Page 74 of Her Tiger of a Duke
“I was not honest with you about them, nor was our housekeeper, which was because of me.”
“I knew you were not. It was most frustrating, too, for I knew you were not telling me the truth, and yet there was nothing that I could do about it. I simply had to accept it.”
Owen glanced around, realizing that they were in a hallway of a small home, which meant lacking a good deal of privacy.
“Might we discuss this in my room?”
“So now you will allow me to go into it?”
“Beatrice, do not be unfair.”
“Do not tell me what to do, not when you are confessing to something as grave as this.”
And yet, when he gestured to his door, she entered the room. She stood in the center, looking around as she waited to be told where to sit. Owen carefully closed his door, and remained looking at it for a moment, as though unable to look at her.
“I kept all of it from you for your own sake,” he continued. “I did not want you to see the house the way that the rest of us do. We see her everywhere, and it is something I would not wish on anyone.”
“Who do you see?”
“My sister.”
The words rang in her ears. She had never heard of a sister, not from anyone in theton. Nobody mentioned her, which made nosense. A thing such as a mysterious death would have been the perfect source of gossip.
“You did not say that you have a sister. Nobody has.”
“Nobody knows what happened to her. They do not know the truth, at least. They all believed that she was arranged to marry an earl and sent away to the north. The story is so old now that it is no longer interesting. I am fortunate that nobody has ever mentioned her, though.”
“The same cannot be said for me, but what do you mean? What truly happened to her?”
“It was awful, Beatrice. Do not make me think of it more than I already do.”
“But I deserve to know.”
“She died. She died, and the fault was my own. You do not need to know anything more than that.”
Beatrice stopped at last, her head down. She had so many questions, but she knew she had already been told more than he truly wished to share with her as it was. This was all she was going to know, and she had to be grateful for it.
Except, she could not bring herself to be.
She walked toward the door, and opened it, stepping out into the hallway again. Owen followed her, taking her by the wrist and turning her back to look at him.
“Where are you going?”
“I do not know. All I know is that I can no longer stay here.”
“Why not?”
“Because that is the real reason you wished to help Lady Helena, is it not? I knew that she looked familiar to me, and at last, I know why. She looked like those portraits of your sister. You thought that you would help her because of what you did, and it would make you feel better, did you not?”
“No, I–”
“Stop lying to me,” she snapped. “This is precisely why I cannot stay here. I do not know what you want from me, but I cannot sit and wait for you to tell me. I cannot stay here.”
“Beatrice, if you walk away, you cannot come back.”
It could have been an empty threat, but the words hung between them all the same. Beatrice looked at her husband, and for once a calm came over her. There was no anger left after everything that had happened. All that she knew was that she was tired, and she could no longer care what became of her.
“And what, Dear Husband, would I be coming back to?” she asked. “I cannot stay in a marriage where I am shut out at every turn, nor where I am made to feel as though I am a burden one moment and a friend the next. Sometimes, you act like you truly do love me, and other times it feels like you see me as nothing at all.”
