What if she had just gone along with him because she had wanted him tolikeher?
He cleared his throat. “Is it true you hate chess?”
“I don’t know.”
“All those hours, Phee. All those hours you spent playing with me. Surely, you must know.”
She shook her head. “All I remember is that I wanted—no, I needed you to tell me I was good or I was clever. And you would, and I would gobble it up. But a few hours later, I was hungry again. You liked to argue and debate, so I learned to do that, too. You liked words, so I liked words. I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what I like. I’m nothing.”
“That’s not true, Phee. There is some essential you.”
“I don’t think so. I’m a person made up to please you and Alice. But mostly you. Over the last two months, what with Mother needing me and my being so much on my own, I had started to feel that I was maybe becoming someone new. But now . . .”
But now you’re tied to me for the rest of your life.
“You never were a nothing, only wanting to please me,” he protested. “Look at your lateness. Has anyone ever told you how wonderful it is that you’re late to everything? No. I certainly didn’t. And yet you are. I’m probably going to regret this for the rest of my life—” He took a deep breath. “But you should always be late, Phee. Because it’s you.”
She let out a bitter laugh. “My essential self is late. Wonderful.”
“Being late isn’t so bad. Who does it hurt?“
“Whom. Mother says it’s a lack of respect for other people’s time. You’ve said that too, George. My essential self is disrespectful.”
“Good. Yes. Be disrespectful. You should be. I only care that you respect yourself right now. And if you need an extra ten minutes in the bath or arranging your hair or looking out the window, you should respect that. I’m going to try to.”
“You do know that adds up to my being a half an hour late? Not ten minutes.” She held up her hand and ticked off on her fingers. “Ten minutes in the bath. Ten minutes with my hair. Ten minutes at the window. Thirty minutes. Thirty minutes late, I would be.”
Right now, he didn’t care about her being half an hour late. She could be an hour late, as she was this morning. She could be two hours late. She was looking at him. She was talking to him. She washerewith him.
A mischievous smile played over her lips and now she resembled the Phoebe he knew.
“But you owe me gobs of time, Lord Danforth, having been two years, eight months, and nine days late yourself.”
His mind’s eye flashed on a calendar, and he counted backward. Two years, eight months, nine days. The beginning of January. Her twentieth birthday. He shook his head. He still didn’t understand.
Her smile disappeared. “The day you showed me chess for the first time? You promised to ask me to marry you when I was twenty.”
He had no memory of that promise. “I remember it being dark, and I remember a kiss. And that you asked to take the white queen back to the nursery with you. That’s what I remember.”
“A faulty memory is no excuse for being late.” One of his own reprimands being tossed back at him.
He held up his hands, as if in surrender. “Like I said, I’ll be happy for you to be late.”
She sighed. “You can’t praise me for being late. That would defeat the purpose.”
“I’ll try not to. But—” He reached out and touched her knee. “I hope you are going to let me show you how much I love you some other way, aren’t you?”
She looked at his hand on her skirts. “Yes, we’ll always have the bedchamber, George. I know my duty as a wife.”
He snatched his hand back. “No, no. You misunderstand me.”
She started crying then.
Blast.
He thought of all the times he had dreamed about comforting her over the end of her engagement and then over her father’s death. Holding her and then kissing her.
But how does a husband comfort a wife who is crying because she’s married to him?
