AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I did not ask about your accomplishments; I asked about what you enjoy.”
“I will enjoy determining that now that I am successfully wed. Now, tell me, dear Duke. What do you enjoy?”
He fell quiet for a moment as he stared off over the back of the couch. “I used to enjoy riding,” he explained.
“Have you not been able to as of late?” Edwina asked, wondering what painful memory he relived as he answered her. His face looked so dark and stormy, but she could not tell if it was one of his normal features.
Even though he looked like he wanted to respond for a moment, when he opened his mouth, the only word that came out was, “No.”
She pressed her lips together, frustrated by his lack of openness. He spoke of needing to feel comfortable with her, but he seemed to just want the comfort to happen without putting in the work to achieve it. Surely, she could ask more pressing questions, probe into the corners of his mind, but to what point?
As if he felt her patience running thin, he broke the silence, saying, “I want you to know if there is anything you want, anything you need, name it. I would do anything to ensure your happiness here at Hillow House.”
“Such generosity, Your Grace,” she pointed out, taken aback. “Surely there are limits to your ability or desire to grant wishes.”
“I have plenty of money, time, and resources,” he explained. “Whatever you wish for.”
“I could name three things right now that you could not give me,” she argued, trying not to be unkind as she spoke. “Do you wish to hear them?”
“Go on,” he encouraged.
“A divorce,” she said, raising a single finger then a second saying, “or an immediate fulfillment of our agreement.”
He waved, gesturing for her to continue. “The third?”
“Your love,” she said simply. She put down her hand. “The first you cannot do because it would defeat the purpose of having married me to begin with, and you need an heir. The second tests the limits of reality, in that I would have to immediately conceive and bear a child which takes a minimum of nine months. The third you will not do because you do not wish to.”
“Very well,” he allowed. He put his hands on his knees and pushed himself to stand. Seeing the tightness in his face, she realized that she might have offended him. “In any case, you understand the intent of my offer, even if you mock me by testing the technicalities.”
“Your Grace,” she begged, reaching to grab his hand. She tugged gently to pull him back down to the couch. Thinking her mention of love and feelings might push him away, she tried to backpeddle. “I only tease. I did not mean to offend.”
He resisted her tugs, refusing to sit. Instead, he bowed, saying, “Your Grace, I bid you goodnight.”
With disappointment, she watched him retreat from the room without even a backward glance, leaving her thoroughly confused. She felt as if she had done everything terribly wrong. He obviously found something in her lacking that he would not even bed his wife on their wedding night. She could have offended him with some scent of perfume, tied to a memory she could not know. Perhaps her simple shift did not entice him.
Or perhaps she pushed him away with her teasing and questions. She had pushed him too far in trying to get to know him. Confused and hurt, she fought back tears. In frustration, she got up and threw off her wrapper again to climb into bed for a night of fitful sleep.
