Elizabeth turned on me with wide eyes, obviously surprised by that.
“All right, sir,” said the servant, bobbing her head and disappearing.
Elizabeth put a hand on my chest. “Is it your plan to simply hide me away from all of your relatives, then?”
“No,” I said, putting my hand over her hand. “No, I only…”
“You wish to give me some primer in how to behave before I meet her?” she said, raising her eyebrows. “So, that I shall not embarrass you?”
“No,” I said, clasping her hand with mine. “No.”
“Because,” she said, “I thought that was why you married me, anyway. To cause a scandal. To make sure no one was talking about anything except you and me, and they were not thinking about your sister.”
“You said that was why I married you,” I said. “I know that is not at all why I married you.” I kissed one of her fingertips.
“Fitzwilliam,” she said, looking into my eyes, and this was something that had changed in the week of our marriage. She called me by my first name, and I called her by hers, and I had the memory of her breathing out my name in the darkness, as we were entwined, our skin bare.
I might have been sort of obsessed with her, with her body, with touching her, with…
We hadn’t talked much, however.
Well, we’d talked about things like our favorite foods, and we’d gotten in a rousing argument aboutMoll Flanders, and we’d debated the virtues of tea versus the vice of coffee, but we hadn’t talked about important things.
We hadn’t talked about the future.
“Fitzwilliam, you cannot simply hide me away forever,” she said, searching my gaze with her own.
“No, I have no intention of hiding you away,” I said. “I have only… been preoccupied.”
She smirked at me.
I kissed her.
And the servant was back, in that moment, saying that Lady Matlock insisted upon being given entry, and I pulled away from my pretty new bride just in time to see my aunt sweeping into the room.
My aunt was a round sort of woman. The fashion these days was for empire waists, but she refused to wear them, saying that it made her belly look rounder. However, poured into a dress that was meant to have a cinched waist, even with the help of boned undergarments, she still looked, well, round. Some round people wear it like cheer, but my aunt managed to simply take up space in a way that was a bit intimidating.
“Not at home, my foot,” she said to me.
I didn’t say anything at all, which wasn’t to my credit.
So, Elizabeth spoke up. “Apologies, Lady Matlock. My husband has been preoccupied as of late.”
“I am very sorry about all of this,” I said, clearing my throat. “Why don’t we all sit down and I shall make introductions? My wife should not be on her ankle overmuch. It is healing.”
Lady Matlock had already seated herself, on a couch across from the both of us, and she looked up at us in anticipation, simply waiting to see what I would say.
Elizabeth sat back down and wiped an errant scone crumb from the corner of her mouth.
I gazed at her lips for too long before sitting down as well.
Then, no one said anything.
Elizabeth turned to look at me, obviously annoyed.
I tucked a finger under my cravat and tried to think of something to say. This was perhaps what everyone did not understand about me. Sometimes this would simply happen to me, in certain situations, where I would seemingly forget how to speak. My mind would go blank, I would feel as if my clothes were too tight, and the room would sort of close in on me.
It happened more often around strangers, but it happened in situations like this, too, where I simply did not know what was expected of me, where there was no set script to follow.
