“Unless you make a practice of lying arm in arm and kissing your wives in name only while falling into hedges, then no, this is no longer a charade.”
He raised his hands. “I should not have kissed you. It was wrong of me. I was swept away. And I shouldn’t have put my arm around you in the night, but I was so tired, and I was so distraught over the boy’s condition.”
She raised her hand, staying him with a gesture.
“I will not have it. I will not have you make light of what passed between us, and most certainly not with paltry reasons such as you were tired. You were not tired in the maze. I do not know what ails you, but I shall not live my life side by side with somebody who constantly alters how he acts towards me. You are as ice one moment, then passionate and kind and act as though you want me in your life the next, and then you cast me aside like some cur as you did this afternoon. I will not suffer it. Why are you like this? Pray, explain yourself.”
“I am as I am,” he said bluntly. “And I owe you no explanation.”
“But you do. You married me. You made me Countess of Wexford. You brought me into your home and told me to be kind to your son, and I was. I am.”
“And I am grateful,” he replied with a shrug.
“But the moment he called me—the moment he referred to me as Mama, your countenance became as stone.”
“You ought to have corrected him,” he said. “When he called you Mama, you should’ve told him that you are not his mother and that you never will be. The boy must not be confused.”
“He must not be confused? You are the one who installed a woman in his household and told him that she would dwell here permanently.”
“As a friend,” he said. His tone was one of exasperation.
“And what did you expect would come of it? You wanted me to spend time with him. You wanted me to learn not to be so reserved with him, to tolerate the soiling of my gowns.”
“Yes, I wanted you to be kind to my son whilst you resided here. I did not want you to take the place of his mother.”
“Is it because you and his true mother have unfinished business between you?”
Lucien scoffed. “Well, considering she is deceased, I would say there can be naught between us.”
“Much can remain between the living and the dead,” Marianne replied. “I should know. My father is deceased, and there are a great many things between us. Words I wish I had spoken. Answers I wish he had given me. No, he has departed this world and is no longer here to be my father in this miserable dance, but he is yet present in my thoughts and heart. As I suspect she lingers in yours. I had supposed that maybe you were still in lovewith her, but it is now plain to me that perhaps you never loved her at all. Then what troubles you?”
“That is not your affair,” he said. “I wish for you to leave me be. I wish for you to play your appointed role.”
“Which is what?” she asked. “Because my role, as was agreed between us, did not include such intimacies.”
“No, and neither did it include being called Mama,” he said. “Let us simply conclude this arrangement as intended. In but a few weeks, the two of us can part ways.”
She stilled. He wished her gone. He no longer desired her presence. Perhaps he had never wanted her at all. Mayhap she had been mistaken in all. Here she was haranguing him like one unhinged.
She let her arms fall. “Very well. If such is your desire, then I shall leave you be. We shall resume our arrangement as first agreed. Deceive yourself if you will that nothing has transpired between us. We both know the truth.”
With that, she turned and left, shutting the door with force behind her—knowing very well that this was something a willful child might do, and something that Sister Bernadette would surely reprove. But so be it. As she walked up the stairs, she pressed her lips together. She was resolved that no servant would witness her tears. However, when she arrived at her bedchamber, where Juliet already waited, she gave way to tears at once and collapsed into her friend’s embrace.
CHAPTER 28
LUCIEN
The following morning, Lucien woke with a leaden feeling in his gut.
He ought not to have addressed Marianne as he had the previous afternoon, but he had been so vexed by Henry calling her Mama and her not correcting him that he had reacted in a manner he knew was improper.
She hadn’t deserved such treatment. And really, if it resulted in her moving away from him, then perhaps that was what needed to happen. Perhaps it was for the best.
They couldn’t be together. He knew that. If she ever knew the truth, then she would leave him anyhow. At least this way, he was going to save them both much pain and suffering.
Still, as he rose and dressed himself without his man’s assistance, he couldn’t help but feel ill at the prospect of seeing her at breakfast. He made his way down, hoping that perhapsshe had already risen, eaten, and had gone to tend to her own tasks, but he found her in the breakfast room, engaged in buttering a hot cross bun for Henry.
“Papa,” Henry said. “Look, I have a hot cross bun. Cook made them especially for me.”
