Chapter 21
CHAPTER21
Rachel watched the last guest leave with numbness. She had barely spoken to anyone since the conversation where Anne had revealed Daniel’s greatest secret. She stood in the middle of the ballroom looking at the decorations that had seemed so beautiful to her earlier that evening, and yet now seemed so dull.
At the far end of the room, a hiccoughing Anne was towed away by Mrs. Brooks. Daniel followed behind her.
“You will see her well-settled, won’t you?” Daniel asked, his voice soft with concern as Anne laughed and interrupted her own laugh with another hiccough.
“There is nothing to worry about, Your Grace. Everyone has a night where they drink a little too much. I shall take good care of Anne.” Mrs. Brooks looped her arm through Anne’s and promptly dragged her from the ballroom. “Come, dear.” Despite the softness of her voice, there was firmness in her movements.
Rather than following behind them, Daniel closed the door of the ballroom. He leaned against it with both palms, not turning to look at Rachel at all. Rachel stiffened, waiting for him to say something. She would have been glad of anything.
Since his revelation, he’d promptly changed the subject and then avoided Rachel for the rest of the night. She’d been left to quiet corners of the ballroom, talking to her sisters, who had kept asking her what was wrong, though she had refused to say.
“Is this to be our future?” Rachel asked, interrupting the silence between them. “You far over there, away from me?”
“You are angry.”
“Well, your powers of perceptiveness have not left you.” She wrung her hands together, paced up and down, then felt words escape her, like an explosion. “Why did you not tell me?”
Daniel lifted his head and slowly turned around, his back resting against the door. His gaze was narrowed.
“Do not look at me like that.” She waved a hand at him. “I deserved to know. I should have known.” She crossed toward him, her pace fast. “You and I are married, and you didn’t think it important to tell the woman you are married to that you never had any intention of giving her a child? For God’s sake, you’re a duke! I thought you’d want an heir, at least.”
“That’s what you thought?” he muttered.
“What else was I supposed to think?” she asked wildly. “You never said anything. Why did you not tell me this before we got married?”
“There seemed little point.”
He walked past her further into the ballroom. She followed him, but he showed little interest in looking at her. He moved toward the refreshments table and took a decanter of brandy, pouring out a ridiculously large glass for himself.
“I decided long ago that I didn’t want children, Rachel. It has nothing to do with you.”
“It has everything to do with me.” Her insistence made his eyes flick toward her over the rim of his glass. “You have not just made a decision about your future, but for mine also. Do you not see that? I should have been a part of that discussion.”
“Let me speak plainly.” He put the glass down so harshly, it thudded and made the rest of the crystalware dance on the surface of the table. Rachel flinched. “I walked through hell on earth, Rachel.”
“What?” she spluttered, turning to face him fully.
“Being a soldier teaches you many things, but it shows you something that can’t be undone.” His voice rose and grew grave. “It shows you the depravity of mankind. What one man is capable of doing to another. It repulses me, it terrifies me, and justly so after all that I have seen. After witnessing so much murder, so much evil, do you honestly think I could bring a child into this world? They are innocents!” he snapped, his voice growing impossibly louder. “I will not force a child of mine to witness anything of that kind.”
He walked away from her, moving around the table and reaching for one of the last canapes that was left on a tray, picking it up, though he seemed to have little interested in eating.
“Do you hear yourself?” Rachel asked, incredulously. “You are purporting that a child of yours would witness it. Good Lord, if your child would be a girl, she would have no need to be a soldier, and even if it is a boy, you could just tell your son not to go to war.”
“It is not that simple.” He tossed the canape back down on the table, and she flinched again. “These sorts of things don’t stay on a battlefield, Rachel. How many men are there in Newgate Prison right now for murder? How much death is caused on our own shores, under our noses?” He stepped toward her, and she backed away, stunned at the venom in him when he spoke of such things. “Just because we stand in fancy ballrooms and pretend this sort of thing isn’t happening in the streets of London right now, it doesn’t mean it is not happening.”
“Such cruelty, murder, it is not as common as you think—”
“It is!” he snapped, cutting her off. “What’s worse, that is not the only thing that plagues my mind. What about soldiers being sent as cannon fodder, hmm? It happens, Rachel. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Our country’s leaders throw us in the line of fire for the benefit of society as a whole. It’s a vicious lie,” he scoffed. “It’s their own gain they fight for. Look at the Spanish wars. Why I fought at all…” He faltered and shook his head. “It’s horrifying.” He turned away and topped up his brandy glass. “I will not bring a child into a world like this.”
