Slowly, Anna withdrew her hand. “I think that I am the one who must leave.” Her throat bobbed, her voice strained with hurt. “You should return to your bedchambers. You should rest. I am so very pleased that you are well and alive, and that I have not lost you… But I think it would be best if I depart.”
“Leave? Nay, lass, there’s nay need. Ye don’t have to go anywhere,” he insisted, frustrated that Beatrice had done this.
He briefly looked back at the mob on the porch, noticing their hard stares and accusatory scowls. No wonder Anna didn’t want to stay, but he wouldn’t let those idiots force her out of her own home.
“I really am glad that you are all right,” Anna said, her voice catching. “You cannot know how glad I am, but… I cannot stay here. I cannot stay in a place where I am not welcome. You do not know what was said to me, Jeremy. No matter whatIsay now, or what you say, or what the physician says, it will not change what they think of me.”
He reached for her hands, but she stepped back, her shoulders bumping into the side of the carriage.
“Anna, don’t pay them any heed,” he urged, his tone harsher than he had intended. “I know ye didn’t do anything to me. Why should their opinion matter?”
“Because this is my home,” she replied sadly. “And it has all been ruined. It will never be the same again. I could not, in good conscience, stay here in this manor with a woman who despises me. But, nor can I be the one to cast out a woman and a child who have nowhere else to go. They are your family. They should stay. I shall make it easier for everyone.”
Jeremy ran a hand through his hair, unable to believe that everything had fallen apart so catastrophically while he had been out cold. He had been so happy before he collapsed; he knew that much. He had felt content in a way he hadn’t in years, if ever, when she was there in his arms, glowing with the flush of her satisfaction, her body warm against his.
“Ye’re me wife, lass,” he insisted.
“In name only, just as you requested,” she replied, her face falling. “No expectations, remember? At least, this way, I do not have to go to the trouble of hanging all those blankets and curtains and ropes again.”
He managed to take hold of her hand. “The townhouse is in disrepair. It’s not suitable for ye.”
And I don’t want ye to go…If his mind hadn’t been so dazed and his pain hadn’t been so insistent, perhaps he would have told her that. Perhaps, he would have said that he had changed his mind and wanted everything that having a wife entailed.
“It shall serve me well enough,” she replied as she turned and mounted the carriage steps. There, on the top step, she turned back, now almost the same height as him. “Please, rest yourself and do not worry about me. I could not bear it if you became ill again.”
He moved toward her. “This is ridiculous, lass. This is yer home. It was yers before it was ever mine, and it is more yers than Beatrice’s.” He cleared his sore throat. “She’s not in her right mind, lass. She’s still grieving. She thought I might die, and she lashed out. She’ll be sorry, lass. I know she will.”
“Jeremy, all those people up there were ready to chase me out of my own manor. Your servants, most of all,” she replied quietly. “Those guests will spread lies to the scandal sheets, and I will have to endure another bout of having my name dragged through the mud. I am sympathetic to Beatrice’s condition, but Iwould rather not be near the one who caused that when it comes. Forgive me.”
She leaned in and pressed a tender kiss to his cheek.
“I will do what I should have done from the start,” she whispered as she withdrew, her eyes gleaming with sorrow. “I will live alone and start afresh. Now, go. Rest. Your family will need you more than ever.”
She gently withdrew her hand from his and stepped into the carriage, shutting the door behind her. Inside, Jeremy heard her tap the side to signal the driver. The man looked down at Jeremy for some kind of permission, but when Jeremy neither responded nor moved, too foggy and confused to even notice the man, the driver snapped the reins, and the carriage began to move away.
Jeremy watched his wife leave, and though every instinct within him screamed for him to run after her, to make her stay, he simply didn’t have the strength.
CHAPTER 30
“How are ye feelin’?” Beatrice asked as she entered Jeremy’s bedchambers, holding a tray.
He had slept soundly since Anna left, though not because he wanted to. The moment he returned to his wife’s bedchamber, intending to implore Katherine to follow Anna and talk some sense into her, the physician was waiting. He had given Jeremy several spoonfuls of a tonic that he insisted was for his throat. Considering Jeremy had slept like the dead for nearly twelve hours, he suspected there was more in the strangely sweet mixture than the physician had revealed.
“Ye dare to ask me that?” Jeremy croaked, his throat on fire.
Beatrice at least had the decency to look ashamed. “I thought she’d harmed ye. I heard what happened and I… went mad.” She shook her head. “I couldnae bear the thought of losin’ another part of me husband, and I… jumped to conclusions. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t make this any better,” he remarked. “Ye’ve made me wife feel so unwelcome that she doesn’t want to be in the home she loves so much. Did ye not stop to think that ye should probably wait for me to wake up before ye started throwing out accusations?”
Beatrice set down the tray. “I didnaekenthat ye were going to wake up.” There was a sudden bite in her voice. “Even ye have to admit that, in me position, it seemed suspicious.”
“Suspicious or not, ye should have waited,” he replied.
“How do ye ken that shedidnaedo something to ye, eh?” Beatrice challenged, apparently less remorseful than she had wanted him to believe. “There was nothin’ wrong with yer throat before the weddin’, but then ye suddenly have blisters in it?”
He glared at her, his jaw clenched. “Get out.”
“Nay, I willnae. The physician didnae give any explanation, nae really. He said ye had a quinsy of the throat and that was that.” She stubbornly crossed her arms. “And, aye, he also said that the previous duke had a weak heart. What if he was wrong? What if that lassdiddo somethin’ to the both of ye?”
