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The first sip made her recoil, but she tried again. It was different from wine, the way it warmed her insides. Maybe it would warm her hands too. His hand when she held it had been so much warmer than hers. She wondered why that was. She sipped again.
“Lady Featherstone,” he said abruptly. He was gazing into the fire, chin resting on his hand. The firelight caressed the contours of his profile. “Lady Peter Elton. Mrs. Westley. Lady Harrington. Almost Lady Yardley, but I put a stop to it when you arrived.”
Oh no. Heavens, she didn’t want to know. She sipped her brandy, and again. Three, four, five times. Once for each of the women named. She had claimed indifference. And she was indifferent. She was. It was just…her.
He turned his head to her, his chin still on his hand. In this light, his eyes were nearly black.
“Four women in three years. Not a bloody Bolderwood among them.”
“And before that?”
“Before that I was married and faithful.” He sighed and rested his head back against the chair. “I was nineteen when we married and Rachel was the first woman I ever bedded. We were married nearly six years and I was faithful that whole time and it never even occurred to me not to be. I mean…why would I want anyone else? I had Rachel. And then I didn’t have Rachel, and sometimes I wanted…”
He stared at the ceiling, lost in a place she could never go. Perhaps staying busy was not always enough for him either.
“You were faithful to your first wife, but not to me.”
“You’re not my wife,” he said. “We just happen to be married to each other.”
“I see. Quite.”
A marriage in name only. She could not complain: This man did not feel like her husband either. It was better they lived apart. It was one thing to want his kiss, or even his baby, but quite another to imagine him in her life. Her longing was not for him, but for what she had lost and could never have.
Another sip of brandy, then: for his wife. No. Six. One for each of the years he had been married to Rachel and loved her and was faithful to her. She had spoken of fidelity and he had mocked her, yet he had believed in it too, once.
“They all know: the husbands, the wives,” he said, talking to the fire again, while she was taking the third of the six sips. He shifted his legs, his energy never staying dull for long. “They marry for family or property or a passing attraction, and courtship is so limited that they hardly know each other, and the men need someone to carry on the family line, and the women need someone to provide for them, and once you’re in a marriage, it’s near impossible to get out of it. So they do their duty and then…If two people are deeply committed to each other, that’s one thing. But if not…People’s lives don’t end when they get married. Marriage doesn’t turn people into little rag dolls who are miraculously released from the chaos of human feeling and desire.”
She took the final sip. She should stop now. What a funny effect the brandy had. Like her knees were going to float away. She pictured herself rising knees first into the air, so she hung upside down, her nightgown slipping over her head, leaving her body exposed and her face covered.
Would he find her naked body as interesting as she found his? Probably not. He had already seen five other women. At least. She didn’t want to know that. Ladies did not want to know these things and she was a lady. She would be interested in seeing his body again. How could that be? That she wanted to see his body but did not want him as her husband. How wicked and wanton she was. How he would laugh if he knew.
“My parents were so much in love,” she said. “Always laughing and kissing. You could see that they enjoyed being together. They were always faithful to each other.” Outside the window, a carriage passed, a man called out. Joshua was audibly silent. “You think me naive.”
“We were all naive once. You’ll grow out of it.”
“I suppose that’s what I’m doing now.”
The glass was at her lips and she remembered she meant to stop. Two more sips: One each for Mama and Papa.
“I thought I would have that, one day,” she said. Instead, she was married and had no husband. “My whole life stretched in front of me, and I was looking forward to living it. Then one day Papa received a letter telling of Harry’s elopement—and my future was gone. Can you imagine what that’s like?”
No answer. He gazed at the crackling flames. She pulled her feet up onto the seat under her, tucked her nightclothes around her knees.
He was quiet so long that when he finally spoke, she jumped.
“I imagine it is like staring into blankness,” he said. “Each day, you have to get up and face that blankness, and try to carve out another future even while you’re grieving for the one you lost. I imagine that each day you remind yourself to concentrate on what you have and never hope for anything else, and in time, that becomes enough.”
He knew.
Because of course: He had loved Rachel. Loved her and lost her. His loss was even worse than hers.
No sacrifice, he had said the day before. Marrying Cassandra and putting her out of sight made him safe. And made her the perfect wife for him. Because his idea of the perfect wife, was a wife who was no wife at all.
Chapter 10
The brandy had failed: Her heart ached for what they had both lost. Cassandra wanted to hate him, but that was not fair. She had agreed to a marriage in name only, back when she was too young to understand how long life could be when you had to live it alone.
Besides, she didn’t want him either. If she could choose her husband, he would be nothing like Joshua DeWitt.
