Page 107 of Married to a Frozen Duke
"Because you're miserable!" The words exploded out of him, loud enough to make her step back. "Because every day I watch you become smaller and quieter and less alive, and I know it's my fault. Because your brothers were right; you're disappearing, and I'm the one making you disappear, and I don't know how to stop it."
The admission hung between them, raw and unexpected. Ophelia stared at him, trying to reconcile this emotional confession with the cold duke she thought she knew.
"So your solution is to end the marriage?"
"My solution is to explore what's possible. To understand what options exist."
"Options for you or for me?"
"Does it matter?"
"Yes! It matters whether you're trying to free yourself or free me. Those are very different things, Alexander."
He was quiet for a long moment, then said, "Your brothers think I'm destroying you."
"My brothers think a lot of things."
"But they're not wrong about this, are they? You are disappearing. You are becoming less yourself."
"And whose fault is that?"
"Mine," he said simply. "Which is why I'm trying to find a solution."
"A solution that involves solicitors and secret meetings and decisions made without consulting me?"
"A solution that gives you choices."
"I had choices. I chose to marry you."
"You had no choice. We both know that."
"I had the choice to make this work or make it fail. I chose to try to make it work. But you never did, did you? From the moment I arrived, you've been looking for ways to maintain distance, to keep me away, to preserve your perfect world from Coleridge contamination."
"That's not..."
"That's exactly what you've done. And now, when it's becoming clear that we can't exist in the same space without destroying each other, your solution is to run to solicitors instead of talking to me."
"Would talking have changed anything? We've been talking for weeks, and all we do is hurt each other."
"Because you won't let me in! You won't trust me, won't see me as anything other than a threat to your ordered existence."
"And you won't stop trying to change everything! The way the household runs, the way the servants behave, the way we interact with tenants. You want to revolutionize everything without understanding why things are the way they are."
"Because the way things are…. they are cold and lifeless and cruel!"
"The way things are has worked for five hundred years!"
"For whom? For the dukes who never have to see the suffering their rules cause? For the nobility who can ignore poverty and illness as long as the rents keep coming? Your way works for you, Alexander, but what about everyone else?"
"Everyone else depends on this estate's stability. If I run it into the ground with sentiment and compassion, hundreds of families lose their livelihoods."
"And if you run it without sentiment and compassion, families like the Wheelers lose their lives. Which is worse?"
He didn't answer, but she could see him struggling with something, some internal battle she didn't understand.
"What aren't you telling me?" she asked. "About the solicitors, about this supposed search for options, what are you really doing?"
"What needs to be done."
