Page 35 of Marry in Secret
“I wouldn’t have told. I’d never betray you.”
“I know, darling, but you were still so very frail. I didn’t want to burden you with my troubles. I don’t think you realize how close to death you came—you nearly died, you know.”
Rose had already lost Thomas, and then... He wasn’t all she’d lost.
So the thought of losing Lily, as well...
“It was better—or so I thought at the time—to just pretend it had never happened. I’m the one who’s supposed to look after you, remember?” She grimaced ruefully. “Who would be sixteen again? I thought I knew everything then.”
“It’s all right.” Lily gave her a comforting hug, then tilted her head and regarded Rose thoughtfully. “You know, I think I knew there was something wrong back then. WhenI came back to school after recovering my health, you were... different.”
“I was? How?” She’d tried so hard to not let anything show. It had been hard, so hard having to keep it all inside her. But the consequences of letting it out were—had seemed at the time to be—unthinkable.
“Oh, on the surface you seemed the same, but for a while there it was as if you were... I don’t know, acting a part—the part of lively Rose Rutherford. There was something a little frenzied about it. You were doing all the usual things, and yet there was something missing. It was as if a light had gone out inside you.”
Rose bit her lip. Such wisdom from her little sister. It was exactly how it had felt. But there was more to it than Lily knew.
“You never said anything.”
Lily shrugged. “I thought it was because I’d been so sick—I know I was horridly weak for ages afterward, and I hated how I’d made everyone so anxious. So I didn’t want to bring it up again. And later I wondered whether something horrid had happened at school while I was away. You always did try to shelter me from anything nasty that happened, didn’t you?”
“And I always will.”
“I don’t need to be sheltered anymore. I can look after myself. And besides, I have my darling Edward now. He would slay dragons for me.”
Rose loved her sister’s glowing confidence. Lily was so happy in her marriage.
Would Thomas slay dragons for Rose? The old Thomas would have. But this Thomas? She thought of his bruised jaw. She wasn’t sure of anything anymore.
She picked up her marriage certificate and linked arms with her sister. “Now, let us screw our courage to the sticking point and beard our own dragon in her den. Aunt Agatha might spit fire but she won’t change my mind. Please tell me you’ll be on my side, even if you still have doubts.”
“Of course I’m on your side,” Lily assured her. “Always.”
***
“Youwhat?” Ollie’s eyebrows almost disappeared into his hairline. “Are youmad? You’re married to one of the most beautiful, lively, well-born gels in the ton—an heiress to boot—and you encourage her toget an annulment?”
“It’s the right thing to do.” Rose was lucky in that she had a family in a position to pull strings to free her. Most people didn’t have that option. Annulments were almost impossible to get.
“Because she has a fortune and you’re broke?” Ollie eased the cork from the bottle of claret he’d selected for the first part of the evening. He held the bottle up to the light and scowled at it. “I ought to let this wine breathe, but you’ve given me such a nasty shock I’m in need of immediate sustenance.”
He poured out the wine and took a deep draft. “Pride, that’s what your problem is.”
“No, it’s—”
“Pride. You think you’ve got nothing to offer her.”
“I haven’t.” Thomas took a sip of wine and put his glass down. After four years without alcohol, he seemed to have lost the taste for it.
Ollie made a rude noise. “Fiddlesticks! Girl’s an heiress, isn’t she? You’re her husband, so everything she owns is yours by legal right. It’s blasphemy, that’s what it is. Pride and blasphemy!”
“Blasphemy?What on earth are—”
“The whole reason God created heiresses,” Ollie continued severely, “is to bring comfort and joy and ease of living to poor sods like you and me. Most men—any poor fellow with a grain of sense, in fact—would jump at the chance to marry an heiress, even if she was cross-eyed, hook-nosed or hunchbacked—probably—but your heiress is a well-connected, gloriously sweet beauty!”
He made a disgusted gesture. “You don’t mind goin’ around wearing some other feller’s breeches and boots, butyou’re willin’ to slough off—yes, slough off!—a perfectly lovely girl—a girl who loves you, too—at least she did four years ago—because you’re too stiff-necked to live off her fortune! Four years ago it didn’t bother you, and as far as I can see, nothing’s changed.”
Thomas was the one who had changed. Four years ago he’d married Rose. Looking back he wondered whether he’d been in love or simply infatuated, but one thing was clear in his mind: The catalyst to their hasty secret marriage, at least in his mind, was the fear that she might be with child. Their unequal positions had paled before the prospect of pregnancy and the disgrace that would follow if she remained unmarried.
