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As she watched him drink the next cupful, her heart indeed sore, she wished she could tell him that he was wrong. But she had told enough half-truths of late; she would not start lying to herself too.
I love him. Her mind knew it as keenly as she knew how to make a tonic for fever. Oh, heaven help me, I do love him.
To make matters worse, she suspected that if Anthony had ever felt the same about her, he assuredly did not now.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“Ispend a week cooped up in the Dower House, thinking it will be good for the two of you to spend some more time alone, and everything falls to pieces?” Harriet fumed, tugging angrily at the pendant around her neck. “What happened, Anthony?”
She sat upon the opposite settee as if it were the audition again, and he was the one being judged.
Anthony had been dreading his grandmother coming to the manor to discover that the duchess was gone, but he would not be spoken to like that. As if it was all his fault.
“She went to stay with her uncle,” he replied bitterly.
Or so she claims…
Every night since her departure, he had tortured himself with the thought of her in the arms of that other man: laughing with him, embracing him, kissing him, whispering words of love into his ear. As such, he was exhausted with the lack of good sleep, his patience gossamer-thin.
“And I am asking why?” Harriet replied, tutting under her breath. “When we last spoke, I thought you were convinced of your love for her. Did she reject your confession? If she did, I am sure she did not mean it. I know she loves you too; I can feel it in my bones.”
Anthony drew in a breath in an attempt to cool his temper. “There was no confession.”
Neither from me nor to me.
“Then why is she not here?” Harriet’s voice rose in pitch. “What are you not telling me? You were both doing so well; I was certain you would be doting on one another when I returned. Is it the matter of children? Does she want them?”
The question shot a hole through his ballooning anger, deflating it. I never asked her. I assumed she would be content to be a mother to William, while having no children of her own.
His mind drifted back to their wedding night, and the embarrassing conversation he had had to lead. That was the night he had told her he wanted no more children and, now that he thought about it, she had never responded.
Is that why she has sought the affection of this other man?
A sharp twist caught him in the chest, for though he had vowed that he would father no more children, he could not help wondering what their children might be like. And he had never even considered her opinion.
“Anthony?” his grandmother snapped, jolting him out of his reverie.
“She is just visiting her uncle for a while. Cease your fussing, or I shall send you right back to the Dower House,” he muttered.
Harriet stood up, dusting off her skirts. “There is no need; I shall return of my own accord.” She walked haughtily to the door, turning on the threshold. “Whatever has happened, Anthony: fix it. She is a fine woman, and you love her. Do not be an idiot.”
He opened his mouth to retort that he would not be spoken to like that in his own house, but she was already gone. The slam of the front door punctuated her angry exit.
In the wake of her departure, he wondered, and not for the first time, if he was being an idiot. Perhaps Marina did love another man, perhaps she was conducting some manner of affair, perhaps she had loved this man long before she married Anthony, but should he not fight for what was his?
Should a knight not fight for his queen?
He had never bothered to fight for his first wife, for there had been nothing to salvage. But Marina? He cared, a lot more than his current pride would permit him to admit.
“Where are we going?” William asked sullenly, trudging behind his father across the grass.
It had rained every day since Marina left. Almost a week. And though he knew it was impossible, Anthony felt as if her departure was the cause of the gloomy weather. Everything had been so much brighter with her around the manor, and it was like she had taken the sun with her.
She had certainly taken William’s sunnier disposition with her.
“I told you; it is a surprise,” Anthony replied over his shoulder, perplexed at how Marina had made entertaining the boy look so easy.
“Is it much farther?”
