Aidan woke in the dark, in the early morning hours. Someone had pulled the curtains and banked the fire, and piled him with blankets. The portrait was gone from the corner. He sat up with his wife’s name on his lips.
His head spun at the movement, and his stomach lurched. A servant looked in on him from the door. “Water,” he rasped. “And something to eat.”
At once, the servants produced an ewer of fresh water and a basket of bread, cheese, and currant cake. The bland food settled his stomach while the water worked to clear his head. His friends were right, he had needed a rest, but now he needed to go back to his wife.
He climbed the stairs with nervous urgency. They would have woken him if she’d taken a bad turn. The whole house would not be abed, so silent, if Gwen was in crisis. He reached his rooms and went inside, and found Minette bathing Gwen’s forehead and cheeks.
“Where is the housekeeper?” he asked. “You should be resting in your condition.”
“I don’t mind helping,” said Minette with her typical cheer. “Your wife is better now. The fever has broken, but she’s very tired.”
“I must sit still, for Jack,” Gwen whispered. Her eyes were closed, her head heavy upon the pillow. “I must be still.”
Minette soothed her gently. “Of course you shall be still.”
“Where is Jack?” Her eyes fluttered open but she didn’t seem to see them. “I’m being still.”
“That’s good, darling. Rest a while, and then we shall have some tea.” Minette looked over at Aidan. “Will you speak to her? I think she’d like to know you’re near.”
Aidan didn’t think she would want him near. She wanted Jack, for all his poor behavior. She’d already fallen back into sleep, dreaming of the meadow, perhaps.
“I met Gwen two days before we were to marry,” he said to Minette. “In a clearing, by a lake. I sketched her there. I was dressed in common clothes, and I told her my name was Jack.”
Minette clutched her chest. “What a relief. She’s been speaking of this fellow Jack ever since the fever broke. I didn’t know what you would make of it.” She wrung out the cloth and laid it over the edge of the bowl. “Would you care to sit with me a while?”
“You ought to be resting,” he said again. “Have you had breakfast?”
“Yes, and I am in fine health. Women do not become weak and pitiful creatures just because they are with child.” She patted Gwen’s hand as Aidan took a seat on the other side of the bed. “As for your wife, I think she is on her way to recovery. She’s very strong.”
Aidan studied Gwen’s face, her eyelids twitching in sleep. “She’s strong enough to leave me,” he said. “And almost die in the attempt.”
Minette gave a subtle shake of her head. “I don’t think she was leaving you. I think she only meant to get your attention.”
“She has my attention. She’s had my attention from the start. I’ve tried to be a good husband, but she’s never liked me.”
“She calls you ‘Sir,’” said Minette quietly. “When she talks about you to others, she refers to you as ‘the duke.’”
“Well, I am a duke, as much as she abhors me for it. I can’t change who I am, or who she is, or where she came from. She is my wife now, and calls me ‘Sir’ as a measure of respect.”
“And that is important to you?”
He gave her sharp look. “For her to respect me? You respect your husband. He surely requires it.”
“I respect him and I love him. But I never call him ‘Sir.’” She returned his look very directly. “Perhaps that is your way of distancing yourself from a wife whom you feel, perhaps, too far below you.”
He had known Minette since she was a child—and he had never heard her speak so bluntly. Worse, her words had a ring of truth. Not just a ring, but many bells tolling.
“She believes I feel that way,” he said. “But I only like to cleave to proprieties.”
“You’ve always been a stickler for manners and such.” She studied him a moment. “I wonder if you’ve been raised too properly, so now your marriage is too cold and proper. I wonder if you don’t know how to be a simple man.”
A simple man, like Jack, the man Gwen called for in her sleep.
“I’m not a simple man.” It always came back to this. “I’m a duke, Minette. It’s who I am. It’s my duty, my purpose, my responsibility.”
“Your title and responsibilities will always be part of your life. But Gwen and her needs must be part of your life now too.”
