Decision made, he rang for Russell. There was much to do if he was going to leave in the morning, and little time in which to do it.
Chapter 28
The clock on the mantle chimed the hour and Teresa frowned at it. It was hardly the clock’s fault that Martin was late for dinner. His note had been terse, merely stating that some estate business was taking longer than expected and he would be delayed. She could have started without him, she supposed — Mrs. Watts had certainly suggested the possibility, saying that when Martin got into work like this it could be several hours before he came up for food.
Teresa had declined, preferring to wait for Martin. He hadn’t missed joining her for dinner yet, something that encouraged her even as she told herself not to read too much into it. That had been nearly an hour ago, however, and her stomach was beginning to rumble. The clock chimed again.
The door swung open and Martin walked in before stopping and looking at her with surprise. “I thought you would have eaten by now.”
His tone was brusque, as if he wished she had. Teresa raised an eyebrow at this. “I thought we’d agreed to eat dinner together. It wasn’t that long of a wait.”
Well, not too long, at any rate. She had to admit she was pleased to see the trays of food the footmen were carrying in.
Martin waved a hand at this. “We’d agreed to do it as time permitted. I thought I sent a note making it clear that I would be working late.”
Teresa folded her hands in front of her and waited as the footmen served the meal and then withdrew. She took a bite and swallowed before looking back up to meet Martin’s gaze. “You did. I chose to wait for you anyway.”
Far from improving his mood, her response appeared to worsen it. “You shouldn’t have.”
She blinked. “Why not?”
“We’re two separate people, Teresa. We lead separate lives.” He sat across from her, his movements sharp, and loaded his plate with food, taking a few bites to eat before he continued.
“There is absolutely no reason for you to order your life to mine.” The words were clipped, all the arrogant Earl and nothing of the man who’d shared her bed for the past four nights. The contrast was startling. She set down her fork.
“Is something wrong, Martin?”
“Nothing’s wrong.” Still nothing of the man underneath the Earl. He took another bite, methodically working his way through the food in front of him. Hungry as she had been, Teresa wasn’t sure she could eat now. There was now a cold feeling settling in the pit of her stomach, a realization that something had changed since she had last seen him and she didn’t know what. She did her best to ignore it. She was probably just imagining things.
It was clear, however, that that line of conversation was not going to be productive. She changed topics. “I rode down to Bramburgh today to check on how the Robins were doing, since there’s been the cough going around, and then worked on some preliminary ideas for a harvest festival. Your grandmother used to sponsor one and I think it would be a lovely tradition to bring back for the tenants. We could invite some of the local gentry and turn it into a house party, perhaps with some hunting? I’d like your opinion before I go too much further with the planning though.”
“I’ll look at them when I get back from London.” He made the pronouncement without even looking up from his dinner plate, his attention clearly still on the meal.
“London?” She narrowed her eyes. “I hadn’t heard anything about that. When are we leaving?”
“I leave tomorrow,” he said, as if that explained everything, emphasizing the singular. The cold, sick feeling in her stomach intensified.
“I thought we were going to visit Bramburgh the day after next, to check on the progress on the new roofs. That’s what I told them today.” She’d hoped, when he’d agreed to her suggestion of the trip, that it had indicated his willingness to begin to involve her more in estate matters.
Martin shrugged. “Allsworth will take care of that. It’s up to you whether you want to ride to the village with him or not.”
“But what if I want to go with you to London?” Not that she really wanted to leave the estate yet for the city, but she wanted to be with Martin. She absolutely did not want to be left behind at the estate. Out of sight would lead to out of mind far too easily.
“It doesn’t matter.” Martin took another sip of his soup. “I don’t intend to stay long and plan to travel fast. Taking you would merely slow me down and for no purpose.”
The words felt like a slap. “I can travel light.”
“Perhaps.” He set his soup spoon back down. “But I don’t have the time to waste in case it turns out you can’t. Besides, my business in London will occupy most of my time in the city. I’ll have very little time available to entertain you.”
“I don’t need to be entertained.” It was as if the past four weeks hadn’t happened and they were back to the beginning. Her temper flared and she struggled to keep it under control. A lady never showed anger, after all. “I’m sure I could find something to occupy my time in London.”
“I’m sure you could.” His voice, chilly before, now reminded her of the coldest winter nights she could remember. She could feel her cheeks heating up in response and knew she was losing the battle for control.
“What’s wrong, Martin? Why won’t you tell me?” The man she’d fallen in love with had to be in there, somewhere. He would have valued her opinion on whatever business needed to be done in London, would have missed their after-dinner chats too much to think of doing without them when it was perfectly reasonable for her to travel to London with him. There was no reason she had to stay at the estate. Even the harvest festival planning could be put off for a week or two with no ill effects.
“I told you before there’s nothing wrong.” He seemed almost offended at the suggestion. “Your reaction, on the other hand, seems entirely out of proportion to the news that I need to go to London.”
