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‘All I ever wanted was to be like all the rest. To be a girl like every other. To have the same expectations for my life. But it was not the path for me. If I were not born with my illness, then perhaps I would not... Perhaps the things that you and I do together would not be something I desired. But I cannot untangle those hardships with which I was born from who I am with you. From who I am all the time. So how can I say that I wish it were not so? How can I say that I wish I were not Beatrice? For if one thing in my life was changed, then I might not be the woman I am here and now. And while I might wish away my every hardship, while I might wish that you would allow me to fully be a wife to you... I cannot take away the risk, the concern, the terrible things that I have endured, and keep these precious things that we have found.’
He leaned his head back against the headboard, his thoughts a tangle. ‘But perhaps if everything wrong in my past was undone, we would not need these things.’
‘Perhaps. But they are not wrong,’ she said. ‘If we are both happy enough, they cannot be.’
‘The only way to avoid my father’s disdain was to be something completely different than what I was,’ he said. ‘My father despised me. And when I thought I had finally found the person who might care for me as I was, she also...found far more to despise than care for.’
He had not meant to carry on this path. Had not meant to continue on with this conversation. It was fruitless, after all. There was no point visiting any of these wounds in his past. He had bested his father by the simple virtue that he accepted William for who he was.
Something gouged his stomach.
Do you?
He did. What he had said to William was about keeping him safe. It had nothing to do with the way he thought the boy ought to behave. He loved the way that William thought. He was interested in the things that his son was, it was only that the rest of the world would never be. And it was not the same as what his father had done with him.
Serena had solidified these truths.
His father had been the one to teach them.
‘I was not what he hoped for,’ he said.
‘Why?’ She looked up at him, her gaze filled with genuine curiosity. ‘You said before your father was ashamed of you. You seem everything a man could want his heir to be. You are handsome, and clever, and there is not a single person who does not enjoy rousing conversation with you. Why should your father not be proud of you?’
‘I’m not the same as I was,’ Briggs said. ‘I learned. I learned to be the heir to the title. I learned to become the Duke of Brigham. Obsessions and specific curiosities, inflexibility, none of it allows you to connect with those around you. I had to learn. The other children in the village, they hurt me, Beatrice. They sought to punish me for my differences with words and fists. The boys at school did the same until Hugh taught me.’
‘And so William must learn,’ she said softly.
‘It is not something you should concern yourself with.’
‘Briggs... Tell me. Tell me about your father. Tell me about you.’
‘There is nothing but the man before you,’ he said, and when he said it, he almost believed it. Almost believed that he had successfully become something other than he had been.
‘I am all that I must be. And that is all anyone ever need know.’
He got out of bed, and she reached for him.
‘I cannot stay with you,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘You already know the answer.’
Perhaps she did know. Perhaps she didn’t. It was not essential.
She could not become essential. And this could not become bigger than his responsibilities.
Bigger than what he’d made himself.
He had to remember. Even if Beatrice accepted him in her bed, it did not erase the way he had failed in the past.
He had become Briggs because Philip had been wrong.
And he stood there in the hall, by himself, imagining what it would be like for William when he was the Duke, and Briggs was gone. The idea, the image, made him feel hollow inside.
So he put it away, and he carried on. He knew what example he must set. He knew what he must be. In the meantime, he would take care of William and Beatrice.
Nothing else mattered.
