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“Well, if you want to understand your husband better, your lover may not be the best one to ask for advice.”
Anne snuggled closer. “You have so many male friends, and they seem to be—well, similar in nature to Hawthorne.”
“You can say it, Anne. They’re sodomites. Mollies.”
“When I say those words, I cannot unhear all the prejudice and shame that society attaches to them.”
“But the more we say it, and the more we are comfortable with it, maybe the less harm the words can do to us.”
“I can understand that,” Anne said. “I don’t understandhim.”
“You could talk to him.”
“Every time I try, I get so angry.” She was quiet for a moment. “Hawthorne was once the most important person in the world to me.”
“Do you remember when we had our first walk together, and I asked you what your favorite memory was? You told me it was your wedding night.”
“It’s the truth. It was the best night of my life.”
Letty blinked. “But—”
“We didn’t consummate it, of course. Neither of us was interested inthat. But it was magical. The day had been so long and so…”
“Exhausting?”
“Perfect,” Anne said instead. “The Prince of Wales was there, and the Queen, and hundreds of others. I had been so well-rehearsed by my mother and the dowager duchess that I could have rivalled an actress. Finally, Hawthorne grabbed a bottle of pink champagne with one hand and took my hand with the other and pulled me up the grand staircase to the hollers of the cheering crowd.”
“In all apparent haste?”
“Exactly.” Anne could remember his face, thinner and less lined than it was now, his eyes brimming with excitement. “We stole upstairs to the balcony outside his bedchamber. He tore thefoil from the bottle and opened the champagne with a cracking good pop, wine spilling all over us both, and we laughed and laughed. He hadn’t thought to bring glasses, so we took turns sipping from the bottle and toasting our good luck.”
“So you were happy together in the beginning,” Letty said.
“Ecstatic. We had managed to fool them all. My parents. His parents. Royalty. Despite growing up on neighboring estates, I hadn’t been the previous duke’s first choice for marriage to his precious son. It took years of persuasion, but our plans came to fruition.” She remembered orchestrating endless social calls to the duchess, which her mother thought was her own idea.
“But why were you so set on marrying Hawthorne? Was it the title? I suppose I might have set my cap for a duke if one had been in my neighborhood when I was young.” Letty’s tone was wry. “Such a union has a way of setting one up for life, after all.”
Letty wrapped an arm around her waist. It wasn’t just her physical warmth emanating from her body that Anne so loved. It was also her open personality, warming up her soul.
“When I was sixteen, I saw Hawthorne kissing a friend of his when they were on holiday from Oxford.” She laughed. “Of course, he tried to convince me that I had seen nothing. Then he tried to bribe me to keep my silence. But I told him that I understood—I felt the same way for one ofmyfriends. It was a tremendous relief to discover that other people had thoughts like mine. It felt like my whole world had broadened, and so our plan was born. We would have as long an engagement as we could possibly manage, marry when the pressure became too much to bear, and all the while enjoy the freedom and secrecy to pursue our own attractions.”
“What on earth happened to turn Hawthorne from husband to rakehell?”
“It wasn’t one month after the wedding before he hated the hypocrisy of it all.” She frowned, remembering nights of tears and fights. “He fled to Paris. Childhood friendship and chaste vows don’t compare to raging passions, after all.”
“And he left you to handle everything alone.” Letty tightened her arm around her. “That wasn’t well done of him.”
“He wrote me a letter, explaining that it was best if he took all the blame. That way I could have the secrecy that I desired, and no one would ever guess at my passions. He was generous, in his own way.”
“Or in his own opinion.”
“Well. At least we had the wedding night. For one glorious night, I felt the weight of the future like a feather in my palm, light enough to blow forward with ease. I will never forget that moment, for as long as I live. The moment in which I truly felt like a duchess. Powerful. Unstoppable.”
“You no longer do?”
“It’s different now. I have shouldered so much on my own. Hawthorne’s father lived for five more years after that, and he and his duchess had things well in hand. In the absence of Hawthorne himself, though, I had a lot of responsibility as I learned how to manage the estates and the households.”
“I suppose everything is different again, now that he’s back.”