Teresa felt her hands clench into fists and was grateful they were in her lap so the table blocked his view. If he thought her reaction was unreasonable already, seeing that wasn’t going to convince him otherwise. She took a deep breath.
“I hardly think it’s unreasonable to expect that we would travel together, especially as we only got married a month ago.”
Martin’s laugh was harsh. “Most of the ton would hardly blink an eye at it. Separate lives, remember?”
She flushed. “I thought we were more than that.” She hesitated. “Friends, if nothing else.”
“You’re my wife,” he said, as if that categorically ruled out the possibility of friendship. Or anything else.
“And you’re my husband, yet I still seem to enjoy your company. Most of the time, anyway.” She balled up the napkin in her lap, having long since lost her appetite. “Society might want to pretend otherwise, but there’s no rule against loving your spouse.”
Martin’s eyes flashed at that. “Society may not have such a rule but I do.” The icy cold was gone, replaced by pure determination. Teresa met his glare, holding her chin up.
“Why? Because of your parents?” At his silence, she softened her tone slightly. “What happened between your parents was awful. It also wasn’t love.”
Again, that bitter, bitter laugh. “And how can you know that?”
“Because that’s not what love is.” The silence in the dining room held a weight, as if much more than a simple discussion hung in the balance on her answer. Teresa groped to find the right words. “Love is about committing yourself to a person, about being happy when they’re happy and wanting to cheer them up when they’re sad. They become part of you, something you didn’t realize was missing until the space is filled. You don’t hurt them deliberately because seeing them hurting hurts you.”
Martin simply looked at her as she said that, the expression in his eyes inscrutable. When she finished, he pushed back his seat and stood up, pacing back and forth as if he could no longer remain still. Teresa resiste
d the urge to join him, instead doing her best to be an oasis of calm. Mostly she felt like all she accomplished was half-holding her breath as she waited to hear his response.
In the silence, what she’d said circled around and around in her head. The words had been a surprise to her, putting into words what she hadn’t yet realized about her feelings for Martin. It was startling to realize how naive she had been at that first ball, when she’d announced to the ton that she wanted to marry for love. Even with the example of her parents, her idea of love had been more courtship and butterflies in her stomach, smiles and laughter.
Smiles and laughter still played a role, she knew, but this was far deeper than that. His happiness now mattered for hers. Seeing his pain — the pain he hardly acknowledged, even as she could sense it lurking behind the face he presented to the world — made her ache, desperately wanting to find a way to heal the wound his parents had left behind. She couldn’t, she knew that, but feelings didn’t respond to logic. Unfortunately.
Finally, Martin stopped pacing and looked at her again, his jaw set. “You can’t just say something wasn’t love simply because it doesn’t fit with your idea of what it should be.”
“But you can say it was even though nothing of what happened was consistent with how people who are actually in love behave?” She refused to yield this point to him. “It sounds to me like the only person your father loved — was capable of loving — was himself. To decide because of that that you’ll cut yourself off from even the possibility of love only hurts us.”
His eyes darkened. “There is no us. We’re separate.”
“There is absolutely an us.” Teresa pushed back from the table and rose to meet him. He might still have several inches on her but she wasn’t going to let him loom over her like some great beast. “We’re married. Two people, yes, but we’ve made the choice to live our lives together.”
“There was very little choice, as I recall.”
The words, dry as they were, stung and she snapped back, “I seem to recall you choosing to kiss me, Martin.”
He was silent for a moment. “So I did.”
Emboldened, she pushed her point. “I know you feel love isn’t a possibility for you but that’s only because you’re standing in the way of it, convinced it will never be. If you’d open your mind to the possibility, you’d be surprised-”
“No.” His voice was flat, final. “Love will never be a possibility in this marriage. I thought you understood that.”
“Why?” Teresa threw her hands up, frustration finally making her throw caution (and ladylike behavior) to the wind. “What are you afraid of?”
“Nothing!” He turned and stalked to the window, looking out over the estate. Close as they were to summer, the sunset still lingered on the horizon despite the relatively late hour, painting the hills outside the estate with liquid gold. Normally Teresa would have relished a view like that but tonight she hardly noticed, focused as she was on Martin. Martin hardly seemed to notice it, his tone flat and unemotional. “If love were possible — if my family were capable of it — what it offers hardly seems worth the headache that it would cause. It is unfashionable to love one’s spouse, after all.”
“Because you put such great stock into what the ton thinks of you.” She couldn’t keep the disdain for that excuse out of her voice.
“I don’t and you know it.” He faced her again. “But how much of your parents’ decision to live in the country was by their own choice and how much was driven by Society’s disapproval? What did their families think of it? You say they were happy. I never met them to be able to say otherwise. But I find it hard to believe that they were completely unaffected by Society’s censure if they retreated from London so completely.”
