Chapter 21

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

M argaret couldn’t stop staring up at Theo. His lips were so close to hers. Was this it? Was he about to kiss her? Was she about to have all her longing dreams answered?

Theodore’s hands rested on the wall on either side of her. His head tilted down toward her, his lips hovering over her own. It was so near that she closed her eyes, turning her head up toward him.

Would he be gentle? Or would he be rough, kissing her with passion? Both thoughts thrilled her so much that her hands began to tremble.

Then he jerked his head back. She felt it, the shift of the air between them and opened their eyes again.

“Are you trying to distract me just to win?” he teased, the corner of his lips lifting up.

She masked her disappointment with a wide smile.

“Oh, would I be that devious?”

“Perhaps you would be.”

“Oh, no! Penelope!” Margaret cried, looking over his shoulder and pretending to see Penelope sneaking toward the treasure.

Theo looked around, releasing her from her pinned position against the door. Taking the opportunity, she darted around him and sprinted straight towards where the treasure had been hidden.

Reaching her hand into the parasol stand, she pulled out the glittering ornament they had chosen as their treasure.

Realizing her deception, Theodore laughed as he turned to face her.

“I will get it back,” he promised, moving toward her.

“You wouldn’t take it… would you?” She backed up. The thought of him coming that near again was making a pleasant heat creep up her chest and neck.

“Maybe I would.” Then he dived toward her.

She yelped playfully and ran the other way, darting through the door of the music room and running swiftly away.

His laughter that followed her thrilled her. When had she last heard Theodore laugh in such a way? Never! He may have started to give way to low chuckles and stolen smiles, but a full guffaw of such freedom? She had not heard that before.

She kept on running through the house, until she stumbled into the sitting room.

“I win!” she called, as per the rules of their game, holding the little ornament in the air and turning on the spot.

“At last!” Evelina called from across the room.

Margaret jumped as she turned to see Evelina hidden in the corner of the room. She had been reading a newspaper but now put it down and she rested her hands on her round stomach.

“Funnily enough, I grew tired,” Evelina explained. “I must prefer sitting here and listening to the laughter inside this house. Isn’t it wonderful to hear our sisters laughing so much?”

“It is.” Margaret nodded.

It’s a delight for all of us to be laughing so much!

There was a rumble of footsteps nearby on the stairs. Alexandra and Penelope’s voices were heard a second later.

“I’ll get it from her,” Penelope declared.

“Not before me!”

The two appeared in the doorway, each trying to elbow one another out of the way in order to get to Margaret first.

“No, she won, fair and square,” Evelina insisted, holding a finger up in warning toward their sisters. It didn’t stop Penelope trying to jump and take the ornament from Margaret’s hand as she held it high over her head.

“It’s been too long since we did anything like this,” Louisa’s voice joined them as she appeared through another doorway. She must have been outside, for she brushed some snow from her cheeks and shoulders as she moved toward Evelina and dropped down onto another settee. “Why do we not do things like this more?”

“Because life has been serious for too long,” Evelina pointed out with a sigh.

Margaret shifted the ornament to her other hand as Penelope continued to persist in trying to grab it. In the end, Alexandra took hold of her waist and dragged her away.

“Was your husband not playing?” Louisa asked, looking around.

“Oh, he was.” Margaret couldn’t stop the big smile that spread across her face.

“Look at that smile.” Evelina giggled. “I know this marriage was one of convenience, but you seem so happy. I suspect… the Duke of Thornfield is having an effect on you, sister, an effect you were not expecting.”

Margaret held herself very still, startled that Evelina had glimpsed this much into her heart.

Penelope stood on a stool and snatched the ornament, then held it up in victory, though Margaret no longer minded. Her cheeks heated so much, she was sure eggs could have been cooked on her skin.

“She’s blushing,” Louisa remarked in thought.

“Well? What is he truly like?” Alexandra asked with interest, sitting down with their other sisters. “When it is just you two, what is life like together?”

“He…” Margaret hesitated, uncertain how to describe Theo. To tell her sisters about how sure she had just been that Theo was about to kiss her felt like a confession too far.

That is my secret, my indulgence…

She also didn’t want to tell them, just in case she had been wrong, and it was all in her head.

“He seemed heartless at first,” she said, sitting down heavily into an armchair nearby as Penelope sat on the footstool, resting the ornament in her lap. “Perhaps at first, I did believe all the rumors, the scandal sheets. He seemed so cold. Even the manner of his proposal was cold.”

“It was business to him, was it not?” Louisa said knowingly.

“Yes, it was.” Margaret nodded. “Yet, that is not all he is. Yes, his business matters to him. He clearly is ambitious in that regard. It’s an impressive side to him, but there is much more to him.” She chewed her lip in thought. “He cares, he has a big heart. I just think that sometimes, he chooses not to listen to it.”

Theodore froze outside of the sitting room door, listening intently.

She’s talking of me.

“He can be protective, he can be sweet. He can be very amusing too when he lets down his guard.” She giggled softly.

“It sounds to me, sister, as if you care for him. A great deal,” Evelina observed.

Theodore held his breath.

Say no.

The thought struck him suddenly. He didn’t want Maggie to care for him. That had never been a part of the plan. It was a marriage of convenience, always. Anything deeper than that, if emotions were to get involved, then he could repeat the mistakes of the past. To make sure there was never any darkness in these walls again, he was determined it should be a marriage in name only.

“I do care for him,” Maggie whispered, her voice so soft that Theodore nearly missed it.

He took a step back from the door, as soundlessly as possible, not wanting any of them to know that he was there and listening to their conversation.

She can’t care for me.

