Chapter 29

CHAPTER 29

B reakfast was tense to say the least.

Despite the progress Marina felt had been made, Phillip seemed to have had a change of heart in the night. His brow was set in a hard, fast line as though he were deep in thought. She watched him eat, her own food sour in her mouth and like lead in her belly, and he did not once look up from his plate. Despite the way their conversation ended the night before, both the Duke and Duchess suffered restless nights.

"What is it that you have planned for today?" Marina's eyes focused on her husband, who continued to chew for several seconds, patted his mouth with a napkin, and finally looked up—though not at her. Just in her general direction.

"Is it to be this way each day, my dear Marina?"

"I cannot know what you mean, Phillip."

"Can't you?" Phillip rose from his seat and walked toward her, stopping a short distance away from where she still sat. "I have thought quite a bit about what we spoke of before. Of honesty and partnership. Do you truly believe that this is the hallmark of a strong marriage?"

"I am sure of it."

"Then allow me, Marina, to shed some light on our situation." He stepped closer and held his hand out for her to take. When she did, he pulled her up to him, steadying her by the shoulders when she stumbled. "There are certain things which a man must keep to himself."

"Certainly, there are, Phillip, but?—"

"I was not done speaking." There was a sharpness to his tone which caught Marina off guard. She gazed into his eyes, and all she saw there was disdain. He bore a striking resemblance, just then, to his father. It felt to Marina that the man she had gotten to know since they were married was lost to her.

"Of course. My apologies," she answered, her voice dry and airy.

"I believe that I have done all that I can to humor you, Marina. There is very little that you have asked of me that I have not been willing to give you. You mistake me when I do not give you every detail of my thought process for a man capable of contempt and malice for you. I have seen what family looks like for you, and I have done as much as I can to be that. But I have since drawn a new conclusion."

"What is it?"

Phillip bent his head so that they were mere inches apart. His eyes studied her for a moment, and her breath caught in her throat. What she had thought, before, to be contempt was something altogether different. He was pained. She had done something to hurt him, and he was trying in earnest to explain. Her body trembled in his hands, worried that she had shattered her marriage into pieces.

"I have shared with you what my childhood was like. You knew well before we crossed paths that I have spent a great deal of time out in the world on my own." Marina watched him choke something back but was unsure of what. His grip on her shoulders tightened. "We have talked at great length about my mother. My existence before you appeared in my life was miserable at worst and lonely at best. I know what you have heard about me."

"I have heard only what was printed in the scandal sheets. I would not give it any heed, Phillip, but that you have never ventured to correct me."

"I did not know that I had to. Was I to believe what was printed about you in them? That your mouth, age, and hovering father should render you unmarriageable?"

There was a pause after which the Duke, at last, relinquished his hold on Marina, his hands sliding down the length of her arms and gently taking her hands in his. His gaze fell to them when Marina could not give him an answer.

"I do not blame you, Marina, for your caution. I know quite well that your apprehension toward me comes from your habit of being overprotective of your sisters, and it has extended to you—to our marriage. I did not…I did not ask for you as my bride to hurt you or humiliate your family. I feel that I have made that clear."

"Are you to tell me that the allegations in the scandal sheets are not at all true, even in part?"

"There is little substance to them but that my uncle tells stories about my father when he has had too much mead and utters my name instead. Perhaps it is the mere fact that I was so far removed from society for so long that whoever sits and writes of the ton felt me easy fodder for an exciting story. Whatever it is, I did not then and do not now have any interest in meaningless companionship. Would you like me to tell you the truth, Marina?"

Her head nodded though her heart screeched at her that she did not—there would be no putting her queries to rest unanswered. However, she could never have been prepared for what he said next.

"When we first married, I did so with the intention of abandoning you here."

"Abandoning me?"

"Yes. The night that we met, I, too, was under the influence of the ton's opinion of you. I thought you were stubborn, wily, and entirely too dedicated to your family. Because of this, I believed we were a perfect match. I would come, once or twice a year, to the manor to handle my affairs. You, Mathilde, and my steward could keep the property and estate in good condition while I was away."

"And you? What of you, Phillip? What would you do? Where would you go?"

"I would return to Paris. I still have a home there. And friends—a rich life where I engage in conversation with masterful artists, talented singers, and remarkable actresses. A world where I do not belong to the upper class if I do not want to and need not play a role for their approval. That is where I am happiest, Marina, and I thought that you would be happiest here. Without me. With your family."

Her hands fell from his as she backed away from him, gripping her skirts tightly as if she might, at any moment, dart off like she had the night of the ball. "Is this still your intention?"

"I am not of a mind to decide right away."

Husband and wife stood opposite one another, each firm in their stance. She, that the man who stood before her was not her husband but a stranger—that all his sweetness was contrived. He, that his immovable wife was unreasonably holding his past against him.

