Chapter Twenty-Six
WHAT COULD ONE SAY WHEN CONFRONTED WITH ONE’S WIFEpacking up and leaving? “Please, don’t go! I beg you?” Or perhaps: “I’m a fool. Stay with me always.” Alexander had somehow done far worse than either of those admittedly pathetic options: He’d instructed Harriet how to reach her peak without him. The only thing she’d ever needed from him. The only use he’d had in her life. And he’d given it away.
For the second time in his life, a woman had left him for good. He had no intention of going after her and begging for affection as he had with his mother.
He needed to move on. Forward movement was the only cure.
Throwing himself into business hadn’t worked as well as he’d planned. A meeting with Lord Holden had proven particularly unproductive, as the man had spent a good half the time congratulating him on marrying such an agreeable woman, praising him for settling down, and threatening him not to “muck things up” with Harriet. He refrained from telling the man that he already had.
Alexander was miserable, wretched. His insides were made of either fire and glass or the cold damp of a remote cave, shifting back and forth between the two constantly. He was irritable at best andirate more often. Nothing tasted good, sounded good, felt good. He was livid and bored and couldn’t see an end to these emotions, which frustrated him even more.
He went for a bracing swim in Peerless Pool. He rode his favorite mare across Hyde Park to their mutual exhaustion. He drank at White’s. He fenced at Angelo’s School of Arms, which ended with him yelling at an opponent for not trying hard enough to kill him, really kill him. He attended three balls in one week—rather a lot, even for him—simply for the sake of doing something that wasn’t prowling around his house.
It didn’t do a damned thing for him, not the dancing or the many beautiful ladies.
Nothing did.
Harriet had spent a week at her father’s house, and the pain had not abated. She’d expected to be quite over the man. As it happened, she thought of him between every breath and twice as often when she was falling asleep. One thing that she was morbidly thankful for was that she was too upset for lustful thoughts to visit her at those hours.
She’d taken to sleeping in her father’s study, not because she liked the room, but so her crying didn’t keep Caroline and Frances awake. After a week, which Harriet filled mostly with sulking and sniffling, Philippa showed up at the door, far earlier than she normally paid a call.
“Philippa, good morning, is something wrong?” Despite her insistence that tea tasted better at someone else’s house, Philippa did not visit unless something was dire.
“Apparently,” Philippa grumbled. Mornings were not her preferred time of day unless they were carried over from the previous night. She pushed her way inside the house and into the kitchen.
“What is it?” Harriet asked as she dutifully started making tea.
“Frances wrote to me about your weeping.”
“I have hardly been weeping!”
“Why are you still here, Harriet?” Philippa asked, pointedly. Then she leveled Harriet with the type of stare only an older sister can give.
“My marriage has … reached its natural limits. We will maintain appearances in public, should we encounter one another, for the sake of Caroline and Frances’s reputations. I can chaperone Caro this season. Well, maybe not the entire season. But on occasion. Perhaps my proximity to the duke might even help. Crass as that is to say. Regardless, I thought it best to stay here instead of … with Lord Alexander.”
“Oh dear, bring that tea to me in the sitting room. I’m far too vertical for this conversation.”
Harriet smiled and did as she was told. Minutes later, Philippa was recumbent upon the stiff divan that they never used and Harriet brought in her tea. No cream, no sugar for her, which did not seem to match Philippa’s ordinary inclination toward extravagance.
Philippa sat to take a bracing swig of tea and then leaned back. “All right, now tell me the truth about why you’ve left his home. If you lie to me, I shall know it.” That was probably true.
Harriet cleared her throat.
“You’re going to think I’m a fool.”
“I vow I shan’t.”
“I haven’t actually … shared his bed. Not entirely. Not—We haven’t precisely …” Philippa sat halfway up. “Consummatedour vows.” Harriet winced.
“Harriet Eugenia Bancroft.”
“Do you truly not know my middle name?” Philippa waved the question off without answer.
“I daresay I must break my vow. I now think you’re the silliest girl I’ve ever heard of, being here and not in that man’s bed.”
“Philippa!”
“There’s no denying his … positive attributes.” Harriet did not want to be reminded of this.
