He dressed quickly, eschewing the nonessentials, hastened by the eerie sense of foreboding that slipped over him. A few minutes later he tapped on the connecting door between his room and Poppy’s. No reply rose to meet him, and so he pushed the door open and peeked inside. Her bed hangings lay open; the bed had been made up already. She wasn’t within the room, and neither was her lady’s maid, Vivian. It shouldn’t have been alarming. Lately, Poppy had spent the majority of her time in the library, after all.
But she wasn’t there, either. And he realized how long it had been since he’d last heard the echo of his own footsteps in the quiet house, as they were usually drowned out by the gay chatter of his young sisters-in-law. Just now they sounded like a death knell, as if the house itself had died, relieved of the live breathed into it by its occupants.
He heard the sound of footsteps down the hall before him, and for a moment his heart lifted—until it plummeted once again when Mrs. Sedgwick turned the corner, a bundle of linens clasped in her arms.
“Mrs. Sedgwick,” he said. “Have you seen my wife today?”
“Of course, sir,” she replied, pausing in the hallway. “Half the household was in a tizzy packing up the carriage for her, after all.”
Packing up the carriage? Suddenly it felt as if the air had been sucked from his lungs, and he braced one palm on the wall to steady himself. “The carriage?” he echoed. “Did she say where she was going?”
Mrs. Sedgwick canted her head, surveying him speculatively. “I believe she’s gone with Miss Victoria and Miss Isobel to Her Grace’s residence,” she said carefully. “At least, that’s what she told the coachman. She did not explain herself to me, and it wasn’t my place to ask.”
No, of course it wasn’t. But she looked at him as if she pitied him—as if, without Poppy’s influence, she expected him to slide right back into his old habits. He had, after all, misplaced his wife not once, but twice within just over a month and a half of marriage.
Frankly, he wasn’t altogether certain that her judgment was off the mark. If Poppy had had the carriage packed up, then she was not intending on a brief visit. She had left him. Poppy had left him. She’d taken her sisters and removed herself from his household. He should have been angry, but instead of fury, it was sorrow that wrenched his heart, the grief of loss that pulsed through his veins. He’d suspected she might need time, but to leave him? It was unthinkable.
“Have the carriage brought around,” he said. “I’ll be going after her.”
∞∞∞
His first thought, upon arriving at Jilly’s residence, was that Jilly did not seem surprised to see him. In fact, she seemed rather pleased by his presence, as if in coming he’d displayed a sort of character that she’d not expected from him.
“Six hours,” she told him, bouncing her daughter in her arms as he strode past her into the foyer. “I believe that beats your previous record by about a week.”
David had not been aware that she’d known that he’d lost track of Poppy before, but even as he felt himself flush with embarrassment, he supposed it couldn’t come as too much of a shock. She had been determined to make friends with Poppy, after all—it stood to reason that she’d discovered Poppy had gone missing even before he had all those weeks ago. The only true surprise was that she’d not taunted him with it before now.
“Where is she?” he asked, heading for the drawing room.
“Not here,” Jilly replied. “David, come sit. You look awful. Here.” She dumped her daughter into his arms. “I’ll find Bartleby and have him send for tea.” And with that she took off, leaving him to fend for himself with his arms full of a blanket-swaddled toddler.
With a sigh he cast himself onto a couch, adjusting the squirming bundle in his arms. His niece, Olivia, peered up at him with a toothy grin, her cherubic, chubby little face framed by a tousled mass of strawberry blond curls. “You wouldn’t simply run off on your husband without so much as a note, would you?” he inquired of the child, who flailed her little fists and made a cooing baby noise at him. “No, I don’t suppose you would.”
He’d not spent much time in his niece’s company—children belonged in the nursery, after all, and it wasn’t as if she had much to say, besides—but she was a pretty child, prone to bursting spontaneously into charming giggles that he found rather adorable.
