“Then why bring this up?” Theodore retorted.Why could you not be happy with me and Phoebe?“You claim to love her, and yet in the same breath you tell me you want us to be a real family? That you want children of your own. And what then, Phoebe simply fades into the background?”
“How could you think that?” Harriet recoiled as though he had slapped her. “You know I would never, never do that to someone. Is that really what you think of me?”
“I do not know what to think.”What are you doing?He pushed through the voice screaming in her mind. “I thought you were satisfied with this. That you understood our arrangement.”
“That was before you kissed me!” Harriet shouted and now it was Theodore’s turn to recoil. “We kissed, Theodore. Twice now, and each time I was foolish enough, hopeful enough to think maybe it might mean something. I have thought a hundred times or more that I should ask you, that I should be brave enough to just ask, and each time I have faltered.”
“Ask me what?” Theodore knew what, but he could not stop himself rubbing salt into the open wound between them.I felt it too, can you not see?
He wanted her. He had meant his kisses, lost himself in them, and that was a part of the problem. She was in his thoughts constantly, distracting him, pulling his focus.
But she wanted more than he could give. He was too weak to give her what she wanted. The thought of her with child, of a world without her in it, made his blood run cold.
He would turn into his father, he knew it. He would ruin everything and everyone around him, and all because he had been too selfish to resist his desires.
I have to end this.
Harriet took a step towards him, her hands clenched into fists by her side. It took all of Theodore’s will not to brush his hand against her cheek, sweeping the stray lock of hair that fell across the crimson slowly spreading across her skin.
“I want to be your wife, Theodore. I am asking when you will finally let me be that woman in more than name.” Her eyes were full of steel.
“That is not all you are asking.” Theodore gritted his teeth.
“No. It is not.” There were several beats of silence.
“Do not ask me to do this, Harriet.” Theodore had not meant it to sound like a plea, but it was.
“I just want to you to see me as more than Phoebe’s mother.” Her voice broke and as it did, Theodore felt himself being torn apart.
“I cannot give you what you want,” he said even as it felt like he was stabbing a dagger into his own heart.
He did see her as more than Phoebe’s mother. Of course he did, but though the words longed to escape him, he forced them back.
There is no future. There can be no future.
All he could see on her face was pain, a pain that he had caused with his silly fantasy. He could not ask her to be his wife, to be only that and accept he would not give her a child. It would not be enough, he saw that now, and he had been a deluded fool to think she might have accepted it.
Theodore said nothing.
“I see.” Harriet turned away from him, moving towards the door with her hands curled into fists. “I have my answer. I will never be more than Phoebe’s aunt.”
You are my wife.He wanted to shout it, to tell her that she was all he could think about. That every moment not spent with her felt like a wasted one.
It turned his stomach to a pit of snakes. He swallowed all the things he wanted to tell her, that he knew he could not. “If you want something more, then perhaps this marriage is not the one for you.”
“Perhaps not.” Harriet turned and left the room, and Theodore felt the sun go with her.
The shattered pieces of his heart hung in the silence she left. He told himself that this was for the best. He could not give her what she wanted most, and in time, the pain would ease and they could each return to the safer, more sensible version of their lives.
In time.
How much time? He feared he knew the answer.
CHAPTER 25
“You are leaving.” Theodore’s face and voice were as expressionless as granite.
Harriet nodded, rolling her shoulders back. It was the day after Theodore had told her that he did not want her, that what her stupid, foolish heart had hoped for was nothing but a dream.