He knew what sort of man he was. People flinched and cowered back from him, they stared at him in public with suspicion. Whether they believed the rumors or not, his whole manner was off putting and dark. How could Maggie possibly care for him now?

“Maybe he cares for you, too,” Penelope suggested softly.

Yet that isn’t possible.

Theodore didn’t hear what was said next for he retreated so fast from the doorway. He turned and walked away on tiptoe to avoid making any sound. He retreated all the way to his study, closing the door behind him and leaning on it.

The anger ripped through him. He tore of his tailcoat and his cravat too, throwing them down to the floor. He caught a candlestick and knocked that to the ground by accident. His normally neat mind, the part of him that insisted on everything being in perfect order, would have demanded he pick it back up again, but at that moment, he couldn’t care less.

He marched around the room, thrusting the sleeves of his shirt up and looking back and forth in alarm.

“I could never care for her,” he muttered to himself. “I don’t have the capacity to love. None of it!”

Yet he had started to feel things. He’d felt concern for her. He’d felt jealousy, too. Yet none of it could lead to love. He was only bound to break her heart someday, for if she loved him, he would be incapable of loving her back.

This needs to stop. I will not let her give her heart to me.

Theodore lifted his head from the book he had been reading to stare at Maggie across the room. She was playing a rather rowdy card game with her sisters. There was much laughter and jollity, to the extent that Theodore wondered if it was possible for the sisters to be this free in their own home.

Perhaps not. At least here, they are free of their father.

His eyes traced the way Maggie smiled and how she placed cards down with victory. It was a sweet image, but one that was cutting as well, for she turned and smiled at him.

What is she hoping for from me? Some declaration of my heart? I can’t give her that.

“Well, I think I must retire for the night,” Evelina said as she won the final round of cards and stood, placing her hands on her stomach. “This baby is beginning to kick and move. They are wanting sleep as much as I am.”

“I need sleep, too,” Alexandra declared, and was quickly followed by both Penelope and Louisa. They all stood and made their way to the door. “Goodnight, Margaret.”

“Goodnight,” she called back.

They all waved goodnight to Theodore and though he nodded briefly in goodbye, he tried not to show too much warmth. To do so might have given Maggie some hope that he would be a brother to her sisters.

I am not capable of that sort of love any more than I am of loving her.

As the door closed, Maggie busied herself tidying away the cards in a small games box.

“Is all well, Theo?” she called, looking up from her task to catch his eye.

He no longer bothered to even try to read his book. He closed the cover and rested it on the table beside him.

“You have been quiet since our treasure hunt this afternoon. You barely uttered a word during dinner.”

“Your sisters rather dominate conversation,” he pointed out.

“I thought you said you wouldn’t mind them being here?”

“I don’t mind.” He shook his head and folded his arms. Now they were alone, it was the perfect opportunity to warn her not to place hope on him, to take that heart of hers and tuck it away somewhere safe. Yet he wasn’t sure how to start such a conversation.

“Then what has made you fall so quiet?” she asked, standing and returning the games box to a small drawer in a sideboard nearby.

“It doesn’t matter.” His answer must have annoyed her. For though he didn’t see her face, he saw the way her shoulders stiffened as she closed the drawer.

Slowly, she turned to face him, her eyes wide.

“For goodness’ sake, what is wrong?” she asked.

“I am merely thinking things, that is all.”

“Thinking about what?”

“Reputation.” His choice of word made her chin jerk high.

“Mine? Or yours?” she said, a knowing tone in her voice.

“Both.”

“Ah, are you congratulating yourself that your marriage has given you this meeting with Mr. Bates that you so craved?” She smiled, clearly intending to make a jest of it, but he did not respond.

He lifted the whisky glass that Yates had delivered to him earlier that evening from its place on the table and took a big sip. His cold silence made her smile fade away.

“Clearly, that is not what you’re thinking,” she mused in a darkening voice.

“Perhaps I’m thinking how strange it is that reputations can dictate the path of one’s life so much.” It was a conversation, even if it wasn’t the one he wished to have.

“Truly? That is what you are thinking?” She took a step away from the sideboard toward him. “Are you now questioning the direction of your own life?”

“I am.”

It was as though he had struck her with the words. Her head jerked back, her lips opening and closing.

“This marriage…” she said the words slowly. “Is that what you are questioning?”

He didn’t answer but took another sip from his glass. She understood him, plainly, even without the words.

“Good lord, it is what you are questioning!” she said a little louder as she stepped toward him. “This afternoon, you didn’t seem to mind being married to me. You came close to kissing me, Theo.”

“That was not what happened,” he snapped, laying down his glass on the table. He missed the coaster, something he never normally would have done. There was a loud thud of glass as he sloshed the whisky over the rim.

“It was!”

“It was not,” he hissed, standing to his feet. Even though there was a distance between them across the room, he still towered over her in height.

It was. I had thought so much about kissing her, about giving into the temptation to know what it would be like to be so intimate with her.

Yet he couldn’t admit that to himself. All it would ever be to him was a rush of excitement. If she was risking her heart, then it had to end – this moment.

“Whatever you have imagined is happening here, Maggie, forget it. Forget it this moment. This is a marriage of convenience to improve our reputations. I told you that when I married you.”

“I know you did.” She matched his expression in defiance. “But what would it matter if it could mean something more –”

“Because it can never mean anything more!” he declared so loudly that she actually stopped, her jaw falling. “Do you not understand me yet? Have you not realized what sort of man I am?”

“You are not who you pretend to be,” she murmured.

“You’re wrong, Margaret.” He didn’t use her nickname. It would have felt too intimate. “I am a man without a heart.”