Never.
She had never spoken to anyone, not even her mother, about her secret shame. Her husband did not want her in his bed, and he did not want to come into her bed.
He never spoke of his previous wives, so she knew almost nothing about them beyond the painting of the beautiful, fragile Emily. Henrietta never allowed gossip to be repeated in front of her. Her lady’s maid had tried to tell her some of the below-stairs talk, but Henrietta had hushed her immediately, saying, “If myhusband wants me to know something, he’ll tell me himself, Lucy.”
She had dared to ask Oliver one or two questions about her predecessors, but she could see with her own eyes he didn’t like to talk of the past and his losses, so she stopped asking. After all, she was trying to make him happy, not sad. Much better to tell him how Nathaniel had learned his numbers up to one hundred because he wanted to draw a centipede or to laugh over Oliver’s stories about the one wily ram who always left his fellow rams to invade the ewes’ pasture or to repeat the family news contained in her most recent letter from Bexton Manor.
She also stopped asking questions about the previous Mrs. Hartwells because, as the months went by, she discovered certain things about herself.
First, she was a coward and didn’t want to hear about the women Oliver had chosen. Women he had married of his own volitionandlain with.
Second, she was a horribly jealous, petty thing.
Third, she was in love with her husband and she wished desperately, more than anything, that he would be in love with her, too.
Twelve
August. 1818.
“You needn’t, you know,” he said on the eve of her twentieth birthday and Nathaniel’s fourth birthday. There had been a silence between them for a good half an hour, during which he had been hiding behind his newspaper and steeling himself to say this to her.
“Needn’t what?” She looked up from her embroidery.
“Stay here.”
He had seen no evidence she wanted to leave. She had said nothing, done nothing to suggest that. On the contrary, she had woven herself into the fabric of Crossthwaite and the village beyond in a way he himself hadn’t in his over twenty years of owning the property. She had met every occupant of Woldenmere and knew every granny, every child, every dog, probably every chicken and cow.
But he would not make the same mistake he had made with Violet. Henrietta needed to know she was not bound to him and she could have another life, one of her own choosing. Hadn’t he vowed to put her needs always above his own? He must keep that vow. No matter the pain it would cause him. No matter he no longer could fathom a life without her.
No matter that both his and Nathaniel’s hearts would break should she leave.
“I’ll buy or rent a house for you, anywhere you like, give you ample money for a household. Nothing as grand as Bexton Manor, of course, but something suitable.”
She blinked and her head bent again to her stitchery and all he could see were her sunset curls, her nimble fingers poking the needle in and out.
When she spoke, her voice was low. “Do you want me to go?”
“No!” The word burst from him with a greater force than he intended. “No, but I want you to be happy.”
She continued to keep her eyes down, to stitch. “I’m happy. Are you happy?”
What was his answer to be? As long as she didn’t leave, it was a resounding, heartfeltyes. But he didn’t know how to be heartfelt, so he merely uttered the word.
“Yes.”
She finally lifted her head. Were those tears in her eyes?
“Oh, I’m so relieved and glad, Oliver. I don’t want to leave. I love,” she almost choked, “Crossthwaite.”
He wanted to be sure, and he wanted to know how to keep her happy in his home. “You’re not bored? Lonely?”
“How could I be bored or lonely? There’s so much to keep me occupied. The house, the village, the countryside, Nathaniel, Zephyr. I’m busy as a bee.”
He felt a small pang that he was not on the list of things that kept her from being lonely at Crossthwaite.
“You needn’t bother yourself about the house. Mrs. Liddell did an adequate job on her own before you came. ”
“I like being mistress of the house.”
