“Kind of the way you want me to go to that party and pretend I’m your happy wife?”
“Yes. Why don’t we do that? I’ll pretend I love you, and you pretend you’re happy. Will that do well enough?”
Her bottom lip trembled, her expression set to crumble again. “I want to go home. I want to go back to Wales.”
Perhaps it was that trembling lip that set him off, or perhaps it was the way she stood there in her grand velvet gown, with her black locks tumbling over her shoulders. His fairy queen had never been his queen. She didn’t want to be. He felt like a toad, him, the Duke of Arlington, whom everyone had always admired. He was not good enough for her, no matter what he did, no matter his commendable attributes. It infuriated him.
“You know what? Go then,” he shouted. “Pack your bags and go to Wales. If it will fucking make you happy, then go. Leave tonight if you want, in the rain and the ice. Get out of my damned house, if you hate it here so much.”
“I can’t wait to get out of your house,” she shouted back.
He went to the door, yanked it open, then spun to face her with a skewering gaze. “Only use the back door, would you? The door for the servants and common people.”
That was too cruel, wasn’t it? But he didn’t stop to apologize, or take her in his arms. He went down to the dinner party and sat at his place, and told everyone his wife had unfortunately exhausted herself planning the event. He avoided Minette’s gaze, and those of his friends.
Gwen had made him exactly what she accused him of being: a cold and haughty tyrant without any heart.
Chapter Fifteen: So Cold
Pascale had made herself scarce while she and the duke were arguing, and so Gwen undressed herself, taking off the ruby necklace and earrings and placing them in their specific drawers. All must be in good order for the duke, excepting his own wife, whom he seemed to believe a lost cause. He had told her to get out. She knew he hadn’t meant it, that he had only been ranting and waving his arms in anger.
She was still leaving. Tonight.
She squirmed out of her gown by pure determination. She heard a seam rip at some point, but she didn’t care. She laid the dress over a chair and went to one of her trunks from home, and pulled a drab gray traveling gown from the bottom. A bonnet, gloves, even a coarse wool cloak that was perfectly nondescript for her purpose.
She would indeed take the back door. In fact, it was the easiest way to slip out without being noted. The servants were busy with the party, and the kitchen was in an uproar of pots and trays. Gwen pulled her hood about her face and snuck out as the cook was calling for more wine to be served. The stables were equally busy, managing the horses and carriages of the guests. She went to Eira’s stall and saddled her for riding. She’d always saddled her own horses at her father’s manor. Eira snorted with pleasure to see her, and regarded her with great shining eyes.
“We are not really going to Wales,” Gwen assured her, stroking her mane as she led her out the back way, beneath the shadow of night. “But you must take me away from here, as far as you can go.”
The London streets were quiet because of the holiday, or perhaps because of the miserable weather. Everyone seemed to be at home, inside, out of the icy cold elements. The air hurt Gwen’s throat, but she trusted her cloak would keep her warm enough on this journey, wherever it took her.
She did not have a specific plan. She only knew she would ride west as far as Eira could take her before her legs tired, and then Gwen would find a respectable lodging and use some of her pin money to hire a room. While she was there, she would write an explanatory letter to her father and ask his advice, and this time the duke would not be able to stop her from sending it. She would tell her father she was too homesick to stay here. Perhaps he would come and meet with Arlington, and realize the duke didn’t really want her. Perhaps they could create some arrangement where she only spent part of the year with her husband, enough time to fall pregnant, and mollify the king.
Even as she thought it, she knew Arlington would never agree to any such arrangement. How many times had the man named himself her owner and master?
Perhaps she could hide at an inn long enough for him to give up on her, or consider her dead. Perhaps she could ride all the way to Wales, if he was not able to find her. Perhaps she would meet a farmhand there who loved her, and live in his shambling cottage and sweep his hearth and bear his babies. She would not mind to do it.
Perhaps she was an utter fool.
It was so cold. She hadn’t imagined England could be so cold. Her anger’s heat warmed her at the outset, but now, a mere half hour into her journey, she couldn’t stop shivering and she couldn’t get warm. She had not gone far enough to take a room. The duke would find her before sunrise if she stopped hereabouts. She grasped the reins with stiff fingers and urged Eira to a canter.
“We might go to Wales,” she whispered, patting her mane. “I ought to. I might meet a handsome stranger there.”
But she had already met a handsome stranger. She lived in his house, ate his food, entertained his friends, wore his priceless rubies.
“I want a different handsome stranger,” she said to Eira. “One who loves me for who I am.”
