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“Hmm, all right.”
Harper was beyond flattered that Brian took notice of the garments that she wore. It was aspects of their relationship like that one which made Harper happy. She wanted him to say more. She wanted his eyes to run over her. And that was when she became aware of the fact that she would change in front of him. He had seen her naked before but given his previous statement, if he liked her in her sleepwear, then he surely enjoyed seeing her with nothing on at all. That was a new feeling for her.
“Well, I’m going to change into my dress now. I don’t want you to miss my sleepwear too much so perhaps you should look away now,” she teased.
“Oh no, that’s not a problem at all. The outfit that you’re going to have on right before your dress, I think I will keep my eyes open for that.”
She could feel herself getting excited in a way that only Brian could make happen.
Harper forced herself to stop daydreaming about their time in the hotel room as it was the furthest thought from appropriate for their ride. And she knew what would happen anyway. Those thoughts would only lead her to dreading how their honeymoon phase was coming to a close. Sure, they had some good moments on vacation, but the truth was, he had still said they would never be with each other, and he would never love her. After every happy thought, those words echoed in her mind.
But even so, that did not stop her from giving in to her own insecurities. She was only human. And she found that she would often venture into the same areas of conversation in the hopes that the circumstances might have changed. Harper wanted to believe that maybe because of their recent trip, their uplifting and intimate moments, that maybe he would have changed his stance on their future.
That time, it came in the question of her nervously asking, “So, what are your plans for when we return to town.” She could hear the unstable tone in her words. “I should probably get myself familiar with what is ahead for us.”
He took his time with answering with his eyes still in the direction of the passing nature on the side of their carriage. Then, without even looking at her, he said, “I plan to live in my country house for another month before heading to London on business.”
His answer had been just as bad as she had assumed. He really wasn’t going to live with her. And he didn’t want anything to do with their marriage. It was like someone stuck a dagger in her chest and then twisted. She couldn’t tell what angered her more, his conviction in his ways, or the fact that she had assumed otherwise.
For a minute or so, she wasn’t even able to form a response. It just hurt too much. Their entire trip had meant a great deal to her. Yet, for Brian, it seemed to have meant less than nothing. But as she ruminated in anger, she couldn’t help herself but to fire off words of her own. In a way, she wanted conflict. She needed to release that energy somewhere and Brian deserved it.
“And where do you intend for me to be? While you are living away and then leaving for an unknown period of time, what do you expect for me?” She tried to word it in a way where it wouldn’t be exactly accusatory but still held a level of anger that was obvious for Brian to see.
He let out a long sigh, as if the question was wrong to be asked.
“Why are you sighing? Do I not have a right to know what my future entails? It is my future, after all. I may not be able to choose it, but I’d still like to know what it holds.”
“Why must you always make your life out to be this horrendous catalogue of events?”
Avoiding his rude question, Harper followed up with asking, “So then is that where it all ends between us? Another six years of you being in London and me in the country? I guess marriage can just be something between us that stays on paper. But at least I didn’t have to marry Michael, right? At least I am not an outcast in the public eye. That is all worth it for a lifetime of a loveless marriage and being alone for eternity.”
Harper couldn’t tell whether he would say anything else in response to her rant. She stood by every word, though. None of it seemed fair to her. It was almost as if she were expected to be grateful for a situation that was beyond terrible. It was her life that she spoke about. It wasn’t just a day out of the year that was an inconvenience. Yet, everyone seemed to expect Harper to be grateful, accept her circumstances, and live out a meaningless, unfulfilled life. How could she be okay with that? It made her beyond angry. It made her want to distance herself from Brian altogether, because in many ways, he was the worst out of everyone. One minute he gave her hope for a normal future. The next moment he was ripping it all away with zero remorse.
When Brian continued to say nothing in response, Harper sent her gaze to where he had been looking before: the wide-open plains and world beside their carriage. She had gone from seeing the world as this great big space of possibility to seeing it as a giant land of loneliness. It amazed her how much perception could mess with the mind. Just as there was more than one side of Brian, there was more than one way to look at life.
In that moment, where they rode to the beat of silence, Harper chose to look at life in a foolish way. She wished that she could simply go back to the time where they were walking alongside the lake. Even up in the tree, despite the height of the thing, it was a far better experience than being told that Brian would be leaving.
His words were so cold-hearted, so unapologetically straightforward. Harper missed their little bantering while climbing the tree. That was when she felt maybe it was all changing again between them. But like always, no.
She briefly imagined what it would have been like to marry Michael instead. Would a life of not being attracted to someone and faking every single moment have been better than being with someone that she was attracted to but wasn’t allowed to have? The better question was why she would even wonder that to begin with. There was nothing that she could do about it after the fact anyway.
In their silence together, Harper still stole little peaks at Brian, wondering what he was thinking about while festering in his stubborn act of silence. His mind was beyond fascinating to Harper, perhaps because it was an utter mystery. He was right about her needing to unravel the unknown. It tortured her to be unknowledgeable. Brian was the one entity that she couldn’t learn and fill her brain up with understanding.
The ride continued and after a few more moments of silence, Brian was the first to speak.
“You make my life rather difficult sometimes, do you know that Harper?”
“Well, then trade me in for some wench by the shore. I don’t have an answer for you. I am who I am.”
She could tell that he held back a smile. It vanished right before his next words came out. “I will…think about taking you to London in the fall.”
Shock filled her. But she refused to let it fill her fully. There always seemed to be a catch with all of Brian’s words. She had fallen into the habit of allowing herself to fill with restrained joy only to have that very same joy ripped out from under her seconds later.
That habit needed to be broken. “Is that so? And why is that? Because you need someone to climb a tree with and no woman in London is stupid enough to do that with you?”
Brian gave her a long, unmoving stare, a symbol that he was not amused by her sarcasm. But Harper found her sharp words to be justified and she did not break from her own cold stare.
“It is rather improper for me to marry and not show my wife off at least once in town.”
