The Truth Behind Their Practical Marriage (Penniless Brides 0f Convenience Book 3)

by Marguerite Kaye

  * * *

  It wasn’t until a tear splashed on to the keyboard of the harpsichord that Estelle realised she was crying. She closed the lid, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. Everything she played sounded like a dirge, for the spark had gone from her music as well as her spirit. Phoebe’s latest letter lay on the desk. Eloise was making a rare trip to London in December. Phoebe thought it would be a wonderful surprise if Estelle and Aidan joined them. She longed to see her sisters, but at the same time, she dreaded the very idea, for they would take one look at her and know she was unhappy.

  Besides, Aidan wouldn’t go. He could barely bring himself to dine with their closest neighbours, and had cancelled most of the other invitations they had received and originally accepted. She had no idea what excuse he’d given, but the spate of callers following their wedding party had died to a trickle. He was becoming a recluse, and perforce so was she.

  She picked up her pen and dipped it in the inkwell, but after writing My Dearest Phoebe she was at a loss. Even if her twin was sitting opposite her in this room right now, she couldn’t begin to imagine confiding in her. What would she say? I’m in love with my husband, I think my husband might be in love with me, but he can’t make love to me? She didn’t really care about whether or not Aidan could make love—well, only a little bit—but Aidan cared. If only she hadn’t begged him to, then they wouldn’t be in this mess. It was her own fault. If they had stuck to the original agreement to keep their marriage platonic, then everything would be fine. At this very moment, they might be discussing how and when to make a start on establishing their family.

  She knew that wasn’t true. The real issue wasn’t that Aidan had been unmanned, the question was why? He believed he had deprived Aoife of what she wanted most in the world. It was a short step from there to believing that he was responsible for her death. The sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach told Estelle that she was edging closer to the truth. Such an extreme step as Aoife had taken could only have been contemplated in the depths of despair. When all hope was lost, as it must have been, if Aidan could not...

  She was crying again. Her heart was wrenched with pity, and a desperate desire to find some way to make him see that he was wrong, that the final act had been Aoife’s decision alone. It wasn’t his fault. He had done everything he could to give Aoife what she wanted, but what she wanted was impossible. Why hadn’t he been able to see that? Why couldn’t Aidan understand that you simply couldn’t make the impossible possible, no matter how much you wanted to.

  She understood that. Though their parents had been washed up and were buried together, Diarmuid’s body had never been found. That had been one of the most difficult things any of them had had to come to terms with. There had been times, in the first months with Aunt Kate, when she and Phoebe had returned to their fantasy that he was living on a desert island somewhere. They convinced themselves that though they might never see him again, he was alive. Other times, they played the if only game. If only Papa had chosen a school in Ireland. If only Diarmuid had been ill and unable to travel. If only the ship had sailed later or earlier. If only their brother had learnt to swim. If only they had made more of their goodbyes.

  If only Aidan would accept that it was Aoife and Aoife alone who took her own life. If only Estelle could make him see how happy they could be together without ever making love.

  The ink had dried on her pen. She set it down. The only person she wanted to discuss her troubles with was the only person who could help resolve them.

  * * *

  ‘May I come in?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  Estelle, seated at her desk, turned away from him, and Aidan saw her surreptitiously wiping her eyes. She’d been crying again. He pretended not to notice because that was clearly what she wanted him to do, hovering in the doorway until she turned round sporting that rigid smile he had come to dread. ‘What was it you wanted?’

  ‘I thought we might take lunch together, for a change.’

  It was a simple request, or should have been, but nothing between them was simple these days and he deserved that guarded look she was giving him, as if his request for lunch masked a darker purpose. ‘I thought you preferred to get something sent over from the kitchens to the estate office.’

  ‘I thought it would be nice to eat together, like we used to.’

  ‘And talk?’

  ‘Of course we’ll talk,’ Aidan said, as if they always talked, as if dinner hadn’t become an ordeal, akin to a meal taken under the auspices of a silent order of monks. ‘We can talk about old times, meals we’ve shared.’

