He started around the bed then, but not fully. He didn’t push into her space, just closed a little of the distance. “My duty as your husband is to protect you. To ensure your health and happiness. To be certain you aren’t being harmed or taken advantage of.”
She shook her head. “They cannot take advantage—they’re my parents.”
“Oh, they very much can and I would argue they do. And all the more shame on them for it.”
All the color left her cheeks at that admonishment. She gripped her hands at her sides. “The duty of a child is to honor their parents’ wishes. If they ask for something?—”
“Even if it’s a cruel request?” he interrupted. “Your pin money is foryourneeds and pleasures. It’s given so that you aren’t beholden to me for every farthing. Especially given the circumstances of our union, it matters all the more that you can feel some control over your purchases and experiences.”
“But they…” She trailed off and shook her head. “They need it.”
He barely stopped himself from snorting his derision. It wouldn’t help now, not when she was so stuck in this idea that she was responsible for the welfare of people who never bothered to consider hers. “Youneed it. It grants you autonomy. If they wish to steal that from you, they don’t have your best interest at heart.”
To his surprise, she didn’t argue with him. She lifted her gaze to his and held there and for a moment he could read her thoughts. She was considering how her parents had forced this union, with no thought of anything but their own desires.
“Perhaps they never have,” she whispered, so softly that he had to strain to hear the words. But there they were. The censure they deserved at last. But she bent her head and let out a little sob. “My apologies for my outburst.”
He came the rest of the way around the bed. “Thatwasn’t an outburst! I wish you were angry enough to have an outburst. At me, at them, anything!”
Her jaw set. “You are so driven to break me from good behavior, for what? Your own amusement? Because you dislike the concept of propriety so much?”
“That’s what this is about?” he asked. “Propriety? Who says that being harmed and then forced to take it with that beautiful smile is proper?”
She swept the unlit candle aside and held up the book beneath it, shaking it at him. “This! Andevery othermanual on what a lady should be! Every person of authority who ever scolded me for being too much said the same. It is what is expected, the way of our world, whether you want to drag me from it or not.”
She tossed the book onto the bed and it bounced toward him.
“And what do the books and authority figures tell you about being human, Clarissa?” He finally gave in to what he’d wanted to do all night and took both her hands.
She stared at their intertwined fingers and then slowly lifted her gaze to his face. There were tears in her eyes, but she blinked them away, not letting him see too far in. A loss he felt down to his soul. “How very easy for you to say when you’ve never had to face the world with a smile when all you wanted to do was scream.”
He blinked because in that moment he saw it all. Everything she feared and suppressed, everything that secretly weighed her down and made her doubt herself. He saw her vulnerability and all he wanted to do was sooth her, help her, see her true self. He wanted to make himself trustworthy enough that she could give him that true self.
She slipped her hands away and moved around him. She didn’t face him, but stood with her back turned, her hands shaking at her sides. “Do you demand I stop giving them the money?”
He let out a long sigh, because as much as he wished to be a safe place for her to fall in that moment, he knew he wasn’t. Arguing with her would only put up further walls between them. “It’s yours. If you insist, I won’t stop you.”
“Good.” At last she turned toward him. “As I said before we came up, I feel tired. If it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll sleep in my own chamber tonight.”
A pain like being stabbed in the heart ripped through him, stronger than it should be, so sudden that he rested a hand on the edge of the mattress to keep himself from buckling. Since their marriage, she hadn’t slept anywhere but beside him.
He cleared his throat. “Very well, Clarissa. Of course.”
She swallowed hard and her gaze flitted away from his. “Good night, Roderick.”
She was gone then, slipped from his chamber in a few steps, his door closing gently behind her. He stood staring at that door for a moment, longing and sadness filling him, along with confusion. This was a forced union, one they had come to accept. Yes, he wanted her, far more than he had ever believed he could, but they’d agreed it wasn’t more. And yet the idea of being without her was painful. The idea of her being alone and hurt burned even more.
He turned away from the door and rested his hands on the edge ofher side of the bed. A few inches away from his hands was the book she had waved at him and tossed aside.
The Mirror of Graces.
It looked such a harmless little tome, and yet it seemed to rule Clarissa’s every move, every thought. It and books like it had become part of the fabric of her being, a way for her to justify any pain her parents caused, to punish herself for experiencing emotions or desires.
He picked it up and slowly opened the cover, reading over the contents page carefully. He glanced at the door again. If he wanted to be of help to his wife, perhaps what he needed to do was better understand her. So he crossed to the fireplace, took a seat and began to read the book in earnest, hoping it could unlock some of the secrets Clarissa held inside. Ones he shouldn’t care about digging deep to excavate, and yet he couldn’t help himself.
CHAPTER 17
Wednesday wasn’t Roderick’s usual day to go to Ripley’s Boxing Club, but he found himself there the moment the doors opened regardless. After a night of readingThe Mirror of Graces, he needed to exert a little rage.