Teresa opened her mouth to deny this but then shut it, a few comments her mother had made over the years drifting up from the depths of her memory. They hadn’t made any sense at the time, young as she had been and convinced that she was the happiest (and luckiest) girl alive. Thinking back on them now, with years of experience in the city, she could hear the wistfulness in her mother’s voice, memories of a past she hadn’t necessarily wanted to leave behind.
“You begin to understand what I mean.” Her silence clearly spoke for her, easy enough for Martin to hear and think he understood.
Yet he didn’t, not really. Because for all of her mother’s comments and the occasional wistful tone in her voice, her mother had always, always supported and encouraged Teresa’s dream of finding love. Whatever her mother might have regretted about the move to the country, Teresa knew with certainty that her mother had never regretted marrying her father.
“Perhaps. And still I ask again, what difference would that make to you? You don’t care what the ton thinks of you. You already spend as little time in London as you can get away with.” She was done backing down every time the subject of love came up. Letting him evade the subject clearly hadn’t changed a thing.
“My point is that it introduces complications — complications I would rather do without — and very little to balance them out.”
“But what about all the good parts about being in love?” He still hadn’t really answered her question, but she could be flexible. A change in approach might yield better results.
“As far as I can tell, gentlemen who think they’re in love act like complete fools. I wouldn’t consider that a good part.” He moved over to the sideboard and poured himself a glass of wine, downing half of it in one swallow.
“How so?” Teresa could believe love would make people do foolish things — look at the argument she was having right now — but she suspected her definition of foolish was very different than Martin’s.
“Making completely irrational, illogical decisions for no reason other than to make their paramour happy.” He finished the wine and set the glass back on the table.
“And you disapprove of putting someone else’s feelings above logic?”
“I disapprove of anything that would put the work I’ve accomplished here at the estate at risk and making ill-advised financial decisions because of love would certainly do that.” That, Teresa decided, was one of the first truly honest things he’d said this evening.
“Do you really think you’d fall in love with a woman who would put what you’ve done here at risk?” Hypothetical though the discussion might be, the idea that he would think she would risk the estate over baubles stung.
“I don’t think I’ll ever fall in love at all.”
That stung even more.
“Then you’re more of a coward than I thought.”
Martin’s eyes flashed. “I may be many things but a coward isn’t one of them.”
“Oh, I must have you confused with some other gentleman afraid to take a chance on love because he’s terrified of being hurt.” The words slipped out before she could stop them, a measure of her hurt that she’d lost so much control. She bit her lip. “I’m sorry, that was uncalled for.”
“Indeed.” His tone was distant and she winced inside, knowing that if she’d made any progress at all, she’d just lost it. “Fascinating as this conversation has been, I must ask you to forgive me for not joining you in the library tonight. I still have much to do before I leave for London in the morning.”
He didn’t even wait for a reply but turned on his heel and pulled open the door. She winced as it shut solidly behind him, the sound echoing through the room. There was a finality to the sound, as if it marked the endpoint to more than simply dinner. A dinner which neither of them had really touched, Teresa realized as she surveyed the remaining food on the table. She sighed and opened up her napkin, placing some of the rolls inside it. She wasn’t hungry now, not after that discussion, but it would be easier than ringing for a tray later, especially since the household would be busy preparing for Martin’s departure in the morning.
Besides, if she could keep her hands busy, perhaps she could ignore the ache in her chest and the feeling that something precious
had been irrevocably damaged.
Chapter 29
He didn’t come to say goodbye.
Teresa watched, numb, as the coach crested the hill and disappeared, heading towards the main road and from there, on to London. Even after the argument last night, she would have thought he would say goodbye before he left.
But he hadn’t come by the breakfast parlor, even though she was downstairs shortly after dawn. She’d sat there alone, nursing a cup of tea and hoping he’d walk through the door. In the end, she’d only been able to watch the carriage leaving because one of the footmen had knocked on the door and let her know that his lordship was outside.
The skies were a brilliant blue already, no sign of the clouds that had draped the countryside for the past week and a half. It would be a perfect day for traveling, she had to admit. Martin would likely make good time on the road, especially as she’d seen him riding alongside the phaeton. I could have ridden too, though. I wouldn’t have slowed him down.
It was her own fault. She’d pushed too hard last night, pushed on a topic she knew was dangerous ground. Something had clearly happened even before he’d joined her for dinner and she had ignored all the warning signs because she’d thought she understood him.
Maybe he isn’t the only one prone to arrogance. Her years on the side of the ballroom, watching the ton and guessing what people would do next, had left her confident in her ability to predict human nature. Too confident, if she was honest with herself under the brutal light of day. Martin had surprised her time and time again and yet she’d assumed she understood him, could just make him see reason and walk him out of the tangle of hurt around his heart. Stupid.
Entangled with the Earl (Tangled Threads Book 1) Page 25