“No, Dawson. Close the drapes. I’m staying in bed.”
She turned on her side and the maid left the room.
Maybe he’ll come to me when I miss breakfast.
But he didn’t come.
He didn’t come the whole morning she lay in her bed, naked, waiting for him.
I didn’t mean to, but I sent him away. After I promised not to.
He must hate me right now.
She needed to escape and he wasn’t going to come and help her do that with his cock. She needed to feel her blood coursing, air moving in and out of her lungs, her skin prickling. She needed proof she was alive and not just a floppy rag-doll made up of tears and regret.
She dressed, laced her boots, found a woolen shawl. She left her room, went down the stairs and out of the house, slipping through the front door without a word to anyone.
She walked miles and miles through the fields and forests of her childhood. She knew where she could walk in September and not see a soul.
She tried to force her mind to be empty because she knew what would fill it if she didn’t. Sadness. Loneliness. Despair. Longing. Self-hatred.
But she couldn’t really keep errant thoughts and worries away. Why hadn’t George wanted Phoebe before as his wife? Would he find fault with her and correct her over and over again? Would he come to hate her because she wasn’t whatever he wanted? Because she wasn’t normal?
A few hours into her tramp, she asked herself the most important question.
Wouldshecome to hatehim?
She almost fell down. Not loving George would be like not loving her father or mother. Her mother. Her mother had gotten home from her trip last night. She must see her mother. Phoebe picked up her skirts and broke into a run.
She ran all the way to the duchy.
The duchess was sitting on a sofa in the morning room. Phoebe went in and laid down and put her head in her mother’s lap and cried.
Her mother stroked her hair and said “there, there” and hummed.
“Mama!” Phoebe howled. She had not called her motherMamain ten years.
Finally, her tears slowed.
Her mother spoke in her gentlest voice. “Tell me why you’re crying, dearest.”
“I’m crying because all I do is cry. I can’t be a good wife. And George doesn’t understand me and is disappointed in me.”
“It sounds like you’re being awfully hard on yourself. And awfully hard on George.”
Her mother was defending George?
“Phoebe, the one thing that is undeniable in this world is that George was always devoted to you and you, to him. You know he taught you to walk. Your father always loved to tell the story about how George called us into the nursery that day to show off what you could do.”
“Yes.”
“But do you know what your first word was a month before that?”
“No.”
“Jahj.”
“What?” To Phoebe’s ears, it was some impossibly exotic word.