He made a low, gruff sound. “That would be fine, except that I don’t understand her needs, and she refuses to understand mine. I married her because the King of England told me to. I have an image to maintain. A sacred legacy.”
“What image? What sacred legacy? That you’re a greater fellow than her? That you’re too lofty for such trifles as love and caring?”
He crossed his arms over his chest, defending himself from Minette’s incisive words. “I care for her. I take exquisite care of her, for all the good it does me.”
“Do you love her?”
Aidan leaned forward and put his head in his hands. He would have given anything for the Minette of his childhood, toddling around their ankles and eating cakes.
“I want to love her,” he admitted between his fingers. “But there is this distance between us. Perhaps I’ve put it there. I only wished for her to respect me. I only wanted her to accept me as I am.”
“As a duke? What about plain old Arlington? Or Aidan, if you will? The kind, caring friend we all know?”
“I’ve tried to be kind,” he burst out, looking up at her. He lowered his voice as Gwen stirred in her sleep. “I’ve tried to be kind and caring, but she wants something more. She wants love, this sweet, romantic ideal that she dreamed of as a child. I don’t know how to give it to her.”
He was stunned to see tears in Minette’s eyes. “Don’t you remember?” she said. “Don’t you remember how I wished for Barrymore to love me, and how much it hurt me when he refused to?”
Good Lord. All of them had suffered, watching that misery. It never occurred to him that he was doing the same to his wife.
“He thought he was doing what was best, and what was good,” Minette continued. “He had his reasons, but it was the worst sort of torment, being denied love by my husband. All I wanted was a smile, a kiss. Some sign of true affection. When Barrymore wouldn’t give himself to me, I thought I wouldn’t survive.”
“Our situations are not the same,” Aidan said. “You loved him and you wanted him. Gwen doesn’t want me.”
“Do you think she would have ridden out into the icy night if she didn’t want you? If she wasn’t desperate for your love?” Minette clasped her hands so tightly together that her knuckles whitened. “I know a little of being a desperate woman, Arlington. I recognize myself in her.”
Minette’s throat worked as she fished out a handkerchief. Aidan bowed his head.
“So what do I do?” he asked, feeling more desperate by the moment. “Help me, Minette, since you’ve been there. What can I do to save us? How did you finally get through to Barrymore?”
“I threw a porcelain swan at him,” she said, wiping her eyes. “It shattered everywhere.” She fluttered the handkerchief with a tinkling laugh. “I don’t imagine that is helpful advice. But I threw a swan at him and shrieked that he had to love me. I behaved like a madwoman.” She gave him a pointed look. “Some might say Gwen behaved like a madwoman too.”
Was it true? Had her flight not been an act of rebellion, but a cry for love?
“She knew she could not get to Wales,” said Minette. “She is not an idiot. She was making a calculated move. Now, I suppose the next move is yours. And you know, I don’t think you told me the truth earlier. I think you do love her. I think you love her as desperately as she loves you.”
“Yes,” he admitted. “I love her in a completely unreasonable way.”
“Why unreasonable?” asked Minette.
“Because there is no basis for it. Only that she is mine, but you see...” He leaned forward again and rubbed his eyes. “I’m afraid that beneath all my richness and finery, and grand title, there is nothing to appeal to her, nothing I can give her. We are nothing alike.”
“Oh, goodness.” Minette chuckled and adjusted Gwen’s blanket. “Barrymore and I are nothing alike, as you well know, but I love him with all my heart and soul. He puts up with my chattering, and I put up with his brooding. I appreciate the things that are special about him, even if he’s nothing like me.” She tucked away her handkerchief, her chin tilted in a thoughtful way. “Gwen has spoken of Jack on numerous occasions, even as she fought the fever. And Jack is you, without all your richness and finery, and grand title. Perhaps it would please her to wake to a husband more like Jack, and less like the Duke of Arlington.”
“But I am the Duke of Arlington.” He swallowed against the emotion in his throat. “That’s always been all I am.”