She followed him without fuss and settled onto the low settee that was placed before the fire. As soon as they were seated, she listed towards him and settled into his left side. The action relieving him of the notion that she was intimidated by him in any way. Wrapping his arm around her he pulled her close, caressing her arm lightly until she was ready to speak.
“I’m sorry,” she said again. She sounded small compared to the woman he had known thus far, and he didn’t like it.
“There’s nothing to be sorry for. But do you want to tell me what just happened?”
Turning further into him, she buried her face against his shoulder. He could feel her breath through the thin linen of his shirt.
“I don’t know,” she mumbled into the material. Sitting back, she finally looked at him. “We were kissing, and it was wonderful. But then suddenly it felt overwhelming . . . like everything was moving too fast. It’s difficult to be so intimate with someone I don’t truly know. It requires a level of vulnerability I don’t think I recognized until just now.”
West thought he understood what she was feeling, but it was also a bit confusing knowing she had been married to the duke.
“What about your marriage? How is this different?” he asked, seeking understanding.
She was still for a moment, and he could see her thinking as different expressions ran across her face. “It felt different with marriage,” she finally said. “It was expected. I was doing my duty as a wife, and I felt somewhat detached from the whole thing. It wasn’t an unpleasant experience, but it just felt like an obligation.”
West hated that her only experience with something that could be so wonderful had felt like a duty. But wasn’t that howhe’d been thinking about marriage himself? The need to find a wife and produce an heir was his duty, even as he wished to find love.
“Oh, don’t look like that,” she said, reaching up to smooth her hand across his forehead. He must have been displaying his feelings on his face. “It really wasn’t terrible. Though I wasn’t in love with the duke, he was a good man who treated me well. Besides, he grew ill not long after our marriage, so we hardly spent any time in the marriage bed together.”
“How did you end up married to Stern in the first place? He must have been at least forty years older than you.” The thought of such a vivacious young lady married to such an old man didn’t sit well with him.
“It was what was expected of me.” Priscilla resettled her head onto his shoulder and drew her legs up onto the settee beside her, tucking her feet under the hem of her gown. She rested her hand on his chest, and he placed his own on top, pressing hers against his heart.
“I’ve already told you some of this, but like many in theton,my parents are fixated on how others see them, making sure our family is regarded as higher than most— much like your own father.” He grunted in acknowledgement but said nothing so she would continue.
“But unlike you, I never questioned if that was the right way to live. I just went along with what my parents had taught me, and I thought that the world should revolve around me. As the daughter of a marquess, there were very few in society above me in ranking and I used that, lording it over others as I believed was my right.”
West stroked his thumb over her shoulder as he pulled her in even more tightly to his side. “You did tell me this at Weston’s, but not how your perspective truly changed.”
“Well, because I was so self-important and knew my parents wanted me to make a good match, I turned away many of my initial prospects and ended my first season without a proposal. My parents were not pleased, and so when the next season came around, they were determined that I should be married as quickly as possible. My desperation is what caused me to lash out at Elise, seeing her as competition.”
West felt a tremor run through Priscilla’s body, recollecting what she seemed to regard as her worst regret. She continued with her story almost immediately, now sucked back into that time.
“Stern was recently widowed and had the option to try for an heir once more. He approached my father, who accepted immediately. He was so thrilled his daughter would be a duchess he didn’t care about anything else. In a way I was lucky, Stern was a good man and we got along well. If another less desirable man of standing had asked for my hand first, I’m sure I would now be his wife.”
That wasn’t a pleasant thought at all. Listening to Priscilla, West was ashamed that he’d never considered how a woman would feel entering into a strategic union. He’d been so bitter about the idea himself that he only focused on his own inconvenience, which is why he had avoided any prospects his father suggested to him in the past. How would a woman feel knowing a man had chosen her as his wife only for his own benefit?
“When Stern fell ill, I found myself a nineteen-year-old bride stuck at home with an invalid husband. I had a lot of time on my hands to think about my life and how I had ended up in such a stifling situation. Over time, the more I dissected the ways of theton,the more pointless and empty it all seemed. When Stern died, I vowed to live differently, utilizing the chance to start over.I’m not better than anyone, and if I marry again—as foolish as this may seem—I want it to be for love.”
“I don’t think that’s foolish,” West said. “It’s not the most practical for how our class operates, but it’s not an impossible goal.” He didn’t tell her it was what he also wished for himself.
“I thought I knew what I wanted. I’ve been trying to live as a more considerate person, especially after learning how badly things could have ended up for Elise. Thank god she found Reid.”
Priscilla turned toward him and looked into his eyes. “You’ve seen them together, witnessed how much they love each other. And all of Reid’s friends are the same. You met the Hastings at their house for dinner the other night, and the Duke of Carrington is head over heels for his duchess, Grace. The passion they all have for one another, the way they can’t help but touch one another. . .” West squeezed her shoulder as she expressed her desire for touch. He, too, had noticed how Reid couldn’t seem to stray far from his lovely wife.
“I decided I wanted to understand that kind of desire, and I made up my mind to have an affair and learn what all the fuss is about. I have so much more opportunity now as a widow, I truly thought that was what I wanted.”
“But tonight you realized that maybe that’s too much for you?” West certainly would never push her to act in ways that made her uncomfortable, but he wanted to know if there was a way he could make it easier for her to experience everything she wanted to.
“I thought since I was no longer an innocent miss that it would all be fine. I didn’t realize how different it would feel when it was someone I was choosing of my own free will and no longer just a duty. Once you add feelings into the mix, it became scary in a way I wasn’t prepared for.”
“Priscilla,” he said, stopping to brush a curl from her eyes, “you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”
“But I do want to, I just?—”
“Alright then,” he interjected. “You don’t have to do anything you’re not ready for.”
A sigh escaped Priscilla’s lips. “I suppose I’m more upset by the fact that I don’t seem to know myself or what I want as well as I thought I did. It’s difficult to discern if I truly enjoy something, or if I merely think that I like it because I’ve been told I should. Up until now, someone else was always orchestrating my life for me, and now that I have the freedom to live as I choose, I’m not quite sure what precisely it is that Idowant.”
