“I wish you would,” he said, his words anything but cool and blithe.
“Well, Lord St. Alban,” she began, bright, chirpy, and false, the sort of façade she needed to hide behind if she was to tell him. “The newly wed couple steps out of St. Paul’s on a bright and sunny day, a future of domestic bliss stretching before the optimistic bride. At last, she has everything she ever desired: a handsome husband, her own household, her own curricle, everything Society told her she ever wanted. She’s never felt so happy.”
“You speak of the husband as if he’s an object of the same value as the curricle.”
“That is, indeed, how the average Society wife views her husband.”
“And is that who we’re speaking of? The average Society wife?”
“Who else would we be speaking of?”
Her question was met with silence, stubborn and unconvinced.
“A week later,” she continued, “she wakes to find herself in bed, alone, her husband off to sport his newest horse on Rotten Row. She might feel a bit hurt that he didn’t include her, but she has plenty to fulfill her. Remember, she is the mistress of her own household, even if it is technically part of a duke’s household and doesn’t much involve her. And she has social calls to make, even if she has begun to find them endless exercises in tedium. And, lest we forget, she has the shiny, new curricle. She won’t allow herself to consider that she might be theBword.” She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Bored.”
“And why can’t she be honest with herself?”
“Because she might search for the root of her boredom, and that wouldn’t do at all. She’s entirely too young and the marriage entirely too new for such notions, so she tucks them away. It’s only when her husband begins excusing himself after dinner to spend the odd evening out with his friends that the notion pokes up its nasty head again. The odd evening soon becomes every evening, and she must admit that she’s not only bored, but lonely, too.”
“And this wife can’t tell her husband how she feels?”
“By the time she’s able to put her feelings into words, it’s too late, the gap between her and her husband, too wide. You see, by now the rumors have started.”
“Rumors?”
“Of his gaming, his horses, his”—Again, her voice lowered to a whisper—“mistress.”
Muscles twitched beneath her palm, but Jake’s features remained otherwise impassive. She wouldn’t have even known of his reaction was she not touching him.
“That is when she allows it to hit her: hers is nothing more or less than a Society marriage. Her husband is no different from the men of his set, and she is no different from the women of hers. Theirextraordinarylove has been perfectly ordinary all along.”
“Betrayed by an ideal.”
“Indeed, my lord,” she chirped on the bright note that rang more false to her ears with each word she spoke. Yet she couldn’t seem to plug the spring. It would flow until its reserves ran dry. “She’s never felt so betrayed. By an ideal. By her husband. By Society. She realizes that she’s been tricked into this life, that Society trapped her with a lie, but such is the life of every other wife. She swallows the bitterness and gets on with her life.
“Then, one day, not half a year into their marriage, her husband tells her that he’s bought a commission in the army to fight the French scourge in Europe. He races off to the Continent to involve himself in war and glory, and she never sees or hears from him again. Six months later, she’s informed of his death.”
“This hypothetical husband,” Jake interrupted, “never met his daughter?”
“Never. The wife is six months along when she receives the news.” She hesitated, certain her tale had gotten away from her. Yet she needed to see it through to the end. “You must understand that her grief for her husband is genuine. She hasn’t forgotten how handsome and charming he was. But after the initial wave of grief subsides, an unexpected and shameful feeling takes its place. Can you guess what it is?”
Lips pressed in a straight, silent line, Jake continued guiding them along the path dotted with puddles wide and deep enough to be a nuisance.
“Freedom. For the first time in her life, she feelsfree. The future stretching before her is no longer dull and lonely. It is bright and golden with the opportunity to set forth on a life entirely of her own choosing. Yet the shame stays with her for this future isn’t possible without Per—” She corrected herself mid-word. “Her husband’s death. So, she locks it away. All Society sees is a grieving widow with a young daughter. If the widow is a bit eccentric with her growing involvement in the arts, Society tolerates it. She is, after all, one of them.”
“A merry widow, it seems,” Jake inserted drily.
“Ten years later,” Olivia continued, “the unthinkable happens: the husband rises from the dead, and all the wife can feel is the walls closing in on her. An alive husband means the end of her freedom. It means a return to her dull and lonely future. It means a return to being awife. She vows then and there that she will never be wife to any man again. She petitions the House of Lords to set her marriage aside and prevails thanks to the combined power of her noble families and the acquiescence of a Lazarus husband who must have reasons of his own for acceding to her request. To be sure, her reputation doesn’t emerge unscathed, but she cares not. What’s the point of a spotless reputation when freedom is within reach? What cost is too high?” She took a deep breath. “And that is the story of a marriage from a wife’s point of view.”
She tried to force a carefree laugh, but it lacked all substance and emerged hollow. She’d never felt more exposed in her life. Beside her, Jake planted his feet and brought their progress to a halt. His hand at her elbow, he pulled her around to face him, an unspoken demand pulsing between them. She wasn’t sure how she could meet his eye. Somehow, when they’d been walking side by side, her story had felt removed from her because she hadn’t been looking at him. But now she must, even as her courage from moments ago abandoned her.
Calloused fingertips touched beneath her chin and tugged, angling her face up, slowly, by increments, even as her eyes remained lowered, her lashes a soft brush against her cheeks. “Olivia,” he murmured, his voice a low, resonant rumble that penetrated through skin and bone to touch the very core of her.
Her gaze lifted, and the breath caught in her chest at what she saw in his eyes.Ferocity. . .Protectiveness. . . The same look he’d directed at thetonwhen he all but dared them to speak a word crosswise about his daughter. Except now it was protective ofher.
“Not every marriage has to be that way.”
She inhaled a tiny sip of air and composed herself long enough to say, “How would you know? You’ve never been married or even engaged, I daresay.”
