Chapter 27

CHAPTER 27

“Celia? You haven’t touched your food.” Elizabeth sat down beside her at the dining table.

Frances had long since left the table, taking refuge in the drawing room with a pack of cards and letters from a friend. Celia couldn’t blame her for escaping. If she were in her shoes, Celia wouldn’t have wanted to be around anyone so miserable as she was right now.

“I’m not hungry, I’m afraid.” Celia put down her knife and fork, quite abandoning her attempt to look like she was eating at all.

“You need your strength,” Elizabeth said softly.

She pulled Celia’s plate away and swapped it with a bowl of treacle sponge pudding that looked rather delicious. Celia lifted her spoon and took a small bite.

“There, at least that’s something.”

“You’re very kind,” Celia whispered.

She kept looking at Elizabeth, strangely mesmerized by the warmth and kindness in her expression. She was rather different from Marianne in countenance. Not once had Elizabeth reprimanded or reproached her for the manner in which she had ended up married to Keith.

“Forgive me…” Celia began slowly. “I wanted to ask you… Keith and I had to marry fast, and⁠—”

“Ah, you wish to know how I feel about it.” Elizabeth smiled. “Well, how does your mother feel?”

“Do not look behind that particular screen.” Celia shook her head as she took another tiny bite of pudding. “My mother is very disappointed in me. She always has been. I’ve been a bit too wild for her liking. I’m not exactly the proper lady she wanted me to be.”

“Who wants to be proper?” Elizabeth asked with a wry smile. Celia froze with her spoon halfway to her lips. “Being like every other lady in the ton surely means you’re no longer an individual but a sheep. One of the flock, not a woman with wits of her own.”

Celia blinked. It was not quite the reaction she had been expecting.

“And as for how quickly you and my son married, it may surprise you to know that I was rather relieved.”

“You were?” Celia put down her spoon.

“Before you got married, Keith talked so much about marriage. He was doing it because I made it clear to him that he would need an heir someday, I know that.” Elizabeth grimaced.

Celia wanted to run out of the room. The thought that all she and Keith had shared over the last day was because he wanted an heir suddenly made her feel like nothing but livestock. She was here to give him a son, that was it.

“The fact that he married you showed he was marrying for another reason, though.” Elizabeth smiled. “I do not know what happened between you two before you got married, Celia, but clearly it wasn’t nothing. Neither of you have attempted to deny it.”

Rather embarrassed to be having this discussion with her mother-in-law, Celia was tempted to hide her face in her napkin but decided against it.

“Then, he married you to protect your reputation. The fact that you were intimate shows there was passion there, and the fact that he married you shows that he cared. Clearly…” Elizabeth’s smile grew wider. “You mean a great deal to him.”

Celia snorted. The sound was rather loud and made Elizabeth giggle.

“Forgive me, but I fear you are quite wrong. If he cared about me, why would he run away the morning after we got married? He spent less than a whole day in my company as his wife.” Celia reached for the wine glass that had been keeping her company all evening and downed it rather hurriedly.

“Ah, I fear he has run away because he cares about you.” Elizabeth stared down into her own wine glass, adjusting some of the candles on the table between them so that the golden light was brighter. “Has he ever talked to you about his father? My late husband?”

“A little.” Celia gulped. His mother had to know about his scars. To talk about them with her, though, seemed like a great invasion of Keith’s privacy. “The scars…” She left it at that.

Slowly, Elizabeth nodded. “My husband was not a kind man. That is the simple truth of it.”

Her shoulders slumped a little as she took a sip of wine. The pain was obvious, even now with the man long gone.

Celia quaked, fearing that there were also scars on Elizabeth’s body.

“What sort of man was he, then?” she whispered, not wishing to push too far yet desperate to know more.

“He set his sights on me the moment he saw me.” Elizabeth grimaced again. “You could say I was flattered. I didn’t want the marriage, but when it was arranged by my father and him, I accepted it. I went into the marriage with hope.

“But that hope did not last long. What began as a fascination with me became an obsession. I don’t just mean in terms of his fascination with me, but an obsession to control me.” Elizabeth looked up. The agony was obvious on her face.

Celia threw caution to the wind. It didn’t matter that she didn’t know this woman very well. She placed a hand over Elizabeth’s, and the old woman promptly turned her palm up so that they clasped hands.

“I fought against him. The pain was inevitable. He was a brutal and violent man who made his displeasure known. When my children were born, he took his anger out on them too.”

Elizabeth’s lip trembled, and Celia leaned toward her, longing to take her pain away.

“I tried many times to escape him, to know what freedom would be like again, but it was impossible. He would not let me go, and as I was bound by marriage, I had no choice. I had to stay.”

Celia hung her head. She was reminded of her cousin, who had lost her life after being seduced by an older man who did not truly care about her. How many times had Celia heard of unkind men inflicting such pain on women? How was it that no woman could ever be cherished enough to be happy?

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

“Don’t be, please.” Elizabeth shook her head, still holding her hand tightly. “I’m not telling you this to gain your sympathy but to help you understand your husband. When Keith was old enough, he put himself between me and my husband, to protect me.”

“His heart,” Celia murmured more to herself than to Elizabeth.

“Yes. He has the best of hearts. He ended up suffering just to keep me safe. The pain stopped when Keith became so strong that his father couldn’t hurt any of us anymore. Then… he was gone.” Elizabeth looked blankly around the room.

Celia wondered if the woman’s mind was elsewhere, perhaps in a castle deep within the Scottish Highlands.

