Page 100 of The Captive
“I wanted to smash the damned teapot, but she looked so broken,” Christian said. They’d ridden far and wide on Severn property, the day cool enough that the horses were frisky. Christian shared his confidences between brisk canters and gallops over the stiles.
“Her experience puts your situation in perspective. What will you do?”
His situation. He was a war hero for silently enduring a few months of Girard’s intermittent abuse, while Gilly remained emotionally imprisoned after eight years of silent torture, for which the law and Society both had guaranteed her tormenter impunity.
“I will give her time.” He’d give her his hands, his sight, anything, if it would help her regain her sense of worth and joy.
“You want to give her the rest of your life and all your wealth and consequence,” St. Just said. “She may never get back on the marital horse, so to speak, and you have no sons.”
“I don’t need sons. I need Gilly.”
“Have you told her that?”
“In the King’s English.”
“Not have you said the words, but have you communicated your need for her?”
Christian frowned at his friend—for surely, one in whom such confidences could be reposed was a friend—but St. Just wasn’t finished.
“You’re a duke, wealthy, powerful, reasonably good-looking when you make the effort, and a decorated war hero. She’s a penniless victim of an abusive spouse. What can she possibly have that you need?”
“Everything.”
“Gracious, you are smitten. I’m impressed.”
“With the lady’s charms?”
“With your courage. You were broken too, and for you to care like this…” St. Just fell silent while his horse danced around some droppings in the road. “You have found the best revenge, my friend.”
“I was damaged. I was never broken. Girard reminded me of that frequently.” And he’d relished those incessant reminders, though he was sure they’d been intended as taunts. “Gilly has sorted me out and put me back to rights.”
St. Just looked pained and pointed off toward the village steeple. “Race you.”
Christian put his spurs to Chessie’s sides and thought he’d have an advantage because he knew the territory. St. Just had ridden dispatch though, and beat him by a length.
“Your heart wasn’t in the steeplechase,” St. Just said charitably. “And my mount is in better condition than yours. I was planning to head closer to Town before the sun sets, but invite me to spend the night.”
“So invited,” Christian said, relieved somebody would join him and Gilly for dinner—and St. Just’s mountwasa splendid beast. “We’ll dine informally and find you something of mine to wear, though I warn you, embroidery is showing up on my attire in unlikely places.”
St. Just looked intrigued, necessitating a change in topic. Christian stroked a gloved hand over Chessie’s neck, for the old boy was still heaving a bit. “We caught Lucy singing to her puppies.”
“Is there a but coming?”
“But she’s still silent when she knows anybody can hear. Gilly thinks we ought to confront her. I cannot agree.”
“Why not?”
“She knows how to speak. She writes great convoluted stories using vocabulary far beyond her years. Her life is made lonely and awkward by her silence, therefore I conclude she does not speak because she cannot.”
“You didn’t speak. Perhaps she knows this.”
Why hadn’t this occurred to him? “Just so, I did not speak because it became the only means of remaining alive. Gilly kept a silence of her own, finding it the only refuge for her dignity and self-respect. Some silences we are compelled to keep.”
St. Just, who likely had a few silences to his name, didn’t argue the point. “She seems a happy child, your Lucy, but I asked Her Grace if she’d ever heard of such a thing, and she hadn’t.”
“Your stepmother?”
“She has raised ten children and was unfashionably involved in the process, as was Moreland.”
