Page 71 of Private Arrangements
“But you probably don't very often wish that the seventh duke hadn't died.”
She opened her mouth to say something that would put his mind at ease, as she'd done innumerable times in recent months. But suddenly, the conceit and stupidity of it struck her. Freddie knew. Even if he hadn't acknowledged it, he understood that everything had changed.
His anxiety could not be soothed away with mere words, nor eradicated even with a wedding ceremony. Like the phantom of a haunted house, it might recede into the woodwork when the sun was high and the day bright, only to return with a vengeance at the onset of long nights and howling storms.
Her lack of a response hung heavy in the air. Freddie looked a little shocked. Like her, he'd probably become accustomed to the elaborate reassurances she manufactured with the efficacy of industrial processes. But she was a sham. The castle on the hill she'd built them was no more real than a painted fort on a stage backdrop.
Freddie walked away from her, as if needing the distance to sort out his own thoughts. She could still coddle him, go on feigning that everything would be all right. But it would be an egregious lie.
It was a sad reflection on her arrogance—and naïveté, to some extent—that she remained convinced for so long that she could still makehimhappy, even if he couldn't do the same for her. There was no such thing as a marriage with one happy spouse. Both must be or neither.
She caught up with him at the edge of the meadow.
“The light is good here,” he said halfheartedly. He looked like something out of one of his beloved Impressionist paintings, a pensive, melancholy figureen plein air,against a brilliant sky and a verdant landscape.
She pointed downstream. “See where the willows grow close to the bank? That's where I first met Lord Tremaine.”
Freddie scuffed the sole of his boot against an exposed rock. “Love at first sight?”
“Close enough, within twenty-four hours.” She took a deep breath, and another. It was time to come clean. “In some ways I was a victim of my youth and inexperience: I'd never been in love before and I couldn't handle the intensity of my emotions. But mostly I was my own worst enemy—I was too selfish, too myopic, and too ruthless. I knew it was terrible to deceive him into thinking that his intended had already married someone else, but I went ahead and did it anyway.”
Freddie gasped. It was the first time she'd ever told him—or anyone, for that matter—what lay at the core of her marital infelicity. Little wonder. It was an ugly story, full of what she liked least about herself.
“What I did bought me three weeks of happiness— rotten happiness at that—and then utter downfall.” She sighed. “Life has its way of teaching humility to the arrogant.”
“You are not arrogant,” Freddie said stubbornly.
Oh, Freddie, beloved Freddie. “Perhaps not as much as I used to be, but still arrogant enough not to have informed you of the truth from the very beginning— about my marriage, about the paintings . . .”
Freddie turned toward her. “Do you really think I love you because you had certain paintings on your walls? I was already in love with you long before I ever set foot in your house.”
She took his hands in hers, gazed at their linked fingers, and slowly shook her head. “Alas, I'd hoped it was the paintings. That would make you and Miss Carlisle perfect for each other.”
“Angelica wants to make me into something I'm not. She wants me to be the next Bouguereau, the most renowned artist of my day. But I'm not meant to be either famous or prolific. I'm a slow painter, and I don't mind it. I paint what I like and when I like. And I'd rather not second-guess whether a particular shadow is ochre or viridian.”
She smiled ruefully. “I can sympathize with that. Though I'd have wished that between you and Miss Carlisle—”
“I loveyou.”
“And I adore you,” she said, fully meaning every word. “I know of no better man than you. But should we marry, there'd be three of us in this marriage, always. That is not fair to you. And in time it would become intolerable.
“I've agonized about it day and night. You have been the dearest friend. I kept asking myself, how could I let you down? How could I hurt you? But I've come to see that I would completely betray your trust were I to continue this pretense that we could go on as if nothing has changed. Things have changed, and I can no more undo these changes than I can make water flow uphill. I can only be honest with you, once and for all.”
Freddie's head lowered. “Do you still love him?”
The question that she'd once dreaded, that he hadn't dared to ask six weeks ago. “Yes, I'm afraid. I don't know how I can apologize to you enough—”
“You don't need to apologize to me for anything. You've never let me down, and you didn't this time either.” Freddie enfolded her in an embrace. “Thank you.”
She was befuddled. “Whatever for?”
“For liking me as I am. I never much cared for myself until you came along. You don't know how wonderful the past year and a half has been for me.”
Dear Freddie, only he could be so sweet to thank her at a time like this. She hugged him back fiercely. “You are the most wonderful person I've ever met, bar none.”
When they let go of each other, his eyes were rimmed in red. She, too, had to fight the urge to cry, a sigh and a tear for something that simply wasn't meant to be, a lovely courtship that would have collapsed under the weight of a complicated marriage.
Freddie was the first to speak. “You'll be going to America now, I guess?”
