Page 59 of Atone, Adonis

So know this, I am trying—clumsily to be sure—to keep faith with the man I believe you would wish me to be. The one who will choose the path of the better angels and leave you alone. Because the man I am now would fail you utterly and that I cannot stand.

I remain, as ever,

yours,

Fred

Chapter

20

The morning was too fine for Julianna’s mood. Sunshine spilled through the tall windows of Chester House, burnishing the breakfast table in a warm glow, gilding the silver and porcelain until the entire room gleamed. She ought to have felt charmed. Instead, she felt unsettled.

Fred sat across from her, his newspaper folded at his elbow, his teacup untouched. He looked every inch the Local Adonis he was named: his coat impeccably cut, his blonde curls tumbling down around his blue eyes. They were guarded this morning, though.

Whatever had happened last night, first in the carriage ride to the restaurant where he could hardly seem to breathe and then again, after dinner, had changed him. Made him wary and formal.

He had watched her at Tremaux’s as though she were the only woman in all of England; he had fed her bites of roast beef with a gentleness that melted her bones. And yet each time the air grew too close, each time their hearts and lips might have collided, he had pulled away from her.

She was tired of it. Tired of being drawn near only to be pushed back. Tired of not knowing the truth of him, even after he’d promised to stop lying to her.

“Fred,” she said, laying down her fork with deliberate care. “Will you tell me what it is?”

He looked up and she knew, even before he spoke, that he would deflect. “What is what?”

“What is happening in your mind? No, not your mind.” She shook her head. “Your heart, I think, is what needs explaining. You hold me close one moment and keep me at arm’s length the next. I am not blind nor am I a fool. Something is wrong. Tell me what it is.”

“Jules—” He set down the paper and leaned back in his chair and she knew—she knew—he was concocting a lie.

Damn him. “No more evasions, Fred. I am your wife and yet you hardly touch me.” Her voice shook more than she might have liked, but she pressed on anyway. “If there is something I must know, please tell me what it is.”

For a long moment he only stared at her, the silence stretching thin as the gossamer strands of a spider’s web. Then he exhaled sharply and dragged a hand through his hair. “I can’t,” he said. The words sounded wrenched out of him. “I can’t tell you.”

“Why not?”

“Because I cannot.” His gaze softened then, unbearably tender despite his cool tone. “Jules, can’t you simply…be with me? Like this, without questions?”

She could only stare at him, the bright points of sunlight reflecting back from the silver spoon she held in her hand. “Like this,” she repeated quietly.

“Yes.”

He was asking if she could live in this world of pushing and pulling, drawing her close and then retreating. A marriage lived at arm’s length, as if he could keep her safe by keeping her apart from himself—financially secure and emotionally bereft.

Julianna’s voice was steady when she said, “No.”

His gaze snapped to hers. “No?”

“No,” she repeated, and the word landed harder this time. “I have been with you, Fred. I have ridden beside you in a carriage, slept under your roof, eaten at your table, held my tongue while you decided what was best for all of us. As though we were chess pieces you might arrange to your liking.” She lifted her chin. “I will not do it any longer. You promised to tell me the truth and it is obvious now that you have not.”

His face went very still as the color drained from it. “You don’t understand.”

She realized then how much he must have been hoping she would acquiesce, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t agree to a life filled with half-truths, not after Robert. She wouldn’t.

“What I understand is that you want my companionship without my questions. You want a wife you can keep by your side as long as she remains docile and quiet and apart from you.”

“That is not—”

“Then what is it? Tell me. And if you think you are being kind or merciful or some other nonsense by keeping silent, you are not. You are being cowardly.”