Chapter 18

CHAPTER 18

“ N oise?! Then I’ll be brief! O happy dagger!” Juliet knelt and pried the dagger out of Romeo’s cold dead hands. “This is thy sheath!” She pushed the weapon against her own chest and let out a throaty cry of pain.

The audience gasped.

The young woman looked up at the crowd with big, wet eyes. “There rust… and let me die…” And she fell on Romeo’s body with a thud.

As they were found by their families and the authorities of Verona, Thomas willed the end to come, tapping his foot. He had to admit that the thespians had some talent, all of them weeping as if they were at a funeral, though he could still see Romeo and Juliet breathing.

As the feud ended with the deaths of the young lovers, the curtains fell down, covering the stage. Sophia had her hand clasped to her mouth and so did many other members of the audience.

Thomas, still bewildered, looked at her with concern.

What am I missing? Maybe… Oh goodness, I hope she doesn’t start crying.

He sighed, then extended a hand and touched her shoulder. “Sophia…”

“She died! He died, and she died too! My goodness…”

She’s… she’s trembling…

“I can’t believe she died…” She leaned into him, tilting her head so it rested on his shoulder.

Thomas almost flinched, but he didn’t dare to move. It felt unnervingly intimate—far more intimate than anything they had done in secret, where all he had to do was concentrate on her and her pleasure . This didn’t call for pleasure or the distractions of his tongue and touch; it called for comfort, which was something he had never known how to give.

Discreetly, he looked around himself and realized that a few eyes were fixed on them.

I guess this isn’t so bad… and it reinforces our ruse. Yes. This is fine—this is all right.

He put his arm around her shoulders. A lump formed in his throat, and he felt it slide down. She didn’t recoil or push him away as he had expected she would. She just remained there in his embrace, a small and vulnerable little thing, processing an unexpected loss.

He didn’t understand most of it, but he saw her reaction and everyone else’s. And they felt real. Even if the story that was causing these feelings was fake, made up, simple fiction, their feelings were as real as any others.

“You don’t have to do this,” Sophia eventually whispered.

“Do what?” he whispered back.

“You are embracing me. You don’t have to do it.”

“We are in public, and my wife put her head on my shoulder… what am I supposed to do?”

She peered up at him, teary-eyed. “I thought you only wanted to be your true self in front of others.”

“The Duke is known to be kindhearted,” he replied stiffly.

“So, you don’t actually care about appearing true, just appearing true to others. ”

“Nonsense.”

“Thomas…” Her throat bobbed. “Do you mean this embrace? Have you meant any of them?”

Silence.

He had no answer that could satisfy her, especially not after the tragic story she had just watched.

She slowly raised her hand to his cheek, her thumb brushing his skin.

There it is again… that look.

As if she thought there was something wrong with him, some piece of humanity missing from him, and she pitied him for the lack of it.

Then she pulled away and turned back, facing the stage. The curtains rose again so the thespians could take their bows and receive the bafflingly rapturous applause, saving the couple from another awkward conversation.

“Do you mean this embrace? Have you meant any of them?”

The words danced around in Thomas’s head, a disturbing little imp possessed by curiosity. It didn’t help that he and Sophia were now stuck in the confines of the carriage, where he could not escape her pensive looks and soft, stirring sighs. Moreover, she had chosen to sit opposite him, making it even harder for him to avoid her gaze, pitying or otherwise.

Did I?

No, of course, I didn’t.

He couldn’t explain why he had not been able to restrain himself in the library and the study, but it had nothing to do with feelings. Did it? They had been moments of madness, spurred on by…

He grasped for the reasoning, but it wouldn’t come to him. It had been instinctual, carnal, beyond all reason.

He glanced at her then, the confined space of the carriage stirring up that indescribable feeling once again.

She looked so beautiful in one of the new gowns he had purchased for her, the refined attire merely accentuating what she already had—a boldness of spirit, a singular sense of self, utterly her .

He didn’t want to change that; he wanted to celebrate it in the only way that seemed to please her and the only manner that wouldn’t lead to an argument.

“Do you mean this embrace? Have you meant any of them?”