"Then you are of a mind to either threaten me with solitude should I not behave as you ask, or you are aiming to wound my heart beyond repair. In which case, Phillip, make no mistake—my heart has never been yours to wound, and my solitude would be a blessing of the highest after what I have been made to endure here in your company."

"It is decided for me, then, as has been much of my life since we wed," he spat. "I shall take my leave of you after all, Marina, and I shall play the role of the far-removed, neglectful husband you have insisted all along that I am."

There was a part of Marina, despite her outward convictions, that did not want to see him go. She wanted to take it all back and beg for his forgiveness. Her voice wobbled as she threw her first Hail Mary to the wind.

"And I suppose that's it, then? We live as man and wife in title alone?" She saw a flicker behind his eyes. Brief but there, and it encouraged her to persist. "We will suffer under the burden of a marriage of convenience and rebuke one another—not friend nor foe but something altogether more grotesque. As strangers. As two ships passing in the night—Phillip, is that what you want? Truly? It is as if all along you have wanted to run me off, to keep me at arms' length. If this is what you want, I will lay my affection at your feet, turn my back on you, and never think of you again. I do not wish for either of us to continue in this torment."

Eyes rimmed with red and wet with tears accumulating along her waterline, Marina stared directly at her duke, determined to see another sign that she had not imagined the way he'd once looked at her or the intimacy of his gestures toward her. She was grateful that she obeyed her instincts only when, too many long seconds later, his shoulders sank and he stepped, again, closer.

"It is precisely your affections which drive me away," he admitted, his voice low in the tone of agony. "I cannot accept them if they grow, Marina. My heart is splintered and fragile—there is no place there for another. I beg of you, do not cling to any hope you have of a loving marriage between the two of us. I can provide you with all of the paints your heart desires. I can go to town right now and have an entire year's worth of dresses made for you if that's what you like. Marina, if—" He pressed forward, once again just a few inches before her, and reached out for her hands. "—if you were to ask me to buy you ten and twenty houses, all over the world, so you might travel comfortably upon a whim, I will do it. But there is one thing which you cannot ask of me, for I cannot give it."

"What is it, then, Phillip? What is that you cannot give?"

"My love, Marina. It is my love that I cannot hand over to you. I will never be able to love you the way that you want—the way that you deserve."

Her free hand flew up to her chest, the other clutched tightly in his. She could feel the heat of his body and his breath against her cheek. In his eyes, she saw past the sea of forest green and into his tired, beaten soul.

"You were made to feel unlovable, so now you feel as if you've none to give," she breathed, each word landing in his chest like a dagger. "Phillip, to believe as a child that you are not good enough for the person responsible for you is a cruelty that you cannot heal from alone. I do not need you to love me in that way. I have only ever wanted your friendship. I have only ever expected your equal effort. If love is too much to ask, then I shall not ask for it, but it is not all there is."

Marina used to think that her parents had gotten lucky when they met one another. Her mother contradicted this story when Marina first began to prepare to come out. She told Marina that she spent the first three months of her marriage locked away in her bedroom, terrified of her young husband, and terrified that he would realize he'd made a mistake in marrying her. They, like she and Phillip, knew each other only a very short while prior to their engagement. Richard Linfield was only twenty-two when they wed, and she was nineteen. The ton criticized her for taking such a young man off the market so quickly—for seducing someone above her station for financial gain. She had been terrified that he would begin to feel the same.

And she had instilled in Marina an essential belief: marriage relied on the hard work of both parties in order to thrive. A good wife was not only a woman who could meet the needs of her husband and her estate but one who knew when to push her husband to meet her own needs as well. It was the principle on which Marina had based her efforts thus far, but she was at last seeing a side of this concept that had been elusive to her.

She had allowed herself to stay on the other side of the carefully woven tapestry which Phillip hid behind—the man he was supposed to be instead of the man he was. Now she had pushed him to reveal a truth about himself that changed the entire dynamic of their relationship. One she would have accepted with open arms from the very start had she known about it.

All this time, he had been just as afraid of her as she had been of him.

Marina gently pried her hand free of his and instead, took both of his in hers, pulling them to her as she gazed up at him with pleading eyes.

"I wish to stay by your side, Phillip, as your wife, companion, and partner. I have never disillusioned myself into thinking that this will be some sort of romantic fairytale like the one Olivia has the great fortune of entertaining. I was a spinster when we met. You rescued my family from the sour fate of my own misdoings. For that, I owe you my gratitude, but as your wife, I?—"

Marina's words were lost to her as Phillip freed his hands from hers and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her to him in a tight hug. She could feel the vibrations of his chest, fighting back sobs as he held her.

"I can ask nothing more from my wife than what she has already provided me. Please, forgive me, and please , Marina, continue to be patient with me."