“Did you want me to?” She sounded like she did, but it didn’t make sense. She hadn’t given him so much as a conversation about any of this. Could she really say now that she had wanted to be talked into staying?
“I knew you wouldn’t,” she told him. “I never had any expectations about it, Norman. I never dreamed that you would try to change my mind. I thought you might be angry with me for going, but you’re not even that. I can see you’re surprised, but that’s as far as this goes.”
“You’ve just been saying you didn’t want me to force you to stay,” he pointed out. “And I wouldn’t do that.”
“If this had been a different kind of marriage,” she said, “you would fight. The fact that I was leaving would distress you so much that you would try to stop me. No, I don’t want you to do that, because it would be exactly what everything between us has always been—an act. A show. And the one thing you and I have never done was lie to each other. I don’t want you to lie to me. You don’t want me to stay, so don’t ask me to stay.” She sighed. “But I am sad about it, and I won’t say otherwise. I do wish we’d had the kind of relationship where youwantedme to stay with you.”
He didn’t know what to say.
I do want you to stay. But he didn’t dare say that out loud. Her next question would bewhy? He didn’t have the answer to that one yet, and he didn’t want to guess at it. It would make him look disingenuous. It would seem like he had only said he wanted her to stay out of a desire to stop her quickly, and not because that was what he truly wanted.
She wouldn’t believe me if I tried to fight for her. She’s already decided I’m not going to.
Susan shook her head. “I thought I could live with it,” she said. “I thought I could accept a loveless marriage. But I can’t.”
The wordsloveless marriagesank into his heart like stones.
They shouldn’t have. Of course, it was a loveless marriage. That was what they had intended it should be, and that was what it was. Why should it bother him to hear her say it?
Well, he wasn’t going to stand here and continue to debate the matter. “If you don’t want this marriage, perhaps you should go,” he agreed. “I don’t have anything else to offer you.”
“I know you don’t.” It was a sad whisper, full of pain. He couldn’t bring himself to look at her directly, so he strode out of the room instead. He wasn’t going to help her load her things into the carriage that would take her away from him.
He strode out of the foyer and up the stairs to his study.
His head was spinning. Had it really been less than half an hour ago that he had had the debate with Aunt Tabitha? She had recommended exactly this. She’d told him that he ought to seek an annulment, that the marriage had accomplished all it should… it was as if Susan had been reading from a script Aunt Tabitha had handed her.
For a moment, he even wondered whether his aunt had spoken to Susan on her own… but she couldn’t have. There had been no opportunity for that, no time when the two of them had been together without Norman’s knowledge. No, there was only one possible conclusion—Susan had come to the same opinion on her own, without Aunt Tabitha’s input.
And that made it true.
It meant that Susan was saying things she truly believed. She hadn’t been talked into any of it. She really did want to go. She wanted the annulment.
Norman slammed the door of the study, hoping that she would hear it and know how angry he was.
He fell into his chair and looked over at his bottle of scotch, but he didn’t reach out for it. Not yet. He would drink later and ponder what he might have done to get her to stay, but for now, he stared out the window and imagined that he could hear her carriage pulling away from the house, and her pulling out of his life.
CHAPTER 31
“I’m sorry to burden you,” Susan said quietly.
She sat on the edge of the bed that had been provided for her at Marina’s house, avoiding eye contact with her sister. She stared out the window instead, longing for something to distract her from the pain she was feeling.
No such distraction appeared, and eventually she found herself forced to turn and look back into the room. Marina was sitting in the chair at the vanity and watching her, concern etched on her delicate features.
“You’re not burdening me,” Marina said. “I told you to come, Sue. I wanted you here. Wouldn’t you want me to come to you if something was making me unhappy?”
“Of course I would.” Now, Susan did look at her sister. “You know I would. Haven’t I always taken care of you?”
“Yes, you have. But you shouldn’t think that I don’t want to care for you too, Sue, just because you’re older than I am. You’re not that much older, and besides, we’re sisters. We ought to share our troubles. Carry them together.” She stood up, crossed to the bed, and sat down beside Susan. Reaching out, she rested a hand on Susan’s arm. “Won’t you tell me what happened?”
Susan sighed. “Nothing happened,” she admitted. “That’s what makes it all so embarrassing.”
“What do you mean?”
She still wasn’t ready to discuss that kiss, but maybe she could tell her sister about the rest of it. “It’s all to do with Norman’s aunt,” she said.
Marina’s eyebrows lifted. “His aunt? Does she disapprove of you or something?”
