Chapter 6

Six

“ W hat exactly is your relationship with the Earl of Rochford?”

Thomas looked up to see that his new wife was watching him carefully from the other side of the carriage. The wedding breakfast had ended, and they were now on their way to his residence, where they would begin their life as a married couple… or at least a married couple wherever society’s eyes could see.

“What do you mean?” Thomas asked, feigning ignorance. “He is my cousin.”

“But there is something else you’re not telling me,” Cherie said, her eyes narrowing. “The animosity between the two of you is palpable.”

“Well, he did try to buy you in marriage,” Thomas pointed out. He knew he was being purposefully difficult, but he didn’t particularly want to go into it all with her.

Cherie, however, was watching him closely, her brow furrowed but her eyes soft, as if she were genuinely curious. “But it doesn’t make sense. The earl and I have only spoken a few times. We are not well acquainted. Why would he ask for my hand from Cousin Charles? And out of the blue like that? If he had really wanted to marry me, why wouldn’t he have asked my brother for permission to court me? And why me? That’s the biggest question of all. It makes no sense.”

Thomas sighed. As much as he didn’t like rehashing his family relationship with the Earl of Rochford, he knew that he owed his wife at least a little bit of the truth.

You can’t tell her everything, of course.

“I don’t know exactly why he asked for your hand in marriage,” he began truthfully, after a long moment. “But it’s true that the earl and I do not get along. Perhaps he thought that he could best hurt me by forcing my friend’s sister into marriage.”

“That seems rather roundabout,” Cherie pointed out fairly.

“Yes, it does,” Thomas agreed. “Perhaps he merely wanted your dowry, which is significant.”

“But it feels more conniving than that, doesn’t it?” Cherie leaned forward in her seat and cupped her chin with her hand. “He was gambling with Cousin Charles specifically when he knew my brother was in Italy. That’s when he fleeced Charles for everything he had. Then he demands that Charles give him my hand? There is something suspicious about the timing…”

Thomas’s heart beat faster in his chest. While he wouldn’t put anything past the Earl of Rochford, he hadn’t considered before that there had been a nefarious plan behind the earl’s bid to marry Cherie. He had merely thought that the earl had taken advantage of an opportunity to get a rich wife. Not that he had purposefully planned this while Aidan was out of town.

I should have known. The earl will do anything to get his way. But why? Other than being wealthy and titled, why would he go after Cherie? If it’s revenge on me he wants, well… What does she have to do with me?

A horrible thought occurred to him, then. Is it possible Rochford knows about the tender feelings I have always held for Cherie?

But it wasn’t possible. No one knew about that. No one…

“Perhaps he knew that Aidan would refuse him,” Thomas said at last. “So he had to resort to less-than-savory tactics.”

“Aidan would surely have said no!” Cherie said with feeling. “And so would I. He is the last man in the world whom I would ever want to marry…”

She trailed off, then looked out the window, and Thomas’s heart hitched in his chest. Does she feel any relief to be married to me instead? Or is she just as disappointed to find me as her husband?

She had been forcing herself to smile all day. He had seen how hard she’d worked to maintain that smile. She had looked so beautiful all day, as she always did, with her dark hair lustrous and always catching the light, her gray eyes alert. His heart had skipped whenever he’d seen her, especially when she would smile so winningly that it could fool almost everyone who looked at her.

But not Thomas. He had known her long enough to be able to see underneath her smile. And underneath it, she was unhappy. It broke his heart to see her like that. For as long as he’d known Cherie, he had tried to make her happy. By playing games with her, bringing her books that he’d stolen from the library at Cambridge, and answering her questions about the outside world whenever she was curious. And now, he was the one causing her unhappiness. It made him want to reach out across the carriage and take her hand, to pledge to her that he would do everything, from this day forward, to make her happy.

But of course, he didn’t.

How could he ever make her happy? Someone like him could only be the villain in her story, not the white knight.

“So, tell me,” Cherie said, turning back to him at last. “Why is there so much animosity between you and the earl?”

Thomas grimaced. “I caused him grave harm and he cannot bring himself to forgive me. I cannot blame him, but I won't allow him to take his enmity out on you."

"But how could you have possibly injured the earl? The man I remember you being was kind and funny, not one to give offense.”

The way she looked at him made his heart ache, but he forced himself to keep going. “Constantine was involved in my father’s India venture, and he is vehemently opposed to me closing down the India operation, although I am eager to. But it’s more than that…” He hesitated. “Constantine was my father’s heir apparent until I was born. For years, my mother struggled to conceive, and during that time, my father doted upon Constantine and planned to leave him everything. His own father had died when he was young and had been a cruel man, so I think Constantine really saw my father as his own. But after I was born, Constantine was pushed aside and ignored for many years, until he started working in the business.

“So, I think he always hated me and resented my place as my father’s rightful heir. It didn’t help that we never much got along. You heard him say he is an herbalist, but that is putting it nicely: he is an amateur alchemist, if you can believe it! When we were growing up, he was always mixing elixirs, trying to come up with concoctions to make boys he didn’t like sick, or to make himself taller or stronger. I believe that now he takes clients for his strange medicines.”

“That is rather sinister,” Cherie agreed, but she was more interested in the business arrangements he’d mentioned. “But why do you want to close down your father’s business in India? Isn’t it supposed to be quite profitable?”

“I have spent too many years abroad,” Thomas explained, “and I would like very much to spend my time here now. Especially now that I am married.”

Thomas gave Cherie a tentative smile, and for a moment, it looked as if she might return it. But then her eyes narrowed, and she scowled.

