Page 9 of The Way We Were

“I can’t forget the things you said last night,” he continued, “but I want to focus on the part about our marriage. You said our previous married life died with Anna, that you wanted to live a separate life. What did you mean?”

Hearing their daughter’s name on his lips made her shiver and briefly look away, at the bed of pink azaleas being admired by a passersby.

“I can’t help if you don’t speak of it,” he said quietly.

Lucy sighed. “I just want our marriage to be one where we’re content pursuing our own goals.”

“Have I ever stopped you from pursuing anything you wish?”

“No, of course not. But…” She trailed off, trying to find the right words. “My friends have marriages I wish to emulate.”

“You mean your friend Lady Elizabeth?”

Lucy thought of Elizabeth, with two children and a third on the way. She and her husband Peter could hardly stand to be separated. “Their relationship is different, rare. We don’t have that kind.”

“Do you mean something like my friend Matthew, and his sisters and cousins, all of whom have marriages based on love and passion?” He lowered his voice. “The passion that we share.”

To her surprise, he leaned across the bread and kissed her, right there in public. She was so surprised she didn’t pull away, and he cupped her face with his warm, bare hand. His lips were soft and gentle, and as always, they took her away from any thought but needing to be alone with him.

She wasn’t going to let him distract her. She straightened away, blushing. Though he dropped his hand, those blue eyes smoldered, and she knew what he was thinking.

“Are those the people you mean, Lucy? Have you been spending time with them, remembering how it feels to be happy?” He lowered his voice to a wistful murmur. “And we were so happy.”

She stiffened. “They’re all very busy raising children.”

She saw the sympathy in his blue eyes, and she turned away.

“I’m sure they weren’t too busy to be with you this past year,” he said softly. “They all would know how much you needed them, especially with my absence.”

“I don’t need anyone’s pity,” she said with firmness.

“Lucy—”

“You left me alone to deal with all of their pity and constant concern. Sometimes I felt like I wanted to escape all their sad gazes and expressions of guilt because they had what I no longer did. My friends in the charities I support are different. They don’t let themselves feel the towering passions and sad depressions of marriage. They don’t invest that kind of need.”

If she had stabbed him with a knife, it would have hurt less. He’d thought escorting her to a lovely garden would lift her spirits, but all it had done was make her feel free to dwell on her melancholia. She didn’t want the passion they shared? She didn’t want to need him the way he always needed her?

But maybe she didn’t think that he truly needed her.

“You know I didn’t leave you deliberately,” he said. “Though I keep saying it, I don’t know if you believe it. We both thought I could not just resign my commission when I’d been under orders. It would have seemed cowardly and hardly honorable.”

“You were needed,” she said bitterly.

“You needed me, too. We needed each other.”

She took a bite of a meat pie, her gaze focused on the distant spires of the pavilion as she chewed. He saw shadows beneath her eyes that he hadn’t noticed in the initial excitement of their reunion. The air of sadness that clung to her hadn’t gone away, he realized. She’d just learned to keep it hidden. Were these emotions keeping her from wanting happiness again?

Then she said, “Those times are past. I learned to live on my own. I found friends in my charity work, people I admire.”

Every time he thought he couldn’t feel more guilty, more regretful, he found a deeper level of sorrow.

“So you want a distant sort of marriage,” he said quietly, “where you don’t have to be bothered with me. What would you have me do? Go to my club every evening? Attend balls where we don’t talk? Travel to my other properties and leave you to your charity work?”

Though she bit her lip, she didn’t look at him. “That’s what others do in Society.”

“Not our happy family and friends. They have marriages that mean something,” he said, leaning toward her. “I thought we did, too.”

She raised those big green eyes up to him, and though they glittered as if with moisture, she did not cry. “You want a real marriage with me, but you’re fine selling out Miss Fournier to the highest bidder.”