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Loretta curtsied but didn’t leave, hovering around the hall as if waiting for something. Simon wished he knew why, but followed Hughes to the library.
“What is it, Hughes?” he asked as soon as they were inside. Hughes closed the door behind them and turned to Simon, watchfully.
“I heard raised voices, Milord. I was concerned.”
Simon sighed, running his hand through his hair. “I had not realized I was so loud.”
“Is everything well?” Hughes asked gently. “You have seemed…preoccupied in the last few days.”
“I’m fine.” Simon pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, rubbing hard until he saw stairs inside his eyelids. “I just need to have a discussion with the Countess.”
“I see,” Hughes was quiet for a moment, but Simon could almost hear his old friend and trusted help-meet thinking. “It seems that the countess has been preoccupied too.”
“Yes,” Simon sighed. “It does, rather, doesn’t?”
Hughes nodded thoughtfully. “Loretta has been distressed, to say the least.”
“Is that so?” Simon asked quietly. “As if she has been asked to keep a…a distasteful secret?”
“No, no, I think not,” Hughes said carefully. “More as if she is worried, but is frightened to speak of what worries her.”
“Do you know what worries her, Hughes?” Simon asked, not wanting to press his butler too much. The mark of a good staff was one that would keep the secrets of the household absolutely, but Hughes was Simon’s personal servant. His loyalty was to the earldom, and the personhood of the earldom as it was vested in Simon. If he knew that Simon was being betrayed by Marion, he would be obliged to speak the truth.
“I do not,” Hughes said, and the reflective mood of Hughes’s face told Simon he was speaking the truth. “I only know that she seems frightened, too, Milord.”
Frightened?Simon felt a surge of a different kind as he tipped his head forward, running his hands over the back of his neck. He recalled Stella’s final words as she lay in his arms, trampled by the horse, bleeding and dying, gasping with her final breath:I’m frightened, Simon.
There had been nothing that he could do to stop Stella’s fear. The idea of Marion being fearful, of keeping her fear a secret, was staggering to him, and too much to bear. He had assumed that his wife was having a dalliance with the man he saw. Against all his better judgement of her character, he had railed against her in his heart, thinking that she had betrayed him by lusting after someone else. But perhaps the man had scared her. Perhaps he had left her in a situation when she was uncomfortable. Perhaps he had somehow betrayed her. But then he recalled the way the man had held her hand, and his rage fired up, never quite extinguished. He groaned and sat down in his chair heavily.
Simon had never been more confused. The Marion he knew—the one he knew before their wedding, and the one he had spent such glorious days with these past weeks—was a kind, loyal woman. But he couldn’t not shake the feeling that something was wrong. And every time the image of that scoundrel taking hold of her hand came into his mind, he couldn’t stop himself from thinking the worst—that he was losing his wife. Again.
“What am I going to do, Hughes?” Simon moaned, his hands covering his face. “She’s slipping away from me.”
“She is right here, Milord, day and night,” Hughes said softly. “She is not going anywhere.”
“But she is,” Simon muttered, thinking of Green Acres Park, thinking of the distance between them over the last few days. “She is going somewhere, and she won’t let me follow.”
“Then you must follow, Milord,” Hughes said earnestly. “You must follow her wherever she is. She is only waiting for you to do so.”
At that moment, Simon heard the front doors to the house opening and footsteps across the hallway. He looked up at Hughes in surprise, as if, by some impossible method, Hughes himself had conjured her back to the house.
“I think the Countess has returned, Milord,” Hughes said, smiling softly.
Simon leapt to his feet and rushed out of the room. As he ran down the hall he could hear Marion and Loretta exchanging words softly together, and then he could hear his wife’s quick but insistent steps up the stairs.
“Marion!” he called out as he turned the corner, seeing her disappearing up the stairs, her blue stockings visible from behind as she rushed and her skirt flipped. He felt his heart flutter at the sight of her shapely calves—he hadn’t seen her body close up in several nights, but didn’t let it distract him. “We need to have a discussion!”
“I’m sorry, Simon, I - I am tired from my journey,” Marion called over her shoulder, still not stopping to talk to him. That was unusual in itself—Marion was usually the pinnacle of propriety and never denied him when he asked her something. This only made Simon more certain something was wrong. He pursued her quickly, running up the stairs.
“Marion, please, I must speak to you—”
“No, I am sorry, Simon,” she interrupted. “I - I must go and lie down.” Marion flew into their small parlour, clearly intending to head straight into her bedchamber, but Simon managed to snatch up her arm, twisting her around to face him.
“Simon!” she exclaimed, her dark, liquid brown eyes wide in surprise. He couldn’t help but notice the flush at her neck, a flush he associated with her high emotions, a flush that made him angry. Who had made her flush like this? Who had awakened his wife’s desire?
“We have to speak,” Simon said, his voice lower and more gravelly than he intended, hoarse with unintended desire. “Something is occupying your thoughts, something you’re not sharing with me—”
“I am not obliged to share every thought that passes through my head,” Marion deferred, turning her head away from him, trying to pull away. Simon couldn’t help but pull her a little closer, his heart thrumming as he felt the warmth of her body against his. Her turning head had done nothing to deter his desire, for now he could see the small, dark, wispy hairs behind her ears and the droplet pearl earrings she wore. How he longed to press a kiss there, to lick and taste the skin until she moaned, to bite her and claim her body once again. He looked down on her, breathing heavily.