Rachel could argue against his statements, but she didn’t. He was too angry to possibly hear any argument she could make on this matter. She instead went straight to the heart of exactly why she was so upset.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked again, following him to the table.
When he reached for the brandy glass, she took it out of his hands and put it back down on the table.
“Rachel, I was drinking that.”
“Oh, stretch yourself and give me another minute of your attention, rather than devoting it all to that brandy. Tell me, why did you never tell me? I should have known.”
“Why should you have?”
“Because it was my dream, Daniel.”
Her words silenced him. He blinked, baffled, as if she had declared something strange, indeed.
She shook her head, seeing just how much this shocked him. “All I ever wanted was to be a mother. I thought I could have that dream here. That you and I could have a family together.”
“You’re reading things that were never here in the first place,” he said with sudden darkness.
“What does that mean?” She stepped back, her fear palpable in the air.
“It means that you and I wed purely for convenience, did we not?” he reminded her, taking the brandy glass and knocking back the contents. “It only recently began to be something more. Why should I have told you anything, when it was all for convenience in the first place? Children were never on the cards, Rachel.”
She stared at him, dumbstruck and uncertain of what to say. The callousness of his words revealed a new side to him she had not seen before. She started to wonder what all of their recent intimacy meant to him. Did he care for her, as she loved him? Or was it all merely the excitement of the bedchamber?
Perhaps it means nothing more to him than that.
She realized the latter was the most likely scenario, for he stared at her and offered no sympathy, no apology at all for keeping this secret from her.
“It was a marriage of convenience,” he reminded her, again.
“I deserved to know that your offer to rescue me from scandal involved giving up on my dream to be a mother someday. I deserved that.” She blinked madly as tears pricked her eyes, backing away from him.
“Rachel…”
He stepped forward to follow her, but she held up her hand. She couldn’t bear being beside him anymore tonight, not now that she knew the truth of everything, of how much he didn’t want a family, and how little her feelings on this mattered to him.
He does not look at me as I do him. This marriage is different from what I thought, entirely!
She spun on her heel and ran from the room.
* * *
It was the early hours of the morning, with the moonlight streaming through the open window, and still, Daniel could not sleep. There seemed to be an insufferable warmth in the air tonight. No matter what he did, he could not escape it.
Flinging himself back on the bed on top of the covers did little to help the heat. He lifted his head and looked at the door connecting his room to Rachel’s chamber, listening to the sounds that were also keeping him awake.
She’s crying.
The sound of her sobs made him ache. He rolled over on the bed again, attempting to sleep but failing miserably. Rachel was plainly doing her best to cry softly, but he heard her snuffles and sometimes heard her feet padding across her bedchamber floor as she went to retrieve a handkerchief.
The length of time for which she cried, even more so than their argument, showed to him just how much he had broken her heart with his revelation.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
He got off the bed and paced, restless, then moved to the window and looked out, allowing the breeze to ruffle his hair and bristle across his chest. He hadn’t planned for Rachel to find out in such a callous way, and the more he thought about their argument, the more he realized he had not helped matters. His own anger at his secret being discovered in this fashion had made him curt and blunt.
“In truth,” he murmured to himself in realization, “I did not want her to find out at all.” He tipped his head forward and closed his eyes, realizing that in his heart, he’d pushed the truth away, somehow in the hope of avoiding this conversation with her. “Of course, she wants children.” He slapped a hand against the wall and walked across the bedchamber, thinking of how Rachel behaved with her sisters.
She’d always been caring and motherly. Even toward Anne, she was kind and protective, even when Anne didn’t want such affection and walked away from her. It was in Rachel’s nature to look out for others.
“This decision has nothing to do with her. She must see that,” he muttered once again, looking at the door. He strode toward it and laid his palm on the wood, thinking of going to her.
Perhaps he could end this argument tonight. He could embrace her, hold her, and let her know that he was sorry for the manner in which she found out, but he had no intention of changing his mind.
It was a decision he’d made within the first year or so of the war, after he’d seen what men were truly capable of. It disgusted him and frightened him both at once.
No child should suffer these realities.
Determined, Daniel reached for the door and turned the handle, only to find it was locked.
“Rachel?” he called through the door.
Her muffled cries stopped, but she didn’t answer him, and neither did she come to the door. He sighed and leaned against it.
She doesn’t want me to come to her tonight.