“Don’t pretend as if you are eager for us to set up house together as husband and wife,” she snapped. “I know that you are not. You have already promised me that we shall not live together as a true married couple, and after how you have acted over this past fortnight, I am not going to believe that you have suddenly become kind again.”

Thomas felt his anger, so close to the surface ever since his father’s death, once more flare up. “How many times must we go over what happened this past fortnight? You know my hands were tied! And you agreed to the match in the end!”

“Only to protect my friends from scandal!” Cherie cried. “And I still think that you should have helped me escape from the inn and find my way to freedom, even if it meant you had to blackmail Lord Breckenridge. That would have been the truly chivalrous thing to do. But no, instead you’re trapping me in a marriage I didn’t want and telling me this sad story about Lord Rochford to try and prove that you’re at least better than him. Well, I don’t buy it! You might not mistreat your workers, Your Grace, but you still mistreated me by forcing me into a marriage I never wanted!”

Thomas ground his teeth together. He was tempted to tell her, for the hundredth time, that he had only done what he had in order to protect her, but he couldn’t. Not when a very small, very secret part of him wondered if there was another reason.

You have her now , the voice whispered. The girl you always wanted. You just had to force her into it, because you would never be worthy without the weight of society coercing her.

Thomas gritted his teeth and tried to force this thought from his head.

“I asked you to call me Thomas, not Your Grace ,” he said at last. “Even if our marriage is to be untraditional, I should like my home not to feel so stuffy and formal.”

“Why should I care what you want?” Cherie cried, although a slight quaver in her voice made him wonder if that was fully true. “I wanted a home full of love, but will I ever get that? No! Therefore, I will continue to call you by your title, as that is what clearly has made you into this hard, unfeeling person. Your Grace.”

“I’m not hard and unfeeling,” Thomas snapped. “An unfeeling person would have let you be ruined, not offered to marry you.”

“You are unfeeling! You—you are nothing like the young man I knew. You came back from India cruel and unfeeling. You could have at least tried to make this wedding more bearable for me by telling me that you wanted to marry me. Lied to me if you had to. Told me that I looked beautiful today. Anything, even the smallest amount of tenderness, would have gone a long way.”

Her eyes filled with tears, and she turned determinedly away, brushing them away with her hand.

Thomas opened his mouth to speak. He wanted to say Of course I wanted to marry you , and You have always been my favorite person in the world , and You looked so beautiful today it melted my heart , but he couldn’t bring himself to say the words. How could he? If he did, she would only get her hopes up that he could be the kind of man and husband she deserved.

But he wasn’t. And that would only lead to more disappointment. He couldn’t do that to her.

So instead, he said, “You didn’t want to marry me either, Cherie, but we are both making the best of a bad situation.”

Tears began to leak down her cheek, and he forced himself to turn and stare out the window, unseeing. Never in his life had he felt more certain that his father was right about him. He was worthless. He was even ruining his wife’s wedding day.

At last, the carriage pulled up outside of his family’s townhouse, and Thomas descended from it. He held out his hand to help his wife down, but she ignored it, choosing instead to hold onto the side of the carriage.

“Would you like to have supper?” he asked, hopefully, as they walked together to the front door. The butler opened it, and he followed his wife inside, where they were greeted by the housekeeper, Mrs. Mallow. As they entered the hall, Thomas watched his wife take in the space around them. It was beautiful if he said so himself. His father, despite all his flaws, had good taste and had decorated the hall in pink marble from India and a wealth of other colorful paintings and tapestries from the Subcontinent. The result was that the house looked nothing like most of the other homes in Mayfair.

“I think I’ll take supper in my room,” Cherie said quietly. She wasn’t looking at him, but at least she had stopped crying.

“All right. I’ll show you to your bedroom.”

“Mrs. Mallow can do that,” she said. She pulled off her gloves and moved away from him. “I shall see you tomorrow morning, although perhaps not until the afternoon, as I plan to sleep late.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Thomas saw the butler and Mrs. Mallow exchange a surprised expression.

They’re not spending their wedding night together?! It seemed to say.

“Of course,” Thomas said, unsticking his throat. “Whatever you prefer. It’s your home now, and I want you to be comfortable.”

Without looking at him, Cherie followed Mrs. Mallow up the stairs and disappeared from view. Thomas had no choice but to follow the butler to the dining room, where he ate supper alone.

When Cherie entered the duchess’s bedroom, which had been prepared for her ahead of her arrival, her first thought was that the late duchess must have had remarkably good taste. She was surprised, in fact, that the late duchess’s taste had been so modern. The bedroom wasn’t wrapped in the usual heavy fabrics that the older members of the ton preferred.

Instead, the curtains on the four-poster bed were light and airy, and an eggshell blue that was remarkably similar to the color of her bedspread when she was a girl. And the room, instead of being dark and wood-paneled, had been painted a soft cream color, with blue wainscotting that matched the drapes on the bed. Even the vanity was in a modern style.

While the rest of the house looked like a museum of the Far East, this room alone felt as if she could have decorated it herself. The style was very similar to the way she’d decorated her brother’s townhouse, and she had to admire the effort that had gone into ensuring this room would be comfortable and feminine.

“The late duchess must have defied her husband to decorate this room so,” she murmured to her lady’s maid, who had come with her from Vaston House, as she undressed her. “It’s not at all like the rest of the house.”

“It reminds me of home,” the lady’s maid murmured in agreement.

The reminder of home was helpful as Cherie got into bed later and twitched the curtains closed around her. Because other than the similar decorations, this place felt completely foreign, and as she stared at the canopy above her, she let the tears once more flow down her cheeks.

I’m completely alone. Trapped in a loveless, passionless marriage for the rest of my life.