  Estelle’s expression had lightened, but it darkened again at this. ‘I no longer have the healthy appetite I used to have for lunch.’

  Or dinner, Aidan thought heavily. She was very good at rearranging the food on her plate to look as if she’d eaten, but he was sadly vastly experienced in spotting such a tactic. He was squeezing the life out of her, quite literally. They couldn’t go on like this. ‘Please, come and have lunch with me. I’ve taken the liberty of organising it.’ He held out his hand. ‘I want us to sit down together and try to be ourselves again. Do you think we could try to do that?’

  ‘Oh, Aidan.’ She hurried over to him. ‘We shouldn’t have to try, should we?’

  He ushered her out of the room, deciding not to reply to this because the honest answer was too depressing. In the hallway, he picked up her cloak from the chair where he had placed it, and her brows lifted in surprise.

  ‘I know the castle can be draughty but I’m not at the stage of needing a cloak indoors.’

  ‘We’re not eating indoors.’

  Where are we going?’

  ‘Wait and see.’

  Outside, the rain had stopped, leaving the sky a pearly grey. Estelle took his arm as he led the way past the kitchen gardens, and though she was still holding her smile in place, he was aware of her studying him from under her lashes, aware of her trying to understand his mood, and to align her own. It sickened him that she had to do this, that this was what they had come to, so polite and careful when they should be carefree, both of them afraid to speak their thoughts.

  Tell her, tell her, tell her, was the rhythmic chant that accompanied him everywhere these days. It was never silent. All he could to was drown it out by speaking over it, but when the words threatened to spill out, when Estelle looked at him with that particular mixture of hurt and yearning, he had no option but to rush from the room.

  Tell her.

  It was there now, an insistent demand to be heard. He had tried to pacify the voice in his head by revealing some of the truth, then with more of the truth and then the bulk of it. It still wasn’t enough, and his body had punished him for not recognising that fact.

  He couldn’t tell her. Not yet. He had one last throw of the dice left and this was it. Recapture what they had. Bring those memories to the forefront of his mind, let them displace the other ones. Estelle was all he wanted. Estelle, for herself alone, not as the mother to their adopted family, but as his wife. She was everything to him. He had to cling on to that, and somehow make things right between them.

  Opening the main door of the succession houses, he led her through to the fern house, where the air was sweet with the smell of warmed peat, and the earthy, slightly sickly scent of the ferns themselves. The wrought-iron table had been set up in the warmest corner as he’d specified, the matching chairs padded with cushions, the table set without a cloth, using the plainest crockery and silverware. Two glasses sat next to a jug of wine. Their food was set out on a separate table with heated dishes.

  He was nervous. Desperately nervous. ‘Well, what do you think?’

  ‘Our own private osteria,’ Estelle said softly.

  ‘Under glass, as I’m sure you have noted. I’m sorry I didn’t have time to have it redesigned into a dome.’

  Tears sparkl
ed on her lashes. ‘This is lovely, Aidan.’

  ‘It wasn’t meant to make you cry.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Of course you’re not.’ He wiped her tears away gently with his fingertips. Her breath caught when he touched her. He wanted to kiss her. He could see in her eyes that she wanted him to kiss her. But he hesitated, and the moment was gone, so instead he pulled out her chair with a flourish. ‘Would the signora care to be seated?’

  ‘She would. Grazie. And how are you today?’

  Delighted to see her enter into the spirit of his homage, Aidan adopted a suitably lugubrious expression. ‘God has spared me for another day, but you have brought the sunshine into our impromptu dining room this afternoon,’ he said, flicking a cloth over the table, before pouring the wine.

  If Estelle’s laugh was forced, it was still a laugh. ‘Signor Giordano! I remember him.’

  ‘‘I’m sure he remembers you to this day too. I’m afraid that Cook struggled to source some of the ingredients, but I am hoping that she’s been able to bring a little taste of Tuscany to County Kildare.’