He hadn’t given a single thought to a family, being so newly married. But he supposed it might be nice, someday, to have one of these cuddly little things. Perhaps a few of them. A little boy that Poppy could imbue with all her copious knowledge of estate management, that he could teach to ride and fence and perhaps, with time, groom to take his seat in Parliament. A little girl to be spoiled by her aunts and who would doubtless give him countless heart palpitations, because any daughter of Poppy’s would certainly be a reformer, a revolutionary.
All this was, of course, moot without Poppy.
Jilly sailed into the room a moment later. “Tea’s coming,” she said. “Here, I’ll take her if you like.”
“I’ve got her,” he said. “She’s not a problem.” But she did have her tiny hand fisted in his hair. He tugged it free with a grimace and tapped her nose in gentle reproof. “What did you mean, she’s not here?” he asked of Jilly.
“Just that,” she said. “She brought the girls over this morning and asked if I’d take charge of them for the time being. I was, of course, delighted. They adore Olivia, you know.” She preened as only a proud parent could, and took a seat across from him, smoothing out her skirts. “But she didn’t stay.”
“Where did she go?” he asked.
“Bath, I think,” she said. “She sent your carriage back and borrowed mine instead. She didn’t want to inconvenience you.”
The word sliced into his conscience like a knife. Inconvenience him? As if he were a stranger, at best an acquaintance—she didn’t want to inconvenience him by going missing and compounding the issue by commandeering his carriage.
“David, don’t judge yourself too harshly,” Jilly sighed. “She was not upset, if you were worried. She was quite composed, I think.”
“She didn’t—” He broke off, surprised by the uneven fluctuation of his voice. “She didn’t even leave me a note.” And he’d searched.
“What should she have said?” Jilly inquired gently.
“Anything. She’s full of words,” he said. “She’s a novelist, for God’s sake. She could have written a whole bloody speech.” But she’d left him nothing at all, and perhaps that had been a statement in itself, far more so than any note could have been. She’d said her piece last evening, and he’d reacted unfavorably, and now there was nothing else left for her to say. She’d not bothered with an impassioned plea, or a pretty farewell, or even her well-wishes. She’d simply packed herself up and left. It felt like a surrender, a graceful bowing-out without a struggle, without any unseemly displays of emotion.
And the house was so unbearably empty without her.
Olivia cooed in his arms, patting his cheek as if to comfort him, and he turned his cheek into her baby-fine curls and let her pluck at his lapels. A maid strolled in holding a silver tray containing a tea service, which she set on the table between them, and for a few moments there was silence as Jilly prepared their cups of tea and tipped a few tiny pastries onto a plate, which she slid across the table toward him.
“She didn’t tell me what was troubling her,” Jilly said softly, sipping her tea, “but in all honesty, it wasn’t hard to guess.”
“She said she loved me,” he admitted uncomfortably. “How could she say that, and then leave me?”
“How could you expect her to stay?” she countered swiftly. “David, she’s doing the best that she can. She simply needs some time to herself. I doubt she ever expected you to love her—but unrequited love is a special kind of hell. She knows your marriage wasn’t a love match, but she needs to come to terms with the kind of marriage you will have on her own.” She managed a sad sort of smile. “It�
�s a shame, of course, but it’s not your fault any more than it is hers. Just—just be kind enough to let her learn how to move past it. You can do that, can’t you?”
For an instant he imagined Poppy returning, that chilling blankness in her eyes. He imagined them settling into a routine, two married people sharing the same house, living the sorts of lives that most everyone else of their status did. Separate interests, separate friends, separate bedrooms. Sharing nothing, except the occasional greeting as they passed one another in the halls, or perhaps the rare meal when they both found themselves at home for it. Perhaps he would visit her room from time to time, but even if she deigned to allow it, it would doubtless be a cold, impersonal coupling—because he’d stolen her passion, and whatever feeling remained for him would be locked away until it withered entirely.
