“I’m so sorry,” he muttered, aware more than ever of how badly he had let her down.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said automatically. As though his apology was of no interest to her.
“It does matter. I should have been here with you.” He swallowed, forced himself to say it. “You lost our baby while I was out drinking myself into a stupor.”
She said nothing, but he saw her swallow, and he knew she was hurting. He wanted to do something to comfort her, but how could he when his touch was probably the very last thing she wanted?
After a while, she said tonelessly, “The doctor said I should stay in bed for a few days. But as soon as I’m able, I’m leaving. There’s no reason for me to stay now.”
Even though he’d expected this, he still felt the shock of her announcement, like he’d been punched in the gut and left winded. He sat back in his chair and searched his mind for a suitable reply, but none came to mind. He wanted to beg her to stay. Or order her. But he would issue no more commands to her.
So when he finally spoke, he merely said in a voice so calm it astonished him, “Is that really what you want?”
Her expression didn’t alter by so much as a flicker. It was as though she was buried under layers, somewhere he couldn’t reach. She’d always had that tendency to hide her distress behind her bland mask, but this was different. She seemed fathoms away, totally unreachable. “Yes,” she whispered at last, “I want to go.”
That unhesitating confirmation mangled what was left of Gil’s heart. He wanted to crawl into a hole somewhere and howl. Instead, he forced himself to be practical.
“Where do you want to go? To Weartham again? Or Bath? I have a small townhouse there.”
“You do not need to house me,” she said. “My father is returning to England. I can go to him.”
“No. Even if we never lay eyes on one another again, I will always provide for you. You must know that. We are still married.”
“But we need not remain married.”
Gil ran a shaky hand through his rumpled hair. “You cannot be thinking of divorce?”
She looked away. “I don’t know. I need to consider it carefully. It is not an easy thing, a divorce. You would have to make the complaint, and it would be very scandalous.”
“And I have nothing to complain about. You have not been with any other man.”
“These things can always be arranged when you are rich. It would be no difficult thing to find someone to say it happened. You could—we could both be free.”
He fought to contain his instinctive outrage at what was she was so calmly suggesting. With effort, he adopted a reasonable tone of voice. “Nothing of what you propose is easy. The simplest thing to do, if you wish to be free of me, would be to remain married and live separate lives. Plenty of couples do that. It is unexceptionable. If you leave me, however, you will have publicly deserted me. You will not enjoy the same respectability that you do now. And if you divorce me, it will be far, far worse.”
And suddenly, that remote mask of hers fell away. She turned anguished grey eyes on him and whispered, “You don’t understand. I can’t bear to live like this anymore.”
His heart wrenched at her hopeless words and her distraught expression—and at what this meant. Staring down at his hands, he bit down on the soft flesh inside his cheek till he drew blood to distract himself from the lump in his throat and the hot, unfamiliar press of tears in his eyes.
When he had himself under control he said, “If you truly wish to leave me, I won’t stand in your way. But I want you to return to Weartham for now, and I’m not agreeing to a divorce. Not yet.” After a moment, he added more softly, “Don’t ask such a thing of me yet.”
She stared at him with those wide grey eyes and slowly nodded her agreement.
They sat together in the cold room in silence for a few more minutes. The air was freezing, and Gil felt like a block of ice, sitting in his open shirt and bare feet.
At last, he stood up, aching in every bone, weary to his very marrow. “I’ll send a maid to make a fire up for you,” he said and quietly left.
Part Five
How like a winter hath my absence been from thee…
William Shakespeare
Sonnet 97
Chapter Twenty-Two
December 1814
Three weeks after Rose arrived back at Weartham, a packet arrived from Mr. Andrews, Gil’s secretary. It was waiting for her at the breakfast table with the rest of her post. She had taken to dressing and going down to breakfast, because her father was visiting and it had always been their time together when she was a girl.