Page 43 of The Duke and His Jilted Bride

Patrick considered this seriously, which Evander appreciated. He was at least not laughing.

“You are forcing me to point something out,” Patrick said.

“As if I could stop you.”

“Frederick eloped with another woman. He married her three weeks ago in Scotland. He is not– Aurelia is not his in any sense that currently exists or has existed since he left. The thing you are describing, this origin point, this she-was-Frederick's, that has not been true for weeks. The situation has changed, and so why cannot you change with it?”

“I know the situation has changed.”

“I'm not sure you do.” Patrick picked his glass back up and sighed when he realised it was empty, angrily clicking his fingers for the footman to return. “Or rather, I think you know it in the way that you know an unpleasant fact. You're aware of it, you've put it somewhere, but you haven't actually changed how you're behaving based on it.” He looked at him. “You are still behaving like a criminal needing to be punished, and she is your wife.”

“Yes, she is my wife. That is precisely–”

"That is precisely nothing worth all this alarm if you treat it as such." Patrick said it without heat. “You are usually a diligent and cool-headed fellow, Evander, and I mean that as a partial compliment. But control, and worse still self-flaggelation, is not always a virtue. You are making the situation more painful than it needs to be.”

Evander looked at him, anger rising within him. “Things are not always neat and simple.”

“Doesn’t matter. I stand by what I said.” Patrick had the decency to look slightly pleased with himself. “The point stands regardless of how you feel.”

Evander looked at the fire. The man with the newspaper had given up on it and left. Someone else had arrived and ordered something hot, and the smell of it drifted across the room.

“She was briefly engaged to Frederick,” Patrick said, ignoring Evander’s drifting attention, “while he was in love with someone else. And then he left, and you married her. Now you have been in Norfolk for a month with a woman who – from everything I observed in four days – is entirely where she wants to be, only you are making it hard for her to be there.” He paused. “Regardless of how she arrived there, by your side.”

Evander was grateful when the footman arrived to refill their drinks.

“I am not suggesting you make a declaration of love to her over dinner or ravage her in her music room,” Patrick said. “I am suggesting you consider the possibility that the rule you have given yourself may no longer be of use. Not to her, or the arrangement. To you. You haven’t breached the law. She was never your sister. There is no wrongness here.”

The problem, he thought, was that Patrick was not wrong. He could see the logic, had in fact seen it himself at various points over the last month. But he did not say any of this. Because the wrongness was still there inside him. And Patrick calling it that – a wrongness – suddenly made it all make sense.

“The situation has changed more than I seem willing to admit,” he said finally, which was as close as he was getting tonight as the footman poured them port.

Patrick looked at him. “Yes,” he said. “It has.”

Fifteen

“Perhaps we could talk. I should apologise.”

Aurelia looked up from her embroidery. She was in the armchair by the fire, her feet tucked under her with a quilted blanket on her lap. The needle glinted in the firelight. He had drank too much and could barely see what she had been working on. But the sight of her was sobering. He heard Patrick make his way up the main stairs and retreat to his room. They had come home together. God, it must have been close to midnight. But Aurelia was still awake. They were alone now.

She looked at him for a moment, crinkling her nose. Then she reached over gracefully to drink some water before returning to her work.

“And why is that?” she asked, punching the needle through the fabric.

Evander approached slowly. “For leaving today. I should have delayed the trip by a few days. Our last conversation was unresolved on my part.”

“Which conversation specifically? We have had several unresolved ones lately. That seems to be a repeating pattern with us.”

“Why do you insist on torturing me like this?” he asked. He had intended to sound playful, but the words didn’t come out right. “When we were walking and it began to rain. You know the moment I mean.”

She scratched at a thread on her needlework, feigning indifference. “I had not realised it bothered you.”

“No? I am frequently bothered by things.”

“You give no indication of that.”

“Good.” He came further into the room. The room was warm enough that his coat felt like too much, and he indecorously took it off and cast it over the back of the other chair. “I am sorry I left.”

She tilted the needlework down and looked at him properly. “All right,” she said. “Your apology has been received, though I still don’t think it was necessary. Was that all you wanted to say? Because if so, I want to finish this before bed, and I work better without an audience.”