  ‘Pinzimonio,’ Estelle said, when he set down a plate of raw vegetables. ‘Irish style, I see. And with an anchovy dressing, if I’m not mistaken.’ She lifted her glass, chinking it with his. ‘Saluti.’

  She didn’t tuck in with her usual gusto, but then she had not done so for weeks. She did eat though, and he forced himself to do the same, knowing her eyes were on him. They talked of that first lunch in Florence, and by the time he brought Cook’s version of affettati misti to the table, they had both begun to relax a little.’

  ‘Blood sausage, ham and piccalilli,’ Estelle said, with a nod of approval. ‘Cook has been extremely inventive. Do you remember...?’

  Day by day, they conjured up the hours they had spent together under the benign Florentine skies. What was the best lunch? Which café served the best coffee, the best ice? What was their favourite walk, their favourite church?

  ‘I sincerely hope it’s not tripe,’ Estelle said as he removed the cover from the heated dish. ‘No, that smells far too good.’

  ‘Pappardelle sulla lepre,’ Aidan said, ‘though it’s rabbit and not hare. You gave Cook the recipe along with several others some time back.’

  ‘I’d forgotten. This pasta is delicious.’

  They continued to talk, though there were moments of silence now, when they gazed at each other and when they smiled, and the tense, awkward silences that had become commonplace between them were banished. When the rabbit was finished and he’d put the plates on the side table, she leaned her chin on one hand, and he covered her other hand with his, just as they used to do.

  ‘Thank you, Aidan,’ she said. ‘That was wonderful.’

  ‘I’m afraid there’s no ice to finish, but we could take a turn around the fernery and pretend it’s the Parco delle Cascine—or a scale model of it.’

  She let him help her to her feet, and she tucked her arm in his. ‘The fernery was your grandfather’s idea, did you know that? I found a notebook of his in the attics full of all sorts of complicated architectural drawings for heating and irrigation pipes. It looks as if your engineering bent extends at least a generation further back than your father.’

  ‘It seems to have deserted me of late. I can’t even come up with a decent design for a modest bridge.’

  ‘Build a new Ponte Vecchio. Or forget all about the bridge, and build us a dome.’

  ‘I wish we’d never left Florence.’

  * * *

  Estelle came to an abrupt halt, her smile faltering. ‘Don’t say that. We left Florence to build a future for ourselves here, together. We’ll always have our memories of our time in Florence, and this has been a lovely reminder of how happy we can be, but wallowing in our shared past isn’t going to make everything right between us in the here and now.’

  ‘I’ll never forget Florence.’

  ‘You say that as if it’s all we have, Aidan.’

  ‘I didn’t mean it that way.’

  But he’d sounded horribly as if he had meant it exactly that way, as if there was no hope for them. She wouldn’t accept that. ‘It’s not about forgetting Florence, it’s about forgetting what happened to make you run there,’ Estelle said, ‘and why you’re still not able to consign it to the past, after all this time. I know you feel guilty, I know you think that it was all your fault.’

  ‘Please!’ He pulled her into his arms. ‘Can’t you see, I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘Then why did you bring me here?’

  ‘I don’t want to lose you.’

  ‘Aidan!’ She put her arms around his neck. ‘Don’t say that. It’s surely not come to that.’

  ‘I don’t want it to. You do know that, don’t you?’

  He sounded so desperate. She tried not to panic. ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she said, smoothing her hand over his cheek, pressing closer against him.

  ‘I can’t bear to contemplate it.’

  ‘Then don’t.’

  The anguish in his voice terrified her, but the need in him made her desperate to reassure him, and herself too. She pulled him towards her and their lips met, clinging without moving for an agonising moment, as if they were afraid to move, and then they did, and she forgot her fear because the taste of him and the touch of him and the way he groaned when their tongues touched had the same effect on her as it always had. She lost herself in kissing him, and he kissed her back wildly, urgently. Her hands smoothed and stroked, clutching at his shoulders and his back and his behind, and his hands were on her too, smoothing and stroking and cupping, and it felt so right and she had missed him so desperately.

