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“You do not need my permission to visit our friends, or to go anywhere,” Simon said, sipping his coffee in a measured way. “Your obligations as my wife are already well established—you are free to go where you like.”
Marion winced. The night before they had spoken of obligations—of what their marriage had been moving towards before Marion had received the first letter from her father. Though it was a matter only of days, to Marion it felt like a lifetime ago. Marion didn’t recognise that shining, carefree woman who had luxuriated in the comfort of her husband’s arms and thought of nothing but pleasure.
Now it was as if a great chasm had opened up between the two of them, and Marion didn’t know how to breach it. Part of her wondered that if she simply broke down and told her husband everything, would that make everything alright between them? Then she recalled all the secrets she had kept, the white lies she had told, the lies she had asked Loretta to tell, and imagined the betrayal on his face. The hurt and the sadness.
Then, with a jerk of her stomach, she imagined something even worse—Simon, stabbed with a knife. Simon shot through the heart. Simon, struggling to breathe as vile hands painfully squeezed the life out of him. She imagined her dream made reality in all the worst possible ways. What kind of wife was she if she put her own peace of mind above her husband’s safety? She couldn’t do it. She had to find another way. Maybe Eleanor would know.
“Well then,” Marion swallowed hard, lifting her bonnet. “I shall be off.”
For a moment, Marion thought she saw a flash of pain in Simon’s eyes at her words, but then she thought she must have imagined it, since his face instantly became veiled. He turned his eyes to his paper.
“Whatever makes you happy, Marion.”
Marion couldn’t help this sensation that she was being dismissed, that the consequence of her own distance was now being played out in front of her.
“Well then,” she said. She had to walk past Simon to leave the room, and despite her better judgement, despite her knowing that she had so many things she needed to figure out to get her marriage back on track, she couldn’t stop herself. She paused behind his back. She reached out with a trembling hand and traced her fingers gently across the skin of his exposed neck.
Moving quicker than she expected, Simon reached over his shoulder and grabbed her hand as it met his shoulder. Marion caught her breath. He didn’t turn around. Marion didn’t try to move away. They remained as they were for a moment, barely breathing, connected by this simple touch.
“Marion,” Simon began, and she could hear the tell-tale beginnings of hoarseness in his voice signalling his heightened passion. Hastily, Marion withdrew her hand. She wasn’t ready for a repeat of their conversation from last night. Simon’s shoulders were rigid in response, as if overwhelmed by emotions. He did not turn around.
“I - I,” Marion stumbled over her words, unable to speak, then finished simply, “I shall be back soon.”
Simon nodded curtly, but did not look at her. She didn’t know how to comfort him. It seemed that the only thing that would really comfort him was the truth, and she couldn’t offer that.
Marion felt tears welling in her eyes and whispered quietly, “I promise.”
Then Marion turned and fled, vowing to stay at Eleanor’s until she had thought of a way to be truthful with her husband.
Chapter Twenty-One
Simon listened to his wife’s footsteps as they retreated down the hall, feeling as if he was turning to stone.I promise.She had said those words.I promise.Simon recalled the moment of Stella’s death. Simon had held his dead wife close to his body in the mud, rocking her softly as the last vestiges of soft life and warmth left her cold body.
“I shall never forget you, my darling,” he had wept, his tears freezing on his cold cheeks. “I shall never love again, I promise.”
I promise.They were such easy words to say, to commit oneself to another or another’s memory, but they were much harder to live by. Simon had lived by his promise to Stella for many years. He had lived every waking moment haunted by them, believing it his only cause to live. He had not realised how oppressive, how claustrophobic that had made life until Marion had come into his.
Now, when Marion touched him, when she spoke to him so softly, so tearfully, he felt as if he was simultaneously being set on fire and torn apart. For years, his love for Stella had made him numb. Marion had brought feelings crashing back into his life with a roaring vengeance. Passion, lust, joy, humour, rage, jealousy, melancholy, desperation—he had felt them all in the last few weeks. Marion had brought him back to life. He couldn’t deny that. It unsettled him that, despite his suspicions and jealousy over his wife’s current secrecy, he burned with her touch still.
He wanted her as he had never wanted anyone. The thought was so remarkable, so revelatory, that Simon couldn’t sit still with it any longer. He pushed back his chair restlessly and strode quickly from the breakfast room, deliberately not looking back towards the stairs where he knew Marion would be going up to gather her carousel and items before she departed. Instead, he walked quickly to the library, eager suddenly for that familiar, cosy space that he still associated so deeply with his last love, Stella.
“Good morning.”
Hughes was standing at the large desk, sorting through Simon’s papers and preparing Simon’s desk for the day ahead. He frowned, clearly noticing Simon’s distress.
“Can I get you anything, Milord?”
“No, Hughes, I just…” Simon let his voice drift off as his eyes focused on Stella’s chair, still sitting in her favoured spot. He recalled the day she had chosen her fabric, how excited she had been to sit in his company by the warmth of the fire.
“We shall still be sitting here when we are old!” Stella used to joke, but Simon had felt the depths of his wife’s sincerity at that moment. He had been able to see his future so clearly—the family he and Stella would build. Then, in a flash, it was gone.
Silently, filled with a curious trepidation, Simon made his way across the room to Stella’s chair. The staff kept it well—they regularly plumped the cushions and dusted it, and when Marion had set about her redecorating the house, Simon knew that they had gently averted her from recovering the chair. So it had sat, this piece of his past life, respected and revered but thoroughly untouched. He was hesitant even now to press his fingers to the pink and gold brocade, but he did, slowly, feeling the cold firmness of fabric that hadn’t felt the touch of human flesh in years.
He thought suddenly that Stella would have been so saddened to see her favourite chair going to waste. Impulsively, he sat down in it, feeling the stiff fabric and cushion crease and give under unfamiliar weight. He didn’t know what he expected. Perhaps he had hope that the chair would have held onto some essence of Stella, some lingering ghost of her scent, but it didn’t. Of course, the fabric had been cleaned many times since Stella’s death, and it was, after all only a chair. There was something about the absurd normalcy of the piece of furniture, of the realisation that it held no special power that helped Simon put things into perspective.
I miss her,he thought to himself.I always will. But I cannot love only her anymore.
He had mourned Stella, had mourned her for a long time, but as soon as an accident of fate had brought Marion into his life, his mourning had changed. Marion’s touch did things to him that Stella’s never had, and he recognised that the magnetic compatibility he shared with Marion was unlike and incomparable to the nature of his attraction to Stella. That, he realised, was not the part of it that was so difficult to reconcile.
