“So, what does it feel like to serve me dessert, Madeline?” he asked, and she knew he was not talking about the tart at all.
Chapter 17
“That ledger must have some kind of spell,” Malcolm remarked, sounding and looking very amused. “You have been staring at it for a long time. I am pretty certain that you have not turned the page since you got here.”
Kenneth focused on the aforementioned page, gritting his teeth. He would not let his brother get under his skin. So, he finally dipped his quill into the inkwell with a firm and steady hand, perhaps a little too rigid.
“Do you want to do this for me, Malcolm?” he asked his smug little brother. “The Huntington estate accounts require focus and constant inspection with careful calculation. If I make a mistake with one digit, the whole quarter will be a mess.”
“Oh? So, the difficulty of maintaining the integrity of this quarter’s accounts is making you peer through the windows and glare at the rosebushes?” Malcolm asked, raising an eyebrow.
“I think I preferred it when you were asleep on my floor and less perceptive,” Kenneth grumbled. “How come you are so alert this early?”
“I simply had an early night for once. But what of you? Why are you so fixated on the window?”
Malcolm looked down into the courtyard, where both of them could see Madeline running with the children. She was wearing a dark green dress, as if taunting Kenneth. Her hair was beginning to scandalously unravel while she laughed so much more freely than when she was with him.
Kenneth forced his eyes back down on his ledger. He would not admit to Malcolm that the numbers had long blurred in front of his eyes. Now, they looked like a troop of ants seeking a lone crumb.
It had been days since he had talked to his wife. He had instructed Mrs. Gaines to have a maid bring his meals to his study. In the mornings, he would leave early for Parliament meetings and other responsibilities. He would retreat to his bedchambers early in the evening and lock his doors.
Why?
One might think that after the passionate encounter in the dining room, he would want more of his wife, and they would be both right and wrong. She had tried to make him feel disgust, but he ended up making them both feel something else.
It should be a win. However, with the memory of her spread out on the dining table, tormenting him at all hours, he was no longer certain. He had never lost control like this before. That chaos could not be good. He was a man of logic and discipline, with boundaries to keep him upright and in line. But he found someone who could make him forget the importance of his daily duties to the point that even the speeches at Parliament fell on his suddenly deaf ears. All he could think about was spendingmore time with her.
He fought himself, doing the opposite.
“I am merely ensuring your children are not destroying my gardens. My wife’s supervision seems to be... lax.”
“Kenneth,” Malcolm said gently, with an irritatingly knowing smile on his lips. “You can lie to other people, but not to me. I would often watch Roberta from a window just like you. My eyes would follow her until she disappeared around a corner.” Malcolm took a sip from his glass and sighed wistfully. “These are the signs of a man in love. They are unmistakable.”
“I have never fallen in love before, Malcolm. Yet, I know it as a foolish and volatile emotion. It serves no purpose in life. After all, we can have children without love involved. My marriage to Madeline is nothing more than a marriage of convenience. I need her here for the children, and she needs me for the security I represent.”
“Ah, keep telling yourself that,” Malcolm murmured, his voice leaning more toward melancholy, and Kenneth knew why. “Heed my warning, though, brother. Even though it can feel utterly magical, your heart will shatter into a thousand pieces if she leaves you. Do not let yourself get in too deep. If you do, she will have the power to destroy you.”
“Madeline is not going to leave me,” Kenneth said, surprised at the barely suppressed anger in his voice.
“Ah,” Malcolm said warily, glancing at him. “That is what I used to believe as well. Roberta loved me like I was the only man on earth, and she still left me.Left us!What do you think will happen to you when, as you say, your foundation is even weaker? An arranged marriage.”
Kenneth bit his tongue until he could taste the metallic blood pooling in his mouth. He forced himself to stay silent. Guilt tightened his chest. Even if he wanted to reveal his secret, he could not just tell Malcolm what happened with Roberta. His brother was not ready. With his red, hollow eyes and the constant smell of alcohol, Malcolm would never recover from this.
His brother was not aware of the sickening reality behind his wife’s departure. Roberta did not run away because she was tired of the suffocating life at Huntington. She did not flee the country with another man. Kenneth himself had sent her away.
I did it for his own good.
Yet, looking at his brother right now made him wonder if he had made the right decision. Malcolm had become a broken shell of a man.
“You need to move on from the past,” Kenneth said. He rose from his desk and approached his brother. He reached for Malcolm’s shoulder and rested his hand there heavily to wake him up. “You are wasting your life, which you should be devoting to Alexander and Emily. They are growing up quickly, so you are missing the moments you should be cherishing. All I am saying is that you should try to find happiness in your children.”
“I cannot be happy without Roberta. Besides, what would you know about these things, Kenneth? You are far too busy trying not to feel anything. All you want to focus on are your ledgers and the estate, and your reputation!”
Malcolm was hurting. Perhaps Kenneth needed to tell him the truth about Roberta’s departure. Perhaps that would be enough to make him realize that this woman was not worth it. Or breakhim completely.
He thought of what Madeline had said at dinner, that a man deserved to know the truth of his own life, however much it hurt. She had not known she was speaking of him, but her words had stayed with him all the same. For two years, he had called his silence a mercy. Now he wondered if he had been protecting Malcolm, or only himself.
“Malcolm, listen. I believe there is something you need to know about—”
