Love.
They went in to dinner and Gwen tried to be merry. She sat near Minette, who was cheerful all hours of the day. She and Aurelia were both going to have babies in the new year. Gwen wondered if she would too. Her appetite fled at the thought of bearing the duke’s child. Then he wouldn’t only criticize her as a wife, but as a mother. She wouldn’t be able to bear it. She glanced up to the head of the table and caught his eye.
He stared back at her with an inscrutable gaze. He was not thinking that he loved her, that was for sure.
“Gwen,” said Minette, leaning close to her. “What’s the matter? Aren’t you having fun?”
“Oh, yes, I am,” Gwen replied, forcing a smile. But she wasn’t. She was thinking how horribly lonely it was, to be looked at in that distant, detached way. Maybe love didn’t matter to the upper crust, but it mattered to her. Arlington’s physical attentions weren’t enough. His title and his protection weren’t enough either. Her heart cried out for something deeper. Please love me.
Stupid girl. He would love you by now if you were good enough.
Lonely, so lonely, while all around her, animated couples laughed and chattered about the holidays. Their easy voices rose and fell, but she didn’t know what to say. She hated the woman seated beside Arlington, because she spoke so easily to him and made him smile.
Gwen tried to eat, but she couldn’t swallow past the tension in her throat, and the food on her plate began to blur. Oh, no. She could not cry, not after all their work to plan this party and show how happily married they were. Minette watched her, so sincere, so troubled that Gwen might be troubled.
“What is it, dear?” asked Minette, taking her hand.
“I wonder if I’m not feeling quite well. My head’s begun to hurt.”
The first tears fell. She wiped them away as quickly and furtively as she was able, but more rose in their place. The loud-mouthed gentleman across the table stopped talking and stared at her. She heard two ladies whispering as she swiped at her cheeks.
“I think I...”
Minette gazed at her with such tenderness. “Perhaps the music is too loud.”
“Perhaps.”
“Let’s go and find you a quiet place to rest.” Minette hustled her up and out of the room, assuring the others it was only a bit of headache. Arlington followed after, his expression one of dark concern.
* * * * *
Aidan had reached the limits of his patience. Who cried at a holiday party in one’s own house? In front of thirty-odd dinner guests? He burst into her chambers. Minette was comforting his weeping wife, murmuring to her and patting her arm.
“Minette, please,” he said. “Don’t make a fuss. Go downstairs and rejoin the guests, and assure them everything is all right. We’ll be down in a moment.”
She looked sideways at his wife. “Gwen is very upset.”
“My wife and I are going to talk about things,” he said in as steady a voice as he could muster. “If you would allow us some privacy.”
“Of course,” said Minette. “I’ll tell everyone you’ll be back shortly.”
“Thank you.”
She cast one last concerned glance at her friend and let herself out, shutting the door.
Aidan crossed to sit beside Gwen. “Whatever’s the matter?” he asked gruffly as she sniffled into her handkerchief. “You realize you’re making a muck of this party. If you want to cry, you can do it later, for as long as you want.”
“Don’t you even care why I’m sad?”
“I know why you’re sad,” he snapped. “Because you’re unhappy, because you don’t like it here, because you can’t hear the rain on the roof or some such nonsense. There are children starving in London, you know. Men and women dying in the streets of violence and disease. There are families freezing in this unseasonable weather. What a spoiled, sniveling piece of work you are.”
This only made her cry harder. She ought to cry. She had stolen his peace of mind this past few weeks, made him a miserable man in his own house.
“That’s enough,” he said. “You will dry your tears, go back downstairs among our guests, and do your goddamned duty.”
“I can’t,” she said, covering her face with the handkerchief.
He took it from her and mopped the tears from her cheeks. “You will. You’re the Duchess of Arlington and you owe it to me. You’re wearing the gown I bought you, the shoes, the damned rubies around your neck. You have responsibilities which I will not allow you to shirk. You will go downstairs and pretend that you are eminently happy.”
She pushed away from him and took to her feet. “No, I will not! I am not happy. I am miserable here. You can give me a thousand gowns and a million jewels and I’d still be miserable because you have no heart.”
She was shouting at him. He knew how to shout too. “I have no heart? What about you? You antagonize me in every way possible, and delight in making me look like a villain. You delight in humiliating me.”
“I most certainly do not.”
“You’ve embarrassed me repeatedly before my friends, before the king, before those guests downstairs. I can’t guess why, except that you hate me.”
“No.” She shook her head, pacing to the window. “You are the one who humiliates me. You have no care for me unless I’m in a bed, or your perverse Greek temple.”
“That is not true.”
“You do what you must to keep up the appearance of a happy marriage. But you have never thought me proper, or worthy of your vaunted hand.”
“You don’t act worthy,” he retorted. “You act like a petty brat the majority of the time. You say I keep up appearances...what did you think marriage was about?”
“Love!” She burst into tears again. “Marriage is supposed to be about love.”
“Oh, now we’re going to go on ab
out love again. I suppose you wish you had married some bloody farmhand back in Cairwyn.”
“I do wish it, if he would have loved me,” she cried.
“And you could have cooked and cleaned all day, and dropped his brats, and swept the hearth in his shambling cottage, wearing threadbare rags. Of course, all women dream of such a life.”
“They do, if they are loved.”
He crossed to her and took her arms. “You say you want love, but you offer me no respect. You have crossed me from the beginning, from the inn the night after we wed. Oh, he wants me to eat this duck. But I won’t, because that’s what he wants. Never mind that it’s just a piece of fucking duck that any normal person would eat without thinking. Everything has to be a fight with you.” He gave her a little shake. “If you want me to love you, Guinevere, stop being so hateful. Our marriage was not my fault.”
“But you blame me,” she said. “You blame me for not being up to snuff. That night at the inn, you looked at me as if I were something you’d found on the bottom of your boot.”
“I looked at you like a wife whom I did not know, and did not understand. I still don’t understand you. I don’t know how to make you happy. I don’t know how to make you smiling and content. I don’t know how to convince you that I mean you no harm.”
“Meaning no harm is not the same as loving someone. And I know you’ll never love me.”
“So you’ll live a whole life unfulfilled, is that it?”
“Yes.” She swiped a hand across her damp cheeks. “It makes me desperately sad.”
“Your nonsense makes me sad,” he said, walking away from her. “Please collect your wits so we can return to the party and salvage what we can of this debacle.”
She stood where she was, her hands clasped in front of her skirts. “I’m not going back to that party with you.”
He glared at her, feeling helpless frustration and rage. “What if I say I love you? What if I really, really pretend I mean it?”