The words echoed in his mind, stifling his desire for her like damp cloth thrown over embers. If she wanted their stolen moments of pleasure to have meaning, to have feeling, then he wasn’t sure he could give her that. It was too great a promise to make, with his mind in such turmoil.

It was never supposed to be like this. You were not supposed to confuse and bewitch me. You ? —

“Thank you,” she said suddenly.

Thomas almost flinched. “What for?”

“I know you hated every moment of the play. And you knew you would. And you still came anyway.”

“I didn’t hate every moment,” he replied, meeting her gaze, wondering if she could somehow feel his thoughts.

“Is that so?” She smiled softly. “Enlighten me. What parts did you hate less than the rest?”

He leaned forward, debating whether or not to move to her side of the carriage. “I saw some merit in the story, in the end.” He reached out and took her hand, lifting it to his lips. “The idiocy of feuds. The senseless loss. How it should not reach the point of two lovers losing their lives for that stupidity to be realized.”

He lifted his gaze to hers and slowly peeled away her glove, placing another kiss on her soft, bare skin. “A marriage should have ended it, but I suppose it wouldn’t be nearly as dramatic if the play ended less tragically.”

Her breath hitched. “So, you don’t think it was all a huge waste of time?”

He watched her for a moment, trying to decipher which feud, which marriage, they were talking about. Something like shyness passed over her beautiful face, and her eyes lowered, giving him his answer.

Did you mean this embrace, Thomas ? —

“No,” he said softly. “No, not at all.”

He turned her hand and kissed the pale skin of her wrist, slowly following the map of bluish veins up her arm. She gazed down at him with gleaming eyes, her lips parted with want as he leaned forward with the motion of his light kisses.

He knew there was a reason he had insisted on capped sleeves—his lips savored the smoothness of her skin all the way to the peak of her shoulder.

Bracing one hand on either side of her thighs, if only to cool his desire to touch her and hear her sighs of pleasure, he bent his head and kissed the dip where her neck joined her shoulder. He kissed the line of her collarbone and up the column of her throat, then along her jaw until he paused at her mouth.

Sophia was breathing raggedly, her chest heaving, her entire being seeming to call out for him to kiss her properly. But he held back, those blasted words circling around and around in his head like vultures over carrion.

I don’t want to break her heart. I don’t want to make promises I can’t keep if it is more that she seeks.

She reached for his lapels as if to pull him into a kiss regardless. “What is troubling you, Thomas?” She spoke so quietly, yet it was like being struck with a mighty blow.

“Nothing,” he replied.

She frowned. “I didn’t take you for a liar.”

“I… am still thinking about the play.”

She sniffed. “Now, I know you’re lying. What is the matter?”

He met her gaze, as eager to pull away and avoid confrontation as he was to just kiss her and lose himself in her entirely. The silence stretched in the small gap between them, begging to be filled.

But as his mouth opened, uncertain of what truths and lies might come out, the carriage jolted violently. Unbalanced as he was, he threw himself at her, wrapping her up in his arms as they were tossed this way and that, the horses whinnying their alarm.

He held onto her like that until the carriage ceased rocking and heard the driver call out, “We hit a ditch, Your Graces! Doesn’t look like we’ve lost a wheel, so we’ll carry on once I’ve calmed the horses!”

“Very good, Maxwell,” Thomas called back, breathless, as he released his tight grip on his wife and moved back to his side of the carriage.

She sat there with her hand pressed to her chest, panting.

“Are you well?” Thomas asked.

She blinked and nodded. “I will be.”

Soon enough, the carriage resumed its journey, and Thomas and Sophia resumed their silence, both lost in their thoughts. And though Thomas was no great believer in fate and divine intervention, he could not deny that some force beyond himself hadn’t wanted him to say what he’d been about to say.

Leave it as it is, he told himself.

If Sophia could watch a play and feel things as if they were real, then he had no right to bewilder and confuse her in her own marriage. It was better if she continued to believe that he was a cold fish with no ability to feel whatsoever.

No, it was better for both of them if he pushed his emotions down and hid them away—just as his father had taught him.

After all, as Romeo and Juliet had just shown him, nothing good could come out of falling for the enemy.