Page 48 of The Baron Takes a Wife

He lifted her chin so she would look at him. “Elena, you made one rash choice in a lifetime of thinking of your family first. You even tried to go back and do it differently. It wasn’t your fault you were in the middle of a war not of your making.” He had often thought of himself and other soldiers as victims of the war, but much more so were the innocent people whose lives were destroyed and displaced by the whims of empires.

“I have one more request.” He paused, not sure quite how to phrase what he wanted to say. “Elena, could you also work on forgiving yourself? Just try. Because if you could only see what you mean to your friends, to Irene. To me.” He added that last part quietly. “If you could see what you mean to all of us, you would see yourself as we do. Someone worthy of love and admiration. Someone brave and sometimes unintentionally funny and—”

She swatted him gently in the shoulder. He knew he was succeeding if she found him amusing.

“So, will you take my requests into consideration?”

“You want me to try on your love like a coat?”

Bizarrely, this just made him love her more.

“I never said I was poetic.”

Her mouth, which had been in a pained straight line, gave a small twitch in the corner.

“I will try to…try it on then. I want our marriage to work, David, I do. I wish I were different. I wish I could know. I wish I could grieve. Do you understand? If I knew what happened, either way, even if it was the worst, then I could move on, I could mourn. But not knowing, it feels like the worst kind of punishment. What is the English word? Purgatory. Like my heart is stuck, not knowing which way to go.”

He thought for a moment. “Is that why you always wear dark colors but never black? You don’t know if you are meant to mourn, but you don’t want to be too joyful?”

Elena gave a small, humorless laugh. “I don’t think I noticed I was doing so, but I suppose without thinking, yes, that is true.”

He thought of his parents’ deaths and tried to imagine not knowing whether they were dead or alive for years. Would he be able to trust in anything without it being snatched away?

“Elena, I promise you, we will find out. And I will be here for you, whatever the truth is.”

She looked up at him, her golden-brown eyes wide and sad.

“I do not deserve you.” She laid her head against his.

He saw now that he was in his own kind of divine punishment. In the wild days of his youth, just after his father’s death, he had been known as something of a heartbreaker. While he had never purposefully hurt anyone or set out to break hearts, he had given little thought to those he left behind. Now to be so in the thrall of a woman who might never love him back, this must be some kind of retribution for his reprobate past. For the carelessness with which he had breezed through life when he was younger.

“Elena, I know you think I have a silver tongue, but please believe me when I say that we are exactly what the other deserves.”

She sighed and looked down. Her expression was still shuttered, but there was a new lightness to her sigh that gave him hope.

“Husband.”

She had moved on from “my lord.” This was good. This was progress.

“Husband, will we continue to sleep in each other’s beds? Is that what is done?”

If she was thinking about sleeping in his bed in the future or possibilities in addition to sleeping, he couldn’t have messed up so badly.

“Oh, it isn’t fashionable, but it can be done. I can make certain of it.”

Chapter Fourteen

The next day, Irene entered the drawing room as Elena, David, Sophie, and Goliath all sat enjoying the late afternoon sun. She walked in purposefully, opened her mouth, closed it, then turned around and exited the room. About two seconds later, she entered the room again, her jaw set. She looked around at everyone, then bit down on both lips, which, Elena had to admit, had a rather comic effect.

Sophie deigned to take pity on her. “Do these entrances have a point, dear?”

“Yes.” Irene cleared her throat, then looked around the room as if she were telling a story to a young child, speaking in a slower-than-normal voice. “Yes. As some of you may have noticed, I have not particularly enjoyed the Season.”

“From what I hear, that is an understatement.” Sophie looked over at David and Elena, who looked at each other in shared guilt, then looked back at Irene, whose gaze was cast down as if studying the carpet

“We”—David nodded at Elena—“just noticed that Irene did not look as happy as she does, say, playing piano.”

“As she should. Better to be making music than breaking bread with that pack of wolves,” Sophie said with a sniff.