Page 66 of Her Wily Duke

Ariana set her uneaten cake down on the table, no longer hungry. She was not about to admit that she had, actually, shared such concerns, and had only finally been convinced to set them aside by her mother’s words. Helena regarded her cynically.

“Are you certain?”

“Yes. Benedict is so, so much kinder than he used to be. He’s almost like a different person. The way he looks at me sometimes — the way he looked at me by the river…” She was becoming flustered now, not knowing how to defend her own husband to someone who seemed determined to see evil in him. “When he looked at me, I felt both safe and exposed, at the same time. I think that was the first time I truly knew that my heart was beginning to be engaged.”

“But are you sure that his kindness isn’t manipulation?”

“I don’t know.” It was an odd feeling, this feeling of being torn between her husband and her best friend. “I know that there are times when I need his affection, where I feel like I’ll die without it. Sometimes when he has to leave home for a day or two, I feel lost, like I won’t be able to breathe again until he returns. Is that what he wanted me to feel? Again, I don’t know.”

***

Ariana watched as Helena decided to let the subject go, before she drew a permanent wedge between herself and Ariana – she had known Helena so long that she could almost see the thoughts happening before her. They spoke of vastly different things for the next two hours, until it was time for Ariana to go home, and she left feeling mostly happy with the afternoon.

Mostly.

Because Helena’s questions repeated themselves in her mind, making Ariana question everything she had thought she felt.

That questioning rapidly bloomed into full scale doubt and, newly suspicious of her husband, she withdrew into herself again over the next week. When Benedict beamed at her, she looked the other way; when he touched her, she shivered and removed her hand.

It saddened her to do so, and she felt a degree of disloyalty to her mother as well, but she could not be sure – what if it was manipulation, not genuine care? She was miserable, no matter what she did, and she wished, in her darkest moments, that she had never spoken with Helena at all.

***

Benedict, who had hoped that the recent thaw in their marriage, especially after that conversation by the river, might herald a real flowering of shared affection, felt a keen sense of disappointment. It seemed like all the work he had put into their relationship over the last several months had been for nothing.

He had no idea what had gone wrong. He had followed Fitzherbert’s advice to the letter, and it seemed to have worked, briefly. But since shortly after her father’s death, it had all changed. Perhaps it was grief?

Now he could barely get her to look at him. When he came into their parlour at night, she had already gone to her own bed, and when he looked in, she lay motionless and silent as if already asleep. During the day she shut herself away, or worked feverishly on the next part of the redecorations, refusing his assistance, or walked in the winter bare gardens, looking mournful.

Some nights she didn’t even come down for dinner.

It was a source of immense frustration for Benedict, who liked it when things worked the way that they were supposed to and hated it when they didn’t. He had always thought of marriage as a situation where one did the appropriate things, and everything happened as it was supposed to. But in this case, he had done everything he knew to do, and it still, repeatedly, went wrong.

Perhaps he should speak with James again, and see what advice he might have. The more he considered that, the more it seemed the only option. But he would invite James here – he had no wish to again converse in the Harbottles’ winter frosted garden.

Chapter Twelve

At Benedict’s invitation, James called on a brisk and sharp late January afternoon when the sun was fast transforming from a pale haze of white in a cloud-filled silver sky to a ball of red and pink. They sat in his study drinking brandy, while Benedict recounted the events of his marriage since their last conversation.

“I worry that this is just going to keep happening,” he said, “that for every advance in our marriage there’s going to be an even worse setback.”

“Did you talk to her about her father’s behaviour? Before his death, I mean.”

James sipped his brandy appreciatively, and waited as Benedict thought, reviewing the last few weeks closely in his mind. There really had only been that one very short conversation…

“A little – I told her that I wished I’d never listened to his advice, that I thought it had not helped us. And she accepted that.”

“Then I’d start with that – address it properly. Now that he’s gone, there’s no reason to let the shadow of his attitudes darken your future. And, until you apologise for the ways in which you treated her when you were first married, she’s going to keep worrying that it might happen again. Sit her down and explain to her that you’re not going to let her father’s wrong ideas about marriage dictate how you treat each other. Make sure that she understands that you were never truly that man – that you allowed your natural inclinations to be led astray by his advice.”

“I’ve been wanting to tell her that ever since she told me about her friend’s death. There she was, a woman still profoundly affected by grief, and no one ever told me – they just expected that she would get over it, and that it wouldn’t affect our marriage, that I didn’t need to know anything of it! So I couldn’t understand why she was acting the way she did, and I got angry and frustrated.” Benedict was beginning to wonder if he would ever forgive himself for that. “Then again, if she had only talked to me, it might never have happened.”

“You’re going to keep feeling bad about it until you apologise,” said James.

Just then there was a thump on the window, as if someone had thrown a stone at it. Benedict flinched, though James looked as placid as ever. A second later there was another thump and then another.

“Is it hailing?” Benedict asked in surprise.

James rose and went to the window, peering out. He turned back, and met Benedict’s eyes.