Page 69 of The Marquess Wins a Wife
Or at least the one he hadthoughthe had wanted.
He wondered if she had even noticed that he had been home more often than not just lately, and just as quickly decided she had not. How could she, when nowshewas the one leaving altogether too often? Even if hedidhappen to catch glimpses of her in the halls, she always seemed to be on her way to somewhere else—to a ball, or to the theatre, or even to Ambrosia with Susan.
But she had never missed dinners at home, and so he found himself at the table each night, since it was practically the only time he saw her anymore.
For the first time in a fortnight, he risked speaking, a tentative breach of that uncomfortable silence. “How is Imogen? I haven’t seen her lately.”
Willie’s knife screeched across his plate. Joanna’s mouth dropped open in shock.
And Lizzie said, the very portrait of calm, “Married.”
“Married?” Luke repeated. “How? When?”
“The usual way. In a church, before a reverend. Two days ago.” Lizzie hadn’t even glanced at him as she spoke, and yet somehow she had maintained that light, unconcerned tone.
He’d missed Imogen’s wedding? “But no one told me,” he said inanely.
“You never asked,” Joanna said primly, turning her nose up at him with all of the hauteur a ten-year-old could muster.
He hadn’t asked, of course. But he’d assumed thatsomeonewould have told him. ThatLizziewould have—
No. Why would she have done?Unlikely, he’d told her, just weeks ago.I don’t attend such things. He cringed now to remember it, to remember how she had haltingly begged his attendance for just one event, and how he had refused her in so condescending and patronizing a manner. How she had humbled herself yet further to plead for Georgie instead.
“I would have come,” he said, and he heard the odd, defensive slant to his voice. “Iwouldhave. I meant to give her away.” Someone would have had to, after all, since Papa Talbot had yet to run through the bank draft Luke had given him, and could not have been relied upon to show up for his daughter’s wedding besides.
Apparently,Lukecouldn’t, either. What was the difference between them, then?
“There was no need,” Lizzie said, and there wasn’t even the tiniest hint of emotion to her voice. She had gone somewhere beyond disappointment, beyond hope—beyond judgment or anger or even grief. Untouchable. “Willie gave Imogen away. It was a lovely ceremony.”
“But I would havecome,” he insisted, and there roiled an unfamiliar feeling deep in his gut, as if something had been stolen from him. But no—notstolen. He’d surrendered it. Every time she had reached out to him, he had spurned her overtures with a casual dismissal. Why would she have expected anything else of him?
“There was no need,” she repeated, and he knew instinctively that there never would be again. She would never choose an invitation from amongst those he’d returned to her. That the door between their rooms would remain locked. That she would never seek him out, never risk another rejection. That the rest of their lives would proceed in countless echoes of this very conversation, full of other things he’d missed, that no one had bothered to inform him of, because he’d already given the impression that they were not and never would be important.
Perhaps he’d miss Georgie’s wedding, and Joanna’s. Perhaps months from now he’d be just as startled to learn suddenly that Lizzie had been delivered of a child, and that he’d missed the birth and the christening both. Perhaps he’d be a grandfather someday and never know it.
That phantom pain, deep in his chest. He resisted the urge to rub the spot. “I’ll go tomorrow to give them my congratulations,” he said.
Joanna poked at her turbot with the tines of her fork. “Imogen’s on her bridal trip,” she said, her mouth pulled into a frown.
Hell. Lizzie hadn’t gotten one of those, either.
“She and Mr. Wycombe will return from France in a month or so,” Lizzie said. “I’m certain they will appreciate your well wishes then, my lord.”
My lord. And it hadn’t even been tendered with the scathing ire which had often accompanied the words in Hatfield. If only she had shouted at him, scowled at him.Shothim.
At least she would have feltsomething. Something other than this tranquilnothingnessshe inflicted upon him now. How had he ever thought thatthiswas what he had wanted? This bland, wretched monotony where they merely existed in the vicinity of one another, where there was nothing to be said between them because there was nothing to besharedbetween them.
Nothing except an empty, meaningless marriage, where there was never a plate set for him because nobody cared whether or not he showed up to the table.
Exactly what he had asked for, he thought, staring down at his plate. Agoodmarriage. Acivilone.
∞∞∞
“You look lovely this evening.”
Lizzie turned, startled to find Luke coming down the stairs behind her. “My lord,” she said. “I didn’t realize you were still at home.” But he wouldn’t be for long, clearly. He was dressed to go out, and more formally than she had ever seen him, in a well-tailored dark grey coat and with a brilliant white cravat done into an intricate knot.
His mouth curved into a rueful smile, his steps slowing upon the stairs. “I’ve been home a great deal lately. Surely you’ve noticed.”