Are you sure he doesn’t love you?
Who had spoken those words? The horse? Gwen was so cold now, she was hearing things. And what a ridiculous question to ask. If he loved her, he wouldn’t scold her, and punish her with birchings and spankings and canings, and make her feel something less than what she was. He wouldn’t use her body the way he did, holding her down and hurting her, and...
You love the kind of hurt he gives. You crave it. Even now, you crave his touch.
“I don’t,” she whispered. “I know I don’t.” It had started sleeting again, the moisture chilling her face and seeping into her cloak. She couldn’t control her shivering. She’d long since ceased to feel her feet, and now her hands felt frozen about the reins. She tried to shake them, to waken them and reassert her grip, but Eira took it for a signal and lurched into a gallop. The mare lost her footing a moment later, and Gwen slid from her back. It barely hurt. In fact, it all happened rather like a dream, as she tumbled into an overgrown hedgerow. It felt almost like falling into a bed.
She was so tired and cold, she could not pull herself out of the waxed leaf branches. She tugged her cloak around her and put her hands over her face, and looked around for Eira, but the sleet had turned to great flakes of snow. She wanted to cry but her tears felt frozen, so she prayed instead, the way her mother had taught her. Ask the heavens for what your heart wants...
“Please,” she whispered. “Please help me, Mama. I don’t know what to do.”
* * * * *
They only found her because of the horse. The shivering beast had stayed beside her mistress in the frigid cold, so that the snow-dusted hedge revealed itself to be more than a hedge. It was a lost, fallen duchess, half-frozen, wrapped in a common wool cloak.
Fifty men had spanned out, and they had found her in time to save her. Townsend had opened his own shirt and held her hands and face against his skin, and carried her back while the others went to fetch Aidan.
Now Townsend was suffering from the cold too, and the house was in an uproar. Most of the guests were still there. Ladies were crying, servants were scurrying to and fro with water and towels and more wood for the fires. Aidan carried his wife’s limp figure toward the stairs. “Are you the physician?” he barked at the nearest stranger.
“No, Your Grace. I’ve a delivery, promised today. The painting you commissioned from Master Oglesby.”
“Damn your painting. Get out of the way.”
He carried Gwen upstairs as fast as he could without risking a tumble from his iced-over boots. They said she was alive, but she was so still. She ought to at least shiver, as Townsend had shivered when he brought her inside.
“Where is the physician?” he roared as he took her down the hall to his chambers. “Where are the blankets? Who
is building up the fire?”
The housekeeper and butler hovered about him, but he didn’t hear any of what they said. He kicked off his boots and threw off his cloak, and stripped his wife of her sodden clothes. The housekeeper came behind to wrap her in a blanket. Pascale wept in the background, praying in French. He stripped down to his breeches and got into bed beside her, and pulled her against him so he could warm her. Servants brought hot bricks and more blankets, but she was still too cold.
Get out of my damned house. He had shouted that at her earlier, mere hours ago. He deserved the torture of her cold flesh against his. He deserved more, much more. At last she moved, and trembled, and began to shiver. Around that time the physician arrived, and checked Gwen over, listening to her heart and rubbing her hands and feet. Now and again he murmured “hah” and “hmm,” and Aidan had to bite his tongue against shouting at the man.
“She’s lucky, Your Grace,” he said when he finished. “She’ll survive unscathed, although she may be weak and feverish for a spell.” He poked at her wool cloak on the floor. “If she’d ridden out in a fine silk cape, I fear she might not be with us, but this servants’ garb is hardier stuff.”
Aidan recognized her traveling clothes, and her cloak from home. “It’s not servants’ garb,” he said tautly.
The doctor pulled the blankets closer about her. “Well, Sir, you must keep your wife warm, and feed her hot tea and broth until she regains her strength. Don’t overheat her, lest you give her body a shock.”
“Why won’t she wake?” Aidan asked.
“I warrant she is exhausted. She must conserve her energy.” The silver-haired doctor packed up his instruments.
“She has to get better,” Aidan said. “You have to make her better.”
“She has to rest,” said the physician firmly.
“Is there no medicine? Nothing you can give her?” He rose from his sleeping wife’s side and pulled on his shirt. “The fire is not warm enough. Are the guests still downstairs? They must go home.”
The housekeeper curtsied as he piled logs onto the fire. “The guests have gone, except for your friends,” she said. “They are belowstairs. The ladies have asked if you will move the duchess into her rooms, so they can help tend her.”