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He had not asked for this. For her intervention with his son, his most private, painful relationship. The one he would die for, kill for.
He had not asked for her to be here, bewitching him and making him long to touch her. Taste her.
Receive her submission.
This was her fault, and not his.
If she did not like the way it was in his household, she should not have flung herself into his arms.
‘Is that how it’s to be, Your Grace?’
‘And when is it that I became Your Grace, and not Briggs?’
‘The moment you stopped being my friend. Maybe you never started. I believed that we were friends, Your Grace, I did. I had a great deal of affection for you. But since all of this, all you have done is stay in your study.’
‘This is what I do with my life, Beatrice. You have always seen me when I was away from my duties and responsibilities. You only ever see me away from Maynard Park. This is my life. I have a duty to my tenants to manage things to the best of my ability. I have a son, and my duty is to make sure that his life... I wish for him to be happy, Beatrice, and I do not know how to accomplish this. There is no road map. There is no map for parents, not in the general sense, but when you have a child like mine, who is not like any other child I have ever met, how is it that I’m supposed to ensure his happiness? When cards with pictures of buildings on them make him happier than toys, and when he does not always smile even when he is happy. How am I to ever know what to do?
‘Do not speak to me with such authority and confidence. Do not tell me what I have denied you, when you are the one that put yourself in the situation. You wanted my anger, an
d now you may have it. You might have got your way. You might have escaped from your house, but you have stepped into my life. And I warned you that I would not disrupt it for you.’
She looked wounded, and he regretted it. But she had no right to speak to him on such matters. She might be a woman in figure, but she was a child in so many ways. Desperately sheltered.
‘I was a child like that. It might not have been for the same reasons,’ she said, her voice filled with conviction, ‘but I was that child. My parents did not know what to do. Hugh has never known what to do with me. I have been isolated and alone because of the differences in me. Because of the fear that my family has always felt for me. And it might come from a place of love, but the result is the same. I have been lonely. And isolated. Controlled. And at the same time... Do you know what it is to be a child who has accepted that you will likely die? Because all of that fear that surrounded me all the time, I knew what it meant. I knew that it meant I was dying. I was surprised to wake up some days. Many days. I endured pain that would make grown men weep. And I learned to do so without fear. Having a different set of circumstances does not make you weak. I am not weak. Your son is not weak.’
‘I did not say that either of you was weak.’
‘When you deny him the chance to fail, it reveals that is what you think.’
‘Beatrice, you have spent your life cloistered in the house. You do not have a child. You do not know what I have endured, what it has cost me to try to be the best father that I can be to him.’
‘I do not deny it,’ she said. ‘I am certain that you have...endured a great many difficult and painful things trying to parent him, but that does not... Maybe it is helpful for me to challenge you.’
‘You have spent a few hours of my son, you do not know him.’ And he felt guilt. Because he was not listening to her. And he did know it.
He was denying the strength he knew was in her, choosing instead to focus on her weakness, which was a petty and small thing to do.
But he had not asked for Beatrice to uproot his life, any more than he had asked for any of this. What he had done, he had done for her.
For her, or for yourself?
He pushed that to the side. It made no difference debating this with himself. She was here, she was his wife. And he would conduct their marriage, and raise his child in the way that he saw fit, and it was not for her to tell him otherwise.
‘You mean well, Beatrice,’ he said. ‘I know you do. You are a kind, sweet girl...’
‘You make it sound as though you are speaking of a kitten. Kind and sweet and well meaning. But you forget, Your Grace, that kittens have claws, and you have vastly underestimated mine.’
She turned to begin storming away from him, and he caught her by the arm.
The action shocked her, clearly it did; her eyes went wide, her cheeks pink. That was what he noticed first. Then after that, he noticed the way that her skin felt beneath his touch. Soft. Warm. And he was transported back to that garden. To that moment when he had realised just what a lovely woman she had become. And perhaps that was why it was so easy to dismiss her now. To turn all of this into a treatise on her inexperience. To write her off as a child, because as long as he could think of her as such, he had an easier time keeping his hands off her.
‘You may have claws, kitten,’ he said, his voice soft and stern. ‘But do not forget that I could pick you up with one hand if I so chose. I do not deny that you possess a certain amount of ferocity, but I have an iron hand, and you would do well to remember that.’
‘Threats?’
‘Not deadly threats,’ he said, pushing hard at the bonds of propriety that he had laid out for himself. ‘But perhaps you do require a punishment. For all that he has kept you hemmed in your entire life, Hugh is quite indulgent towards you.’
Her lips parted, her breasts quickening. ‘You do not know of what you speak.’