  Aidan wrenched himself free, his chest heaving. ‘This isn’t working.’

  Estelle stared at him in confusion, for she’d felt the physical evidence that everything was working perfectly well pressing against her.

  ‘It solves nothing, I can finally see that,’ Aidan said, confusing her further.

  ‘What solves nothing?’

  He was staring at her as if she was a stranger. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  The tone of his voice made her blood freeze, for it was gentle, the kind of voice that a person used when they knew that what they were about to say was going to be hurtful. ‘Please don’t, Aidan. Whatever it is you’re going to say...’

  He covered her hands with his, but the gesture, far from reassuring her, sent a shiver down her spine, as if someone was walking over her grave. She snatched her hands away, steeling herself. ‘What are you sorry for?’

  ‘I brought you here thinking that if we could forget for a while, and remember what it was like in Florence then it might change things.’ He covered his face with his hands. ‘But it’s impossible. I can’t be the husband you deserve, Estelle. I am so very sorry.’

  He dropped his hands. His eyes were bleak, so bleak that she wanted to look away.

  ‘When I married you, I never expected we would make love. In fact I married you on condition that we wouldn’t.’

  ‘It’s not about making love or not making love.’

  ‘Then what is it about? Please, Aidan, don’t say you can’t be my husband, you are my husband.’

  ‘Estelle, I’d agree to almost anything when you look at me like that, but I know in my gut it would be wrong. I’m sorry, I simply can’t do it. I’m not going to make the same mistake twice.’

  ‘What on earth do you mean by that?’ She took a stumbling step away from him. ‘I’m not Aoife.’

  ‘I don’t mean you might kill yourself, I’m worried that I’m destroying you.’

  ‘Aidan...’

  But he shook his head violently. ‘I thought I could put it all behind me, but I can’t.’

  ‘Aidan, I don’t understand.’

  He eyed her sadly. ‘No, but you will. It doesn’t matter
how deep you bury the past, it’s still there and always will be. The only solution is to confront it head-on. I love you too much to live a lie with you.’

  Despite everything her heart leapt. ‘Oh, Aidan, I love you too. I love you so much.’ Aidan loved her. She loved him. Surely that was all that mattered. But one look at his face told her that she was wrong. This wasn’t a beginning. It was an ending.

  ‘Estelle, I love you as if you’re part of me, but ultimately it makes no difference. I shouldn’t have married you.’

  ‘Don’t say that!’

  Aidan paled, but his mouth remained set. ‘We need to visit the island.’

  ‘The island?’

  ‘The past is buried there and so is the truth about what happened.’

  No sooner were his words out than a crack of thunder sounded overhead, and rains started pounding down on the glass of the fernery. Cursing, Aidan pushed open one of the windows used for ventilation to reveal a sky iron grey with black clouds, the wind so strong that the window was nearly wrenched from his hand. By the time he’d wrestled it shut he was drenched, and the fernery was enveloped in gloom. ‘There’s no way we can go out in that. It’s going to be a struggle to get back to the house. We can talk here.’

  ‘No!’ Whatever he had to say, she needed to prepare herself to hear. ‘In the morning, when the storm has passed, we’ll go to the island then.’

  ‘Estelle, I won’t change my mind. Putting it off until the morning will only prolong the agony for both of us.’

  She knew that, she could see it in his face, but she wasn’t ready. It was too big a leap, from their Florentine lunch to this. ‘In the morning,’ she said stubbornly. ‘Please, Aidan, let’s wait until then.’

  * * *

  A flurry of rain rattled the windowpane, and a gust of wind found a gap in the casement, making the curtains billow. Shivering, Estelle curled up under the sheets, knowing that sleep would never come. How could it, when in a few short hours she’d finally discover the true reason for her husband’s tortured and self-destructive behaviour.