Page 86 of My Own True Duchess
He gently turned her to face him, and Theo saw in his eyes that he was offering the only truce he could. We’ll simply not speak of the club.
Her despair was a palpable weight on her chest, a pressure in her skull. The longing to fold herself into Jonathan’s embrace, to give in, wailed in her soul.
“I was married to a man to whom I could not speak, Jonathan. The silence grew, starting with his gambling and wagering, then to his erratic schedule, our miserable finances, his overimbibing, his failing health. Diana and Seraphina learned to not speak to him, as did the staff. He died amid a silence so loud, my heart broke to endure it. I love you, but I cannot base a marriage on ignored differences of this magnitude.”
Jonathan’s hands fell away. Another loud silence expanded as he stepped back. “A gentleman does not argue with a lady.”
A gentleman does not own a house of ruin. Theo stopped short of that retort, because Jonathan was a gentleman. He was kind to Diana and Seraphina. He walked his uncle’s dog when that was properly a footman’s job. He’d sent peaches to a nobody of a widow and danced with women simply to raise their consequence.
“I am sorry, Jonathan, but I am not wrong.”
Please, please capitulate. Give in, offer the smallest indication that we can weather this disagreement.
He took Theo’s hand and kissed her knuckles. “Your independent nature was one of the first things I noticed about you. I’m sorry too, Theo, but I cannot fail my uncle, cannot fail those who depend on me, and most of all, I cannot leave an establishment I’ve built year by year to watch it sink under a weight of scandal and crooked behavior.”
He kept hold of her hand, a comfort and a torment. Theo was tempted to drag him back to the sofa, to make love one more time, to rail at him until his parents’ spats looked like the mere domestic altercations they’d been.
Anything to maintain a connection to him. Anything to maintain hope.
“I’ll see you home,” Jonathan said.
Theo allowed him that courtesy, because she wanted to linger with him as long as she could. He escorted her from the hidden chamber and past the laden tea tray. The aging footmen were cheerful, the journey back to her home silent.
Jonathan kept an arm around her shoulders the whole way, and she held his hand until the coach had pulled up in the alley. Only then did Theo permit herself to kiss him good-bye.
She made the gesture brief, but as she pulled away, Jonathan held her fast for one, endless agony of a moment.
“Good-bye, Jonathan. Be well.” She left the coach the instant the footman let down the steps, and she did not look back.
* * *
“What else can you tell me about Archimedes Haviland?” Jonathan put the question to Anselm at another Lonely Husbands night.
For the first time, Jonathan was allowing an evening of cards under his own roof. He wanted to watch the play, to look for patterns, for he’d yet to put his finger on what, exactly, Moira was doing at The Coventry.
Perhaps she’d sheathed her claws now that Jonathan was on hand nearly every night, but at the vingt-et-un tables, the house was winning too many hands over too long a stretch of nights. The pots had grown larger, and that was attracting a different and less savory crowd.
Jonathan himself had passed out the staff’s wages the previous week “on behalf of the owner” and had seen enough raised eyebrows to confirm that Moira was skimming from the payroll.
He was slowly working his way through the invoices from the trades and—no surprise there—had found the amounts charged padded, the difference doubtless shared with Moira.
Anselm touched Jonathan on the arm. “It’s a fine night. Let’s stretch our legs, shall we?”
Three tables of four players had been set up in the Quimbey mansion’s game room, and the French doors were open to keep the room aired.
“The parlor across the corridor is unused,” Jonathan said.
Anselm complied with that suggestion, thank the angels, and Jonathan was soon surrounded by a blessed quiet.
“We’ve already covered the topic of the late Mr. Haviland,” Anselm said when Jonathan had closed the parlor door. “Why dredge it up again? His debts have been paid and you’re smitten with his widow.”
An eternal verity, however inconvenient. Jonathan had tried to immerse himself in work, but for once, numbers and ciphering were no consolation. He endured his endless meetings by daydreaming and fretting instead of preaching economy and accountability. Theo haunted him, waking and sleeping, as did the sense that he’d failed to solve a simple equation, failed to identify the only variable that mattered.
“Mrs. Haviland is no longer enamored of me.”
Anselm took a wing chair by the fire. “My duchess was right, then. Araminthea said she hadn’t seen you and the widow together for nearly a fortnight. Trouble in paradise and all that.”
Trouble in purgatory. “Mrs. Haviland disapproves of my ownership of The Coventry. I disapprove of her late husband’s intemperance, but she and I cannot find common ground or a way forward.”