It would be an agreeable marriage, in its way. The sort of marriage he’d always envisioned he’d eventually have. She would give him no trouble; she would do her best never to inconvenience him. She wouldn’t, as she’d said once before, begrudge him a mistress if he chose to take one.
But the thought turned his stomach. It wasn’t what he wanted—not with Poppy. They could have had more. They still could have more. They could have debates over breakfast and waltzes at balls—until she could reliably manage a quadrille—and clandestine trysts in every noble household in London. They could have so much more than a typical society marriage. They had had so much more than a typical society marriage—they’d had the sort of marriage that Rushton and Jilly had, talking about everything and nothing, listening to one another, sharing with one another…until he’d destroyed that fragile bond with his fondness.
The breath left his lungs on a whoosh, and only partly because little Olivia had jammed her knee into his solar plexus. Perhaps he’d been falling in love with her all along, a bit at a time. He simply hadn’t recognized it because it hadn’t come with the clap of a thunderbolt. He’d once thought himself in love with Elaine, but that had been simple infatuation. Poppy had come up on his blind side and settled into his life as if she’d been made to fit it. She’d settled into his heart as if she’d always belonged there. He’d done nothing to earn her faith, her respect, her love—but she’d offered him those things anyway, and he hadn’t even realized just how precious they were until they were gone. Until she was gone.
Jilly said that unrequited love was hell, but she was wrong. Losing Poppy’s love would be hell. Knowing he’d had it, but that he’d crushed it out of her with the weight of his indifference—that was hell.
“I have to bring her back,” he croaked. Olivia had grabbed another handful of his hair, but he scarcely even noticed the tug.
“Oh, David,” Jilly sighed. “If you’d only—”
“No,” he interrupted fiercely. “I can’t—I don’t want her to stop loving me. God, I don’t want that at all. I just want her to come home.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “I think I do love her.”
But Jilly shook her head sadly. “David, she’s hurting, and she needs time. You have to give her that.” She rose to her feet and rounded the table, prying her daughter off of him. “You have to give yourself time to sort through your own feelings. It would be so unfair to go haring after her to drag her back in the heat of the moment. Just let things settle a bit.”
“I have sorted through my feelings—”
She pinned him with a glare as she settled Olivia against her shoulder. “David, you’re going to have to do a sight better than I think I do love her, and if I were Poppy, right now I wouldn’t believe you even if you swore devotion eternal.” She heaved a sigh. “You’re hurt because she’s left. It’s understandable. But be sure of what it is you want from your marriage before you go looking for her. You can’t toy with her emotions like this.” She jerked her head toward the door. “Get yourself in order,” she said. “Decide what it is you truly want. Be honest with yourself. And then, for God’s sake, be honest with your wife.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Poppy stared at the stacks of pages before her and considered them with equal parts resolve and trepidation. It had been three weeks since she’d returned to Bath, to a tiny rented house on the outskirts of town, and in that time, between drowning in loneliness and choking on her own unhappiness, she’d managed to reach the conclusion of her novel. Miss Julia Ainsworth had found her fate at last.
Two of them, rather. Two disparate paths, and only one could win out. One was reality, cold and unforgiving, and the other—the other was the dream which could never come true. Mr. Plessing would be expecting to receive one of them shortly, but she could not quite make up her mind about which to send.
She knew which one she ought to post. Doubtless the readers wouldn’t like it, but at least it would feel real to her. Posting it would be rather like ceding to fate. The weight would slip from her shoulders, and she imagined she would finally come to terms with herself, her position—her marriage. Once it was done, she would have given up, surrendered the part of herself that had struggled against fate for so long.
She would likely never pen another novel. There would be no point to it. She wouldn’t be able to find a happily ever after, and she’d had enough of tragedy to last a lifetime.
She sighed, shoving away from her little desk, putting off the decision for just a little longer. Perhaps another day or two, on the outside. Abandoning the bedroom, she passed into the kitchen to put a kettle on for tea. As she pulled a cup down from the shelf, she heard a carriage rumble to a stop outside, the whicker of the horses the only other sound in the street.