“Keith has spent his whole life being told how like his father he is. How much he looks like him, how sometimes they are alike in manner⁠—”

“Don’t tell me.” Celia’s voice was quiet but firm. She saw quickly what other assumption Keith may have made. “Don’t tell me that Keith thinks he could one day become his father?”

“I am certain he has made it his life mission not to be his father. When he left this morning, he talked about giving us all our freedom. What else could that have been about, unless he is distancing himself from his father completely? Turning his back on the woman he cares about in fear that he could one day hurt her the way I was hurt?” Elizabeth looked at her, at last.

“That’s mad!” Celia stood up abruptly. “How could he think that? He has never hurt me. Not once in all the time I have known him. He’s… he has protected me, more than once.”

She pushed back her chair and paced up and down, thinking about how even on the night they met, he had rescued her.

“From the moment I met him, he was not his father. His father married you and made the arrangements with your own father. He controlled you from the beginning. Oh, Keith! He even vowed never to marry a woman like me. He never intended to control me. Not… not like that.”

She looked away, fearing Elizabeth would see a glimmer of something on her face. The only control Keith had ever exercised really was in the bedroom—but that had been different. It was all a game, a thrill, a way to excite them both with playful orders. In the time she’d known him, he had never truly tried to manipulate or control her.

“How could he think he is like his father?” Celia protested, turning back to face Elizabeth again.

“He’s still afraid,” Elizabeth whispered.

“That doesn’t give him the right to do this—to turn his back on me and not explain any of this, not to give me a chance to object.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Oh, what is the trouble with men?” Celia went back to pacing, throwing her hands in the air. “I knew this would happen. This is why I never wanted to get married. Men are only capable of mistreating us.”

“Not all men, dear.”

“Yes, there are exceptions, but with the Lord as my witness, they are rare!” She circled the table this time. “My father is one of them. My sister’s husband too. And our friends’ husbands. They are the exceptions. I thought… I thought Keith was one of them too. How wrong I was.”

“I thought this would help,” Elizabeth murmured, wringing her hands. “I only wished to offer some insight, dear.”

“I am very grateful to you, Elizabeth. Very grateful, indeed.” Celia stopped behind her and placed a hand on her shoulder affectionately. “You have helped me see the light.”

Celia now understood Keith so much more. If he wished to isolate himself and be miserable, then that was what he deserved. He had proved he didn’t care about her feelings.

When he said goodbye, he could have explained why he was doing this. He could have given her the chance to tell him that she loved him, that she didn’t believe him capable of causing her any pain, but he had taken the decision from her.

Like all men… thoughtless!

“Well, enough then.” She went back to her pacing. “I shall do as he wants me to. I shall oversee all the changes he began here. I shall help the tenants and the farmers, I shall look after the estate. I will be the obedient wife he always wanted.”

Her voice hitched as she halted behind her own chair. Elizabeth reached for her again. Her gentle demeanor was making Celia want to cry again, but she fought against it.

“What would be the point in doing anything else?” Celia said in a small voice. “He has decided for the both of us that we shouldn’t be together.”

She was quickly losing that battle with her tears now.

A sudden shadow in the doorway made her jump. Celia turned away, a hand on her stomach, not sure she could bear talking to anyone but Elizabeth right now.

“Thank ye for the rest, Your Grace, My Lady.”

It was Mairi. She had napped for much of the afternoon to recover from her journey. Now she smiled breezily, not sensing what sort of awkward conversation she had walked into.

“I am ready to see my patient. Where will I find him?”

“Ah, how about I make the arrangements?” Elizabeth offered, rising from her seat. “Lord Pembroke is at his house. I can prepare a carriage to take you there, and I will accompany you to explain. What do you think, Celia?”

“Yes. Thank you,” Celia whispered, trying her best to keep her voice level. “That is kind.”

Her breath was coming thick and fast now as tears pricked her eyes.

“Come, I’ll take you to him,” Elizabeth said.

She walked past Celia, squeezing her shoulder soothingly before she was gone, with Mairi following behind her.

As the door closed behind them, Celia’s tears spilled over. She covered her mouth with both hands, trying to stifle the sound.

To know now why Keith had run away somehow only made things worse. Maybe he was trying to protect her, maybe that was a noble thing, but he had made a decision that they should have made together. If he had loved her, as she loved him, he would have been honest.

He couldn’t be honest with me. That is the problem.

She reached for the carafe in the middle of the table and frantically topped up her wine. She spilled a little in her haste and rushed to wipe it with a cloth, then grabbed the glass and marched out of the room. Rather than heading to the drawing room to find Frances, or to her chamber to hide from the world, she went to the study.

Earlier that day, Frances and Elizabeth had shown her this room and told her this was where Keith conducted his business. She pushed the door open to see two desks in the room. One was Keith’s desk. It was piled high with paperwork. The other desk was empty. It had once belonged to the late Duchess of Hardbridge, but she had been gone for some time.

Slamming the glass down on the desk, she reached for the paperwork and transferred it to her own desk. She left behind anything to do with the lairdship and instead focused on everything to do with the dukedom. There were tenants’ papers, plans for a new building, farm plans, and even the servants’ schedules.

She spread them across her desk and sat down, picking up her glass and taking a large gulp of her wine.

It was nearly dark now, and she only had a couple of candles to keep her company as she looked at the papers. Through that candlelight, she was painfully aware of how empty the room was. Her eyes landed on the empty seat behind Keith’s desk, though she managed to look away eventually as her tears ran down her cheeks.

There were no sounds, no murmurs even in the distance, and the darkness seemed to be closing in on her, making her painfully aware of the dark shadows in the corners of the room and the emptiness of it all.

“So, this will be my life now?”