Page 58 of Duchess Needed
“Ah. I see.”
“Yes.”
“And this is,” Thomas tried, picking his words with precise care, “A problem?”
“It should not be. And yet...” Edward closed his eyes for a moment, willing himself to put thing to bed as soon as possible. “I had the arrangement clearly established from the beginning. There was a specific and necessary purpose to what I was doing, Thomas – I required a wife for the sole sake of birthing an heir, a continuation of the line. That was all. I told her as much. I told myself as much, consistently and at length. And then she–”
He stopped suddenly, wondering if he could attribute what had happened solely to her efforts.
“She what?” Thomas asked, looking as though he was greatly concerned for Edward’s wellbeing.
He thought of the afternoon she had taken his shaking hands in hers without being asked, without making any particular thing of it, simply because she had noticed and had wanted to bring him some sense of comfort. He thought of her laughing at his aunt's table – genuinely laughing, as though there was nowhere better, she could have been. He thought of the way she spoke about her sister, about her family, regarding their wellbeing as a responsibility as natural to her as breathing. He thought of every small smile he had seen slide across her face, how her eyes sparkled every time he complimented her even though she doubted him, how her lips were the sweetest things he’d ever tasted.
He thought about all of that and felt utterly sick.
“She simply kept being herself,” he huffed tiredly. “She made no particular effort to charm me. She did not try to win me over or to manage me. She was simply... herself. Consistently and entirely herself. And somewhere along the way she dismantled every last wall I had put in place, and I genuinely cannot identify the precise moment it happened.”
Thomas said nothing for a moment, watching him with an expression that was carefully neutral. Then, very slowly as though he was worried that he might scare him, he questioned,
“Why is it a problem, Edward? Being in love with one's wife is, by most accounts, a desirable thing.”
“Because I held her at arm's length for a reason.” Edward’s voice came out quiet and strained. “Because I did not want to loveher or to receive her in return. That was the whole point of the distance.”
“I see.” Something sharpened in Thomas’ tone. “And why is that?”
Edward fell silent then, the guilt gnawing at him.
“Edward.” Thomas leaned slightly forward. “Why would you not want your wife to love you?”
“Because I am going to die.”
It was the first time he had said it aloud, to anyone, in years. It had always been a fact he had known, something that buzzed in the back of his mind quietly, every day he woke up and every night he went to bed. But saying it out loud was different. They occupied the room differently than he had expected, without drama bur more as though he had simply stated the truth, was in some ways worse.
Thomas's expression did not change, but his body picked a tense weight that told Edward the words had reached where it was meant to go.
. “I have known for several years. I could claim a lot of rubbish about hope and time I may or may not have, but I have seen how it ends. And as such, I have no interest in wasting my time in engaging in needless trivialities. That is the reason I placed the advertisement. An heir, for the dukedom. Someone to carrythings forward when I cannot. That was the entire and only purpose. It was meant to be clean. Functional. Free from the kind of entanglement that makes things complicated.”
“And instead, you fell in love,” Thomas noted, his tone empty.
“I never thought of happiness,” Edward sighed, and the frankness of the admission surprised him. “I did not consider it as something that belonged on my list of concerns. The dukedom, the line, the heir – those were the things I had decided mattered. Everything else felt like indulgence I could not afford and did not require... And then Phoebe arrived.”
“And she made happiness seem possible,” Thomas nodded, as though he had only just understood Edward.
“Made it feel inevitable,” Edward corrected quietly, “Which is much worse. Because now I want it. I want her. I want to love her properly and completely for however long I am given, and I also know, with equal certainty, that when I am gone... it will ruin her. And I cannot do that. Not to her.”
The air in the room was silent for a while, heavy with all that had been said the confessions still sharp as they resonated and cut deeper than most truths had any reason to be. Then finally, Thomas asked gently,
“Is it not her choice to make? Should she not be given a chance to choose whether the love she has found is worth being ruined for? Would you not want the same choice if you were in her shoes?”
Edward did not answer the question, because he did not have the courage to handle the implications of the response. He knew, on some level – had known it in the dark, with Phoebe breathing steadily against his side and his arm around her and the whole quiet weight of her presence beside him – that Thomas was right. He had known it. Knowing something and being able to act on it were simply not always the same thing.
“You cannot remain here indefinitely,” Thomas told him, rising to his feet. “She is at home, very likely wondering what she has done to deserve a husband who disappears without a word. And whatever else you decide, you cannot allow her to carry that, when the fault is entirely your own cowardice. It would not be fair to her.”
Once more, Thomas was entirely right.
“I was so certain,” Edward mumbled, almost to himself. “That she wouldn't get past me. I was absolutely certain.”
Thomas looked at him with something that might have been sympathy, or perhaps a sense of kinship because he, too, might have experienced what Edward was currently struggling with.
