“Are you afraid?” she persisted.
“It’s been over a decade since any of us has done it.” He began plucking at his coat again. “Dev said he will do it first, inspect the formation and document the tides precisely. I don’t think he’d let me do it if it isn’t safe.”
Oh, yes, she’d assumed as much. Dev would not allow Harold to go into any danger that he himself would not investigate thoroughly beforehand. Thank God, she’d not known him while he’d been away at war. She would have worried every day, every hour, every minute.
“You will be giving up a great deal — your family, your heritage, your very place in life — here in England.” All rather daunting. “You are courageous to even consider doing this.”
“I can hardly think of anything else. And yet, feeling the specter of the law hanging over me does not come without a fear all its own.” He glanced at her quickly. “I could be hung for who I am. Stewart could be hung. It is referred to as an unnatural crime and is punishable by death. Some rumors as to my… predisposition have made their way back to my mother. More specific ones than those which had been spread before. I must admit, Sophia, that I was surprised no one mentioned anything to you when we became engaged.”
“Your parents are worried for your life.” This revelation brought on a greater understanding as to why they would be so heavy-handed with the marriage contracts. They wanted Harold safe. Believing marriage to Sophia would protect him, neither of his parents had been willing to delay the wedding. No wonder the duchess had welcomed her so warmly.
Harold nodded. “My father demanded that I end things with Stewart, well, not Stewart specifically, but he demanded that I not act upon my feelings in the future. Ever. My marriage to you was my concession to him. I could not send Stewart away.”
This explained so much. Sophia pondered that there was always so much more to a situation than one might see initially.
And complicated problems usually required complex solutions.
“What does your… What does Stewart think?”
“Stewart has felt the threat of hanging as well.” He stared out the window for a moment before he spoke again. “As ugly, as unnatural and grotesque as I always thought of myself, and these perverted desires I have lived with, I cannot help but think humanity has it backwards. They want to kill me for it. They wish to kill me for something God has put inside of me! What kind of god is that, Sophia? I ask you, what kind of god would make me this way and then put me in this world?”
His words were passionate. These thoughts, these questions, were as foreign to her as anything she’d ever heard and yet, a part of her understood perfectly.
Shame.
He’d felt shame. Shame for something he could not change about himself. Shame about something very, very private. And along with this shame, came fear.
And then all fight seemed to leave him. “Out of all of this, the one person in this world who I would never wish to bring any pain or sorrow, suffers.”
“Stewart?”
“My mother.”
People are so much more complicated than we ever consider.Over the past few months Sophia had considered Harold simple and safe but a little unfeeling, and then she’d thought him uncaring and manipulative. Last night, she’d realized he would likely have to hide a part of himself from the world for the remainder of his life. And today, she learned of a depth of affection he held for his mother.
“First, there was her disappointment, the sadness I knew she felt when she suspected I was not the same as Lucas — and when she realized I’d never take a wife, give her grandchildren. And then, her attempts to help me, a series of subtle attempts to save me from myself. But more recently, I see worry in her eyes. Every time she hears even the hint of a rumor, I watch that worry grow. Occasionally, articles show up in the paper telling of a public hanging. I know she sees them and imagines it could be me. And she is right! It well could be! Or Stewart!”
“You said that our marriage was partly a concession for your father. It was also for your mother, then?”
“Yes, anything to bring her some peace.” He leaned forward, resting his forearms along his knees as the carriage bumped along. His posture, one of despair. “God, Sophia, she has never stopped loving me despite it all. My father, I think, has given up on me as a human being. But my mother…” He blinked a few times as though surprised at his own thoughts. “…sometimes, I think she loves me all the more for it.”
“She will be devastated after your… accident.” He simply could not do this to the duchess.
Sophia remembered the walk she’d taken with her grace along the portrait gallery and felt horrible.
“But, in a way, Sophia, it will bring an end to her suffering. Ever since this morning… I’ve had an idea. My mother was over the moon thinking that you and I had… that we were… I’ll hate to see the disappointment on her face again when she realizes it was only an illusion.”
Sophia watched him. “None of this can end well.”
Harold nodded. “I know. But which is worse, waiting for me to be caught, tried and then hung? Or believing me to be at peace… in death?” It was a solemn question indeed. “I wondered if perhaps it would not give her some happiness if she believed you and I had fallen madly in love. If it might give her some comfort to believe that I’d died a happily married man. A natural man.”
“How do you feel about that?” Sophia asked.
He tipped his head back against the plush upholstery and closed his eyes. “I feel like it would be the least I could do for her, after all of her support, all of the times she’s defended me to my father.”
Sophia wondered how Dev would feel about it.
“What does Stewart think?”