Vowing to finish their conversation the next day, Daniel returned to bed, still suffering in the heat, but he could not sleep. As he lay back, his mind wandered, and he thought of what a child could be like.
He imagined a small boy with Rachel’s honey-brown hair and his bold eyes. The boy would certainly grow up to be handsome! He imagined playing shuttlecock with the boy in the garden, the two of them laughing together. Such joy filled his chest at the image that he ended the thought abruptly and sat up.
“No, no, stop it,” he whispered to himself.
Of course, in his heart, children were a happy thing to dream of, but his head knew the truth. It was too dark a world. It would be cruelty to make an innocent boy suffer it.
It can never happen.
* * *
Daniel stood in the breakfast room, refusing to take his seat. With a coffee cup in his hands, he stared out of the window at the hot day. The sun was blazing down. This sudden heat had come out of nowhere, and it was stifling.
He pushed open the window and shrugged off his tailcoat, trying to find a way to cool down.
“Oh, my head,” Anne complained from the breakfast table behind him.
He glanced back to see her propping up her head in both hands. Beside her, Dorothea pushed forward a cup of tea.
“Well, that is what happens when you drink too much,” Dorothea said pointedly, then huffed. “There, drink that. It will help.”
“Will it?” Anne lifted the teacup to her lips and wrinkled her nose. “I’m not sure anything will help.”
When Dorothea lifted a cloche from a platter in front of them, revealing their breakfast of eggs, Anne’s face turned green.
“Perhaps this is your punishment, dear,” Dorothea said, her tone soft, though her eyes were calculating.
“For drinking too much?” Anne asked, forcing the teacup to her lips.
“For revealing Daniel’s secret in front of my friends and in front of his wife, who plainly knew nothing of it.” Dorothea glared at Daniel across the room, clearly just as upset with him.
“What?” Anne looked sharply up. “What did I say?”
“You do not remember?” Daniel could have laughed at the absurdity of it all, but he didn’t feel like laughing. He turned back to stare out of the window, nursing his coffee cup between his hands. “No wonder Ashleigh watched over you for the rest of the night. I did not realize quite how much you’d had, Anne.”
“Your friend was very kind.”
“Hmm, I noticed you thought that last night.” Daniel looked sharply at his sister again. “Something else you want to tell me of what you think of my friend?”
“No.” Anne shrank down in her chair, refusing to look at him as she rubbed her temples. “What did I say exactly?”
“You told us all that Daniel does not want children.”
Daniel looked sharply at the door to see Rachel standing there. She was dressed in her riding habit, eyes down, fussing with a sleeve to avoid looking at him..
“I… excuse—” Anne abruptly broke off and ran from the room, a hand to her lips.
“Well, perhaps she will feel better for it,” Dorothea drawled, then served herself some eggs, jerking her head at Daniel and then in Rachel’s direction.
He needed no encouragement from his aunt. He put down his coffee cup, crossing to the end of the breakfast room to see his wife. Rachel turned on her heel and walked down the corridor, prompting Daniel to follow her.
“Your eyes are red, Rachel.”
“Yes, that is what happens when you cry. The law of nature, I’m afraid.” She shrugged, not looking at him as she stopped by the front door.
To see her avoiding his gaze so much made a knot tighten in his gut.
“Rachel, please.” He laid a hand on the door, stopping her from opening it. “You cannot go riding now, we need to talk.”
“What more is there to talk about?” She looked at him at last. “You made it quite plain what you thought last night. That you have no intention of ever have a child and didn’t think I deserved to know that. Clearly, you did not plan to tell me at all, did you?”
Her question pinned him to the spot. He looked down at his boots, shifting on his feet restlessly.
Say something, you imbecile!
Yet, he could think of nothing wise to say.
“Excuse me,” she said, trying to reach for the door.
“Do not go riding now.”
“I am not going riding for the sake of it. I’m going to see my sisters.”
“What?” He looked up sharply. “For how long?”
“I do not know.” She blinked, clearly holding back more tears. “I need to speak to them. They are my sisters, and they understand me better than anyone else in this world. Strange that.” She looked at him again. “I thought you were becoming my greatest confidante. I guess I was wrong, was I not?”
Daniel couldn’t argue against her words. The closeness between them seemed so distant now, as if whatever cord had connected them had been severed.
He released the door, and Rachel opened it hurriedly, stepping out and striding around the house in the direction of the stables.
Please, Rachel, come back tonight.