly that it was a wonder it didn’t shred in her grasp.
“A great deal can change in a few years when people are left to their own devices…to find their own place in the world,” Alaina hissed dangerously, sapphire flames sparking in her eyes. She tilted her chin to the parchment he still held. “And it is so nice to know some letters made their way to you. I wonder if that one was important enough to warrant a response.”
The jab struck as intended, but if only she knew how he’d longed to reply to her letters, how he’d yearned to let her know she was not as alone as she felt. Sterling opened his mouth to reply but was interrupted when a maid arrived, flanked by one of the footmen.
“Beggin’ your pardon, Your Graces,” the blond girl chirped, bobbing an apologetic curtsy as she flicked her eyes between her employers. “Mrs. Frank and Cook asked me to see if you’d like to discuss the rest of the week’s menus now.” The query was directed at Alaina, but the young woman’s wide, pale eyes darted to Sterling. She seemed to assess the tenseness of his posture, his impatience that he be left alone with his wife to continue the conversation, his frustration as he drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair.
“Her Grace will be available shortly,” he finally answered for Alaina.
The maid and footman did not move.
Sterling turned to face them fully.
“That will be all,” he added in no uncertain terms.
They remained unmoving like bloody gargoyles.
Until they looked at Alaina.
Sterling followed their gazes quickly enough to catch the subtle nod from Alaina, to which the servants bowed and curtseyed before taking their leave.
First, the footmen at dinner the previous eve, and now the servants today?
Something inside of Sterling shattered.
“Why in bloody hell does it take everyone multiple commands before they obey an order?” he demanded, not caring who overheard. Perhaps it might even be good for the servants to witness this. “This is my home, and I am lord and master here!”
“You may be their lord, but these people have become near to friends to me these last eight years!” Alaina punctuated her words with a closed fist upon the embroidered cushion beside her.
“What?” he asked, taken aback by the waver in her voice.
“You may pay their wages, but you’ve been naught but a faceless name to everyone for so long—some of the staff had never even laid eyes upon you until the last twenty-four hours. I am the one who has been here. They—” Her voice broke and she averted her eyes for a moment before regaining her composure and meeting his gaze once more. “These people were my only company in the early days of my tenure as your wife when I was little more than a girl, unsure where to go or how to navigate the incomprehensible hand I’d been dealt.”
Too ashamed to show her face after the scandal of his flight.
The ensuing silence rang with emotion as if following the last tone of an enormous brass bell.
The words had been said, the message had been laid across the table between them.
Sterling’s fingers maintained their steady tap-tapping against the arm of his chair, disguising the thick, tar-like discomfort welling up from somewhere deep and long-suppressed within his gut.
Alaina’s words struck him more deeply than he’d expected. He hadn’t been blind to the fact that her life would be drastically changed by his absence; he’d just been too young and naïve to believe it wouldn’t alter her in some irrevocable way—that she’d have felt so alone in the early weeks and months of their marriage that her only companions would have been his staff.
His fingers stilled and then moved to rub at an uncomfortable knot in the back of his neck.
He had tried apologizing to her. His regrets were sincere, whether or not she accepted that fact. Did she expect him to apologize for the rest of his days? He was beginning to suspect his rash decision in his youth would forever color their marriage and his life.
His fingers worked around to press against his eyes and the bridge of his nose to quell a burgeoning pounding in his skull.
She’d never accept the truth behind his absence—not that he’d ever once felt that a full explanation could truly compensate for their lost time…however, he must have been an unmitigated fool to believe she’d accept him back with any warmth or gratitude.
