Page 99 of Married to a Frozen Duke
"The damage to the gallery will take weeks to repair."
"I'm sure it will."
"You're angry."
"I'm devastated," she corrected, turning to face him. "You just banished my brothers and suggested cutting me off from my family entirely. Angry doesn't begin to cover what I'm feeling."
"They were destructive and disrespectful."
"They were hurt and defensive because you've made it clear from the moment they arrived that you despise them and everything they represent."
"I was civil."
"You were coldly polite, which is almost worse than open hostility. At least hostility is honest."
"You want me to be honest? Fine. Your brothers are exactly what I expected—crude, resentful social climbers who mask their envy of their betters with false moral superiority."
"Their betters?" Ophelia's voice rose. "You think you're better than them because of an accident of birth?"
"I think I understand responsibility and tradition and the importance of preserving history, which they clearly don't."
"You understand privilege and position. That's not the same as understanding worth."
"And they understand worth? By destroying priceless artifacts?"
"They understand that people matter more than things. That family matters more than propriety. That kindness matters more than tradition."
"Kindness? They've shown me nothing but disrespect since they arrived."
"And you've shown them nothing but disdain. Why should they respect someone who clearly sees them as beneath notice?"
"I see them as what they are; threats to the order and dignity of this house."
"This house," Ophelia said bitterly. "Always this house. Never our home, never our life together, just this house and its blessed dignity."
"This house is our life. It's our responsibility, our heritage..."
"Your heritage. I'm just the unwanted addition forced on you by circumstance."
"You're my wife."
"In name only. In every other way, I'm an inconvenience you're trying to manage, a Coleridge infection you're trying to contain."
"That's not true."
"Isn't it? Then why are you so quick to cut me off from my family? Why are you so suspicious of every kindness I show? Why do you watch me like you're waiting for me to reveal some terrible Coleridge plot?"
"Because I..." He stopped, running his hand through his hair in a gesture she'd come to recognize as his tell for genuine distress.
"Because you what?"
"Because I don't know how to trust you," he admitted, the words seeming pulled from him against his will. "Every time I start to think maybe we can make this work, something happens that reminds me you're one of them."
"One of them," she repeated. "The enemy. The invaders. The common Coleridge merchants who dare to contaminate your perfect bloodline."
"I didn't mean..."
"You did, though. You meant exactly that. I will always be 'one of them' to you, won't I? Never just Ophelia, never just your wife, always a Coleridge first and a person second."
