But they became erratic. The high of them often as unsettling as the low, which could last months. And eventually became all that remained.
It was only after his marriage with Serena had deteriorated to the point she no longer spoke to him that he realised he’d been...a romantic. He’d believed that she would be the one person he could be himself with.
He had met Beatrice when she was a girl, and had felt instantly drawn to the child who was nearly a prisoner in her bedchamber. He so rarely felt compelled to reach out to people around him. And truly, he did not often need to. He was a duke. People were desperate to reach out to him, and it made his life all the easier for it.
But she...
He had wanted to make her smile. In a world that seemed very determined to give her nothing to smile about.
If there was one thing he had understood, it was what it was like to be born into a life you had not chosen, and that felt ill-suited to your nature. And so he had always paid her visits when he’d come to call. Had always brought her sweets from London.
He had recognised a rebellion in her eyes, and he had felt a kinship to her. For he had been much the same. In the wrong life, the wrong family. Perhaps the wrong bloodline. Never meant to be the heir.
She had been placed in the wrong body. One that could not contain the wildness in her spirit. One he wholeheartedly supported.
Until, of course, it ensnared him.
Still, he would never have sentenced the poor creature to a marriage with him.
One of the many, many ways in which he was wrong included what he desired from women. He had been young and foolish and he had believed that his wife would...that as she was a virgin when she came to his bed he might—in time—introduce her to his preferences and she would share them.
Nothing could have been further from their reality.
In the years since his wife’s death, many women had enjoyed their time in his bed. But those women were not ladies.
Ladies, marriage...
All of that was supposed to be behind him.
‘You can continue to do whatever you like,’ Kendal continued, as if a wife was an incidental hardly worth overthinking. ‘You already have your heir. And Beatrice will have...a child to care for should she wish it. She... She desperately wants that. I know when the doctor told her that it was not advisable that she bear children she was deeply upset.’
‘She cannot have children?’ Briggs had not been aware of that.
‘She should not. That is my concern. She very likely can. But you know how her health was in her childhood, and it is the opinion of those in the medical profession that she would take a great risk to bear children. It was why she was not to make her debut this Season.’
‘That’s what you told her?’ Briggs asked.
‘Yes.’
‘What exactly did you tell her, Kendal?’
‘That she would not need to marry. That she would not marry. Because I would take care of her. And of course I will. She is my responsibility. It is my responsibility to keep her safe.’
He could see his friend had no real idea of what he’d done, and further that he...did not know his own sister.
Beatrice was sweet, it was true. But she was also quietly determined. And she was not half as biddable as she appeared. Over the years he’d stayed at Bybee House on many occasions and he knew Beatrice was often not where Kendal assumed her to be. He had seen her appear at dinner out of breath, with red cheeks from being in the cold, and occasionally a leaf somewhere in her tangle of brown hair.
But of course, his friend’s largest shortcoming centred around the idea everyone took his authority as seriously as he did.
His little ward, Eleanor, she hung on his every word.
His own sister on the other hand...
‘I see,’ Briggs said. ‘So, what you’ve done is create this situation we find ourselves in, while laying blame everywhere else.’
‘How have I created the situation?’ Kendal asked, clearly outraged.
‘You offered your sister a life sentence. Living here at Bybee House in the country, away from society, from friends, from freedom. I don’t know why she chose to target me as her means of escape, but she has found it, hasn’t she?’