From beneath her rumpled hair, she glared at him. “With mywhat.” Not a question, but a fierce demand.Daringhim to continue.
Herexpanding waistline, he had been tempted to say. Not much to speak of just yet, notnoticeablebeneath the fabric of her gown, but—there. Tiny hints of what was to come, in the thickening of her waist. He knew, in an abstract, clinical sort of way, the mechanics of pregnancy. That the seed she carried within her womb would grow into a baby that she would deliver likely by mid-February, if he had to guess. But it was all suchnonspecificinformation. None of it was particularly enlightening or helpful.
“I don’t know what I’m meant to do for you,” he admitted, and he rubbed the spine of the book with his fingertips. “When I find myself at a loss, I read. Ilearn. You know this already.” He watched the play of light and shadow drift across her skin, as evening waned into night. “There’s several months left until the birth, but as near as I can find, physicians tend to be quite…dismissive of it all.Women’s work, they call it.”
“Women’s work,” she echoed, a scowl caught within her voice.
“They seem to agree that there’s little enough reason for a man to involve himself in any part of it,” he said. “It’s the woman’s responsibility to see to her own needs, and to keep them from the minds of men so that they remain unburdened by such things, and to ensure that any of the…less pleasant parts of the process are to take place properly behind closed doors.”
“I see.” Her fingers tangled in the laces of her stays.
“I don’t agree.”
A shallow sniff. “It’s the way of things.Learnedmen agree.” This, sardonically, with a wrinkle of her brow.
“Of what worth is a man’s opinion of a condition he shall never experience? I want to learn all I can, and it’s not because of some simple intellectual curiosity. It is becauseyouare pregnant withmychild. And I don’t want to be the sort of father that flinches from unpleasantness. Perhaps my thoughts do not conform to societal expectations, but I do not share the belief that my duty is only to stand idly by while you perform the task of growing and giving birth to our child. To wait in the wings until such a time as that child is delivered.” There was a fragility in the slope of her shoulders, a faint arch to her back, as if she held herself as rigid as possible. “I cannot imagine a more vulnerable time in a woman’s life than when she is expecting a child,” he said. “It’s a burden I cannot share with you—but I would ease it, if it is possible to do so.”
A bitter tone inflected her voice. “And how would you do that?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I was hoping you would tell me what you need from me.” To mend a sense of security he had badly damaged, in a time when she needed it most. “I know,” he said, “that you have little enough reason to trust me. I am hoping that will change in time. And I know you did not want this baby, but—”
“What?” she asked, her voice going tight. “What?”
“I don’t hold it against you—”
“You think I don’twantmy own child?” That wasfuryin her voice; she had gone so tense she was practically vibrating with it.
“No,” he said. “I thought you wouldn’t wantmine.”
Chapter Thirty Three
The words drew Jenny up short, the surge of anger fleeing just as rapidly as it had appeared.
“I know that I am not the man you would have chosen to be the father of your child,” he said, and his fingers tunneled through his unruly hair in that anxious way that he had. “I’m given to understand that it is themenin our situation that are said to betrappedby such circumstances, but I know also that but for the baby, there is nothing that would otherwise persuade you to marry me.Youwere the one trapped into marriage.”
That was not precisely true—she could have married elsewhere, or gone abroad. She could have borne her child in secret, and given it away. She had neverhadto marry him.
“I remember,” she said, “the way you looked at me when I was in jail. Someone had told you I was with child, and you were so—revolted. Perhaps even ashamed. I thought—”
“You thoughtIdidn’t want the baby.” A rough sound issued from his throat, and he scrubbed one hand over his face. “I swear to you, that isn’t true. I always did. But you didn’t want to speak of it, and I—I didn’t want to disregard your wishes.”
There was a tightness about her throat. “I could not bear to speak of a child I was never going to know,” she said. “What sort of mother wouldwishto bring a child into the sort of life this one was destined for? A life of shame, nameless, fatherless, with a notorious murderess for a mother—”
“No,” he said. “No—”
“Toabandonthem to it,” she said. “A swing of the rope, and then an innocent child left to fend for itself. What sort of mother would I be, towantthat?” A shred of a sob clung to her lips. “How could I bear even to think about the child I had already failed?” Her fingers had curled into claws, snarling in the bedclothes, stays abandoned.
“You didn’t,” he said, “Idid. I failed both of you. Jenny, if you saw shamein me, it is only because I had put you in so precarious a position. I wish—” There was a hesitation, and she felt the bed depress and glanced up to see he had risen from his chair to settle at the edge of the bed, his fingers just inches away from her own. “I wish we might stop misunderstanding one another,” he said at last. “I have a habit of taking words perhaps too literally; the intricacies of conversation and the subtle insinuations that people often leave within their words frequently escape me. I beg your patience there.”
She swiped her hand across her face—the one that had been closest to his. “I don’t know what you want of me,” she said resentfully.
“I want you to tell me what you need,” he said. “And—I want you to know that there was never a moment I did not want this child. I have held my tongue and kept my distance because I thought it was whatyouwanted. It has never been whatIwanted.”
She didn’t want to ask him what he wanted. She didn’t want toknow, as ifknowingmight confer some sort of responsibility. Some sort of obligation, some duty to attend to his desires as he had failed to attend to hers. There was too much hurt in her still, too much anger wound round her heart.
Instead she said, “Toast.”
“Hmm?”
