Twenty-Six
It took over a week for them to make it out to Burchester. In that time, Caroline rearranged the London household, paid back wages, and found other positions for most of the servants. She made small deposits on the staggeringly large outstanding bills. She sold the phaeton, the piece of land in Cornwall that was part of her dowry, her mother’s pearls.
She did not tell Phineas about her mother’s pearls.
And through it all, she chastised herself. She had been a fool. How could she have forgotten that marriage was a business transaction? She had known from her parents that marriage wasn’t about love but she had ignored that it also wasn’t about waltzes and roses and tongues on quims in drawing rooms anddarlings.
Marriage was a bargain between two parties.
And she had made a very bad bargain.
She tried very hard not to take it out on her husband, and she felt, for the most part, she succeeded. After all, she was mostly angry at herself, and not at the silver-haired boy she had married. And when she came to bed late, her eyes blurry from looking at numbers, she went into his bedchamber instead of her own and took consolation in the arms of her husband.
After their wedding night, however, she made Phineas spend outside her.
“No babies yet,” she said.
A wounded look crossed his face. Not the one he used to garner sympathy, but real pain. And then she saw him make it disappear with a grin and a kiss on her nose and a “Whatever my woman of business says.”
He was an actor, her husband, and not a very good one. But at that moment, she did feel his generosity. He was acting for her.
She and Phineas and Lavinia and Jones and Dashwood all went out to Burchester in a single carriage together. An extra carriage for the servants was an unnecessary expense. It was an awkward journey, her husband’s valet holding himself in a disapprovingly rigid posture, Jones looking worried, and even her talkative husband silent for most of the trip.
It was dark and raining when they arrived. The house was cold, dirty, damp. The late supper was a means to end hunger and nothing else.
She was glad her husband knew she never smiled so she was not obliged to make herself smile here.
She told Jones there was no need to unpack tonight, her maid should get some rest. Jones undressed Caroline and found a nightdress at the top of one of the trunks and bade her mistress goodnight and left the chilly bedchamber.
Caroline unpinned and brushed her own hair and told Lavinia to lie on the carpet and to stay.
She knocked on the door connecting her bedchamber to her husband’s. There was no answer.
She opened the door. “Phineas?”
Her husband was sitting on his bed, still dressed, his head down.
She had never thought of him as a small man—not with that chest, those shoulders—but he suddenly looked small. And seeing him that way filled her with foreboding. And regret. She had spent the first week of their marriage handling the money, not her husband’s feelings.
A brush against her thigh. Lavinia had contravened Caroline’s command and was coming into Phineas’ room. The dog went up to him and put her head in his lap. Phineas stroked Lavinia’s ears but kept his neck bent, his eyes on the dog’s head.
“La is a b-better wife than m-me.”
Phineas didn’t say anything.
She was scared now. She had known what to do in London. There, she had some idea about how to repair things and herself. But how was she going to buttress her husband?
She crossed to the bed and sat next to him. She took his hand.
“You were n-never supposed to be an earl.”
Silence.
“You weren’t raised to it. You w-were in the navy.”
When he finally spoke, his jaw was clenched and his voice was steely and sharp. “I’ve been the bloody earl for fourteen years, Caroline. I should have learned something by now about the job. Anyone else would have.”
He had never used that voice before. He had never called her Caroline when they were alone. She was more frightened than ever. Lavinia let out a short whine, sensing her people were unhappy.
