Page 60 of A Proposition for the Comte
She stood in her room and looked around the chamber with eyes that were different from the ones she’d had before she’d left here at the noon hour.
She had told Aurelian her greatest fear and he had not shouted at her, had not despised her but had calmly said they would speak of it again when they had both gathered their thoughts. But she had seen the blank shocked hurt on his face and he was a man who usually hid any emotion with ease.
What did that mean? She closed her fingers around the ring he had given her and wished that she was a different woman, a happier one, less scared and more fertile. For him.
But she could not change. Harland had punished her for it but Aurelian merely looked sad.
That was the worst of it all. He was a good man who deserved more. Turning to the window she gazed out over the rooftops and at the cold grey sky. She was so sick of being frightened and of being not enough and a day that had started with such promise had run down into disaster.
Tomorrow she would be different. Tomorrow she would claim her life back again and visit the bookstore. Perhaps she might find some medical treatises on the subject of bearing children at Lackington’s and glean some hope of one day conceiving a child. Perhaps, too, on reflection, she could speak with Aurelian without so much emotion and try and forge another pathway forward for them both.
Harland’s battering of her self-confidence had been most effective. He’d jammed the portraits of the two children he’d had with a mistress in her face at every available opportunity and she had been mortified. The basic reasons for marrying and being a wife were beyond her and as their relationship became more and more embittered she almost understood his desperation for an heir. The social status of being a lord meant everything to him and to have his title pass into the hands of a far-flung relative with living sons was a hard pill to swallow.
She shook her head. If he had taken the care Aurelian had with her, she might have managed something but his hard and brutal lovemaking in the first few years of her marriage had left her stiff and dry, the feelings engendered ones of loathing and fury.
With Aurelian she had only felt the magic. She let out her breath and dashed a tear from her cheek. If she could provide Aurelian with an heir she would never ask for another thing in her life, she swore she would not.
‘Please God,’ she began, and tapered off. There were more pressing problems than her own in the world and if she could just relax her body might begin to soften and ripen.
She ran her hands across the flat of her stomach and whispered her words with fervour.
‘Please, God, please help me. Please.’
Aurelian met Lytton Staines later that night at Whites, and was relieved to see the Earl of Thornton already well enough into his cups to make him easy company.
‘You look browbeaten, Lian. Is the Lady Addington running you into the ground? I heard you were at Wakes today and that you left before even eating.’ He raised his glass and drank deeply. ‘Here’s to beautiful red-headed women and their penchant for histrionics.’
Without meaning to, Aurelian laughed, but Lytton was not finished.
‘To give Violet Addington her due it seems that everyone in society is enamoured of her. Half the men have pleaded for her hand in marriage and the other half are already married. Did you know that?’
This observation coming on the back of his own failed marriage proposal had Lian looking up quickly but he could see no true sign of any knowledge on Thornton’s face. A mere conjecture and a remark that had been thrown off casually.
‘You seem under the weather, Thorn. Was your recent Scottish sojourn unsuccessful?’
‘Very’ came the reply and for a moment Lian had the distinct impression that Thornton was not quite as drunk as he made out. ‘I’m thirty-five next week. God, thirty-five. Where did all those years go to? If I don’t find a bride soon and have children this will be all that is left of the Thornton line.’ Long, thin fingers gestured to himself. ‘Well, be damned if I will let that happen.’
‘You are thinking of marrying, then? Who did you have in mind?’
‘Anyone. The next woman who catches my eye and is passably attractive. I no longer require great beauty but I do want wide hips.’
Lian couldn’t help smiling as he took a glass of brandy from the table before him. Thornton had ordered half a dozen so he didn’t think he would miss this one.
Breathing out heavily, the melancholy of the day wrapped itself around him. He wanted to simply stand up and go and find Violet. He wanted her so desperately that he shook with it. He also knew that he couldn’t.
Still, Lian felt Thornton was waiting for some sort of confidence and racking his brain he found something to say. ‘Perhaps just living is the best anyone can hope for. Politics and the raw reality of life can take things away from you before you knew you wanted them.’
‘That’s deep, Lian, and tonight I only can deal with shallow. My sister is ill, deadly ill, for it seems she might not survive even another month. I found this out today. She is young and mortality is staring us all down a barrel.’
The truth of the words was shocking, the laughter from a nearby table unwanted and intrusive.
‘The antics of a spoiled society lord doesn’t hold as much appeal as it used to, Aurelian. I want to settle down, to be a better man.’
‘Five glasses of strong brandy won’t be helping that and it looks like you’ve had more before these turned up.’
Staines had the grace to look guilty. ‘You were always the best of us all, Lian. The cleverest and the most...mysterious. Everything comes easily to you and yet lately I think that perhaps it has not. You’ve lost a portion of your third finger to some hideous accident and your face has been almost sliced in half. These things don’t come from living the life of a landed and coddledcomte.’
Thornton raised his glass, his smile perplexed. ‘Shay was the hero of England and you...perhaps you are the anti-hero with your French heritage? Not that it worries me for I like you anyway but...’ He stopped.
