“I really want to be a good father to you,” he said. “And a good husband to your mother. If only she would let me.”
He sighed, and went to his own chamber.
Sleep did not come that night. He tossed and turned endlessly, dreading what the following day would bring, because he knew he had to speak to her. The vicar was right. They could not continue on like this — two steps forward and five steps back. That could not be his life. He did not wish to walk on eggshells every day, the way he would have with Cassandra. No — this second marriage was not going to end in an annulment. He was determined to make it work, if only he could get her to?—
* * *
The following morning he sat in the entrance hall, beneath the portrait of his ancestor, and waited for the sound of Helena’s footsteps.
He knew from the governess that she had taken Lavinia for a walk before breakfast, and he had seen Marlena return with the little girl some minutes ago. Which meant Helena would be down shortly.
He heard the click of her heels on the marble, and then they stopped when she reached the carpet.
He got up. To his surprise, Lavinia was not on her hip as she usually was.
“Where is the little angel?” he asked.
She said nothing for a moment, and then took a slow breath, her chest rising. “I left her upstairs. I thought it best.”
“Will you sit with me? We must talk.”
She shrugged and followed him into the breakfast room. He looked at the breakfast dishes already assembled and let out a short, mirthless laugh at how splendid the table looked — warm and full, painting a picture of a happy household about to sit down together, when the opposite was true.
“I really wish,” he said, “that you would tell me what has happened to you in the past to make you so frightened. It seems no matter how much time passes, no matter how much I try, you are always expecting me to fly into a?—”
“You do,” she said, and crossed her arms. “I have seen it multiple times.”
This was already exasperating. “I do not fly into rages. I am upset when people take advantage of me, and I think that is justified. As for what happened yesterday — I will not have you spoken to in that way in our home.”
“I did not need your assistance,” she said, her tone immediately putting his bristles up. It was so defensive. He had thought about this again and again all night and truly could not find what he had done wrong.
“I do not know what I have done to upset you,” he said. “I already explained why I raised my voice at the steward. As for Emmett — I will not stand aside while a man speaks to my wife in that manner. It was not right. It will never be right.”
“But I told you. I will not have this manner of conduct in my home.”
“I will not curb my every word and look in my own house because of something in your past that I had no hand in.” He got up and walked to the window, hands behind his back. “I want to be respectful. But I will not have a label of violence and unpredictability fixed to me. It is not true. If you called me a rake, or suspected me of having affairs, I could at least understand it — that has always been my reputation, not that I have any intention of living up to it. But I have never been known for violence. I have never been known for unjust outbursts.”
“You almost planted a facer on Lord Henry at Almack’s,” she said. “And I heard about the outburst at the club when we first met.”
He stopped. He stood very still.
Was he a violent man? Did she see something in him that he could not see in himself? He turned. “Do you think I am violent? Do you truly think I would harm you? Or Lavinia? That I would lay a hand upon you?”
She looked at him for a long while. Then her eyes grew darker.
“No,” she admitted. And her tone told him she meant it entirely.
“Then why? Why do you act the way you act? Why are you cutting up stiff out of nowhere? I thought we were making progress. We had such a lovely day yesterday.”
“We did,” she said. “But it was a dream. An illusion. And reality caught up with us quickly.”
“I sometimes wonder,” he said, “if this whole marriage was an illusion.” He saw her flinch, though he had not spoken in anger — more in resignation, and he suspected that was almost worse.
“I will not lie to you, Helena. I had hoped that in time what was between us would grow into something real. A true affection. True love. And there were moments where I thought that you wanted that too.”
“I never gave you that impression,” she said. Though they both knew she had.
“Perhaps I was wrong to harbor such hopes. Perhaps I saw something that was never really there. But I will not lie to you. It is what I wanted. For the two of us to have something more.”