A moment later there was a sharp rap on her door. Odd, that. No one had come calling in the three weeks she’d resided here, except the neighbor woman she’d hired to do some light cleaning for her, but she came only on Mondays and Thursdays, and it was neither.
Crossing to the door, she twisted the knob and cracked it open, and then fell back with a short, indrawn breath—not quite a gasp, but close enough to it to wring a crooked grin from the man standing on the steps.
“Hello, Poppy,” David said. “May I come in?”
She should have said no. She should have snapped the door shut in his face and ignored him. But instead she heard herself say, “Yes, of course,” like an absolute ninny, and then she stepped back, and before she even knew quite what had happened, he was inside and seated at the small table in the kitchen, sipping tea as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
He held the teacup in both hands as if he knew not what else to do with them, and he was so handsome that it hurt to look at him. Somehow she’d let that part slip her mind in the time she’d been away, because there was so much more to him than that. But it made her heart squeeze painfully in her chest to think about, and so she turned away and busied herself with preparing her own cup of tea, and then she stood by the kitchen window and directed her attention through it, hoping that someday soon it would not hurt quite so much simply to be in his presence.
“Won’t you sit?” he asked, and something in his voice was so unbearably kind and gentle that she had to blink back a burn of tears.
“No, I—I think I’d rather not,” she said at last. And she drew in a deep breath and steeled herself for the worst conversation of her life. “I’m glad you’ve come,” she said, hating the telling rasp in her voice. “Truly I am. I didn’t expect it, but I suppose it’s best to get it out of the way, isn’t it?” It was excruciating, but necessary, like cleansing a suppurating wound. If she hadn’t been so conflicted, she might’ve laughed at the unflattering comparison.
“Get what out of the way?” he inquired, and there was an odd note of hesitance in his voice that didn’t bear considering too closely.
“Our…situation,” she hedged. “I think it would be best if we maintained separate residences.”
“I see,” he said. There was the sound of something dropping into liquid, and then the clink of a spoon against china, and she assumed he’d added a lump of sugar or two into his tea.
“It’s not uncommon,” she said. “No one will think anything of it all, I’m certain, given the circumstances that resulted in our marriage.” She managed a weak laugh, in an attempt to sell the fiction that her heart hadn’t already shattered into a thousand pieces. She had recovered enough of her tattered pride not to let him see it, not to burden him with her unwanted affections.
Soldiering on, she continued, “I’ve made enough from the sale of my books to allow for the letting of a small house. And of course I’ll have the girls with me, and you’ll be spared the chore of escorting us to events. Your house will be your own again. It’ll be a welcome change, I imagine.”
“My house has been my own again these past three weeks,” he said tersely, a shred of resentment coloring his voice. “It’s bloody awful. I loathe it. Are you quite finished?”
Shrinking from the tightly-leashed temper now evident in his voice, she gave a brisk nod.
“Good,” he said, and the legs of his chair scraped over the floor as he stood, the sound deafening in her quiet little kitchen. “Then I suppose it’s my turn, isn’t it?” He scraped a stack of books off the table and into his hands. She hadn’t even noticed them—but then, she’d been trying so very hard not to look at him.
He approached slowly, deliberately, as if he suspected she might bolt away from him otherwise, and his face was set, purposeful but otherwise unreadable. Two feet before her, and he held out the stack of books. She took them unconsciously, because it seemed impossible not to, and it would be cruel to refuse them, and she didn’t have it in her to hurt him, because he hadn’t hurt her—at least, not intentionally. It hadn’t been his fault, after all. She had expected too much. She’d let herself want impossible things. For just a little while, she had let herself dream. Even knowing the cost of such a foolish act, still she had let herself dream.
“What are they?” she asked, clasping the little leather-bound volumes in her hands.
His Reluctant Lady Page 30