Page 55 of Two Blessings For His Duchess
“I do not know how to deal with Euphemia,” Nathaniel admitted, the confession tasting like ash in his mouth. He opened his eyes but didn’t look at his friend, choosing instead to stare blankly at the polished mahogany of his desk. “I am still thinking of what to do. I am still trying to figure her out, and figure out what it is we are doing entirely.”
He turned back to Thaddeus. “I would deeply appreciate it if you did not make things worse between us. Like bringing up Eleanor for instance.”
“You should tell her,” Thaddeus insisted.
“That’s my business,” he countered. “If you are to talk to Euphemia, you must restrict yourself to light things. Do not speak of my past, do not speak of Eleanor, and do not speak of me.”
Thaddeus squinted his eyes, his gaze sharpening as he looked at him. “What is actually the problem?” Thaddeus asked. “What is it you are not saying?”
Nathaniel was quiet for a long, heavy beat. Slowly, he moved away from the window and sank into the leather chair at his desk, rubbing a hand across his face as the absolute exhaustion of the past week finally caught up to him.
He looked up at Thaddeus and sighed. “I have a problem.”
“I know. What is it?” Thaddeus asked, sitting across from him.
“I do not love her,” Nathaniel said, as if he needed to convince the walls of the room as much as his friend. “I do not love Euphemia. But what I feel for her is... concerning.”
Thaddeus remained entirely still, waiting.
Nathaniel rubbed the back of his neck, staring down at his blotter, struggling to give form to the chaos that had possessed him for the past weeks. “Whenever she is near, my mind goes completely blank. Everything I am supposed to be focusing on simply vanishes. If she stands close to me, I find myself entirely consumed by the ridiculous urge to touch her. The other day...” He hesitated, his jaw tightening as the memory rushed back. “The other day, she asked me a question. A question about making love, and ever since that moment, my mind has been an absolute mess.”
He stood up abruptly, pacing a short line behind his chair. “She... flusters me, Thaddeus. No normal person can exist in such a constant state of emotional disarray, yet she is somehow managing to fluster me almost half of the time. I do not like that kind of effect. I do not like it at all, and it annoys me.”
Nathaniel stopped, turning his eyes toward his friend, frustrated. “You know me. You know me well. I have work to do. I am simply not at a stage in my life where I want feelings, or where I want to deal with love. I have plans... grand plans, big plans for this estate and my political standing and I need to accomplish all of that first. I do not need the distraction. Euphemia has slowly become exactly that. A distraction. I did not even think it possible for her to be one at the start, but for some inexplicable reason, she has become it anyway. I just want order to return.”
He ran a hand through his hair, his voice dropping slightly. “I am perfectly all right with her being with my children. I have made my peace with that. Cordelia and Georgianna love her, and she does remarkably well with them. But between the two of us, Ijust want something normal. Perhaps we could be friends. That is the most we should ever be. But I cannot even manage that, because every time I am around her, I do not think like a normal person. The only solution I have figured out, the only way to regain my sanity is just to avoid her entirely. Avoiding her is the only thing helping me concentrate on the work we have to do.”
Nathaniel threw his hands up slightly, effectively putting all his cards on the table, and sank back into his chair.
Thaddeus watched him in silence for a long moment. Finally, he let out a soft breath and straightened up from the desk.
“It sounds to me like you love her, Nathaniel.”
“I do not,” Nathaniel argued instantly, his voice cracking like a whip across the study.
“If you say so,” Thaddeus replied smoothly, raising his hands in a brief gesture of surrender. “If that is what you wish to tell yourself, Nathaniel, that is perfectly fine. However, you are not handling it well. From the very little I have seen today, you are not handling this situation, or her, well at all. Euphemia does not look all right. She looked a little pale out there in the drawing room. Perhaps avoiding her is entirely the wrong course of action for both of you. You might want to actually sit down and talk to her about what you are feeling.”
Nathaniel’s expression hardened. “Never. That is absolutely not an option. I am not talking to her about it.”
Thaddeus squinted his eyes, looking down at his friend in frustration. “Fine. You say it is not love, and I will let you have that. But how do you intend to solve this if the two of you are completely estranged in your own home? I remember what you told me a few days after your wedding. You said you wanted Euphemia to feel at home on this estate. But did you stop to think for even a single second that what you are doing right now is making her feel less comfortable in what is supposed to be her home?”
“I just want a normal situation,” Nathaniel answered, shaking his head as he stared at the ceiling. “A perfectly normal arrangement. I do not want a life where I am constantly worrying about whether she has eaten, or what she is thinking, or what she is doing. I do not like it.”
Thaddeus let out a short, incredulous laugh. “What precisely did you expect to come out of a marriage, Nathaniel, if you did not want any of that?”
“It is a vast manor,” Nathaniel argued immediately, gesturing vaguely toward the walls of the estate. “It is an enormous estate. I thought, perhaps, that we could all simply disappear into our quiet wings and our separate corners. I believed we could coexist without ever having to deal with any of this complicatedness.” He paused. “But this has become far too complicated. I will admit that a part of it is my fault. But how do I go back? I want to go back, Thaddeus.”
He stood up again, his movements restless, almost frantic. “I am not avoiding her to spite her or to be cruel. I just want to returnto the time when we could talk about books, or argue over some trivial matter, without me feeling this constant, overwhelming urge to kiss her. I want to go back to when I wasn’t so impressed by how her mind works... how she thinks... how understanding she is with the girls... the kind of books that interest her... why they interest her.”
Nathaniel stopped, his breath hitching slightly as he spoke the truth aloud for the first time. “Because that is the stranger that has been bleeding into my thoughts these days. This constant urge to just kiss her anytime we are near. I do not want it. It is not good. Love is not my domain. I did not grow up with it, I know nothing of it, and I am not ready for anything that will come and cost me my comfort and my focus. I do not want it.”
“You’ve said that,” Thaddeus answered. “I hear you. As sad and as stubborn as you sound right now, Nathaniel, I hear you. I understand what you are trying to say.”
Before Nathaniel could offer any reply, a sharp knock rattled the door of the study. The door burst open, and the butler stood on the threshold, his face entirely drained of color, his breathing ragged.
“Your Grace,” the butler gasped out, his voice trembling with panic. “It is the Duchess. She is unconscious. She has passed out in the drawing room.”
“What?” Nathaniel blurted, temporarily forgetting how to breathe.
