That was what he ought to have done. He had nothing to hide, after all, and nothing of which to be ashamed.
He had done none of those things.
Instead, after that brief apology to his bride in the church, he had said nothing at all to anyone, but had behaved just as though that shocking episode had not happened. And apart from Percy’s quick word with him before the carriage moved off, everyone had followed his lead. All had been smiling, festive merriment for the rest of the day—the perfect wedding celebration with the perfectly happy couple.
Not a cloud in their sky. Only endless bliss ahead of them.
It had been one giant pretense. All day there had been a loud silence on the very topic that had surely been foremost in everyone’s thoughts. Eastham would be delighted if he could know that he had ruined George’s wedding day even though he had failed to put a stop to the proceedings.
George changed position to brace his hands on the side frames of the window just above the level of his head. A light was bobbing slowly and rhythmically about the square—the night watchman’s lantern. His presence was unnecessary, however. Nothing disturbed the peace. Not out there, anyway.
And then there had been the greatest disaster of all. He had let his bride go to bed alone—on her wedding night. He had done it because she had looked tired and he had thought to do her a kindness.
Balderdash!
Why the devil had he done it, then? Because he could not quite bring himself to face her in the intimacy of the marriage bed? Because he feared that a part of her might believe what she had heard? Because retreating into his own inner world was second nature to him and he had needed to be alone?
On his wedding night?
He curled his hands into fists and pounded them lightly against the window frame. Was he going to allow Eastham to do this to him on top of everything else?
He felt suddenly and painfully like his seventeen-year-old self again, gauche and totally out of control of his own life and destiny. How could he have sent his bride to bed alone on their wedding night? He fairly squirmed with shame and embarrassment.
It was well after midnight, too late to go to her now. But was it? How likely was it that she was sleeping? Not very, at a guess. How could she be? He had so very much wanted their wedding day to be the happiest day of both their lives. Instead it had turned into perhaps the worst nightmare of a day either of them had ever lived through. Good God, she had been abandoned by her bridegroom on her wedding night—her forty-eight-year-old, oh-so-mature bridegroom, who had allowed himself to be completely overset by the spite of a man who had blighted a large portion of his adult life.
He did not take a candle with him into his dressing room or into hers beyond it. He did not want the light to wake her if by chance she was asleep. Or perhaps he did not want to illumine his own face if she was not. He tapped softly on the door of the duchess’s bedchamber—in which he had not intended that the duchess ever sleep except perhaps for afternoon naps—and turned the knob quietly before opening the door and stepping inside.
The bed was untouched. He could see that much in the dim light from the window across which the curtains had not been drawn. For a moment he thought the room was empty. But there was a large, winged armchair beside the window, and he could see that she was curled up within it, her legs drawn up onto the seat and turned sideways, her arms hugging each other by the elbows beneath her bosom, her head against the chair back. She was very still and very quiet. Too still and too quiet to be sleeping.
He crossed the room to stand in front of her chair. She was indeed not sleeping. Her eyes were open and looking up at him.
“I am so sorry, my dear,” he said. The same lame words he had used earlier in the day.
“Don’t call me that.” Her voice was quiet and toneless.
He felt a lurching of alarm.
“I have a name,” she told him.
“Dora,” he said softly. He had planned to call her that in the carriage before he kissed her outside the church, had deliberately not asked before their wedding day if he might have the privilege of using it sooner. He had looked forward to hearing her answer him with his own name. There was an intimacy in names, and he had wanted that intimacy within moments of their leaving the church as man and wife. Where the devil had “my dear” come from?
“I could not have mismanaged the day more than I have,” he said.
“It was not your fault,” she said, still in that dull monotone.
“Ah, but much of it was,” he said. “A ghastly few minutes might have remained just that—a few minutes—if I had only spoken openly about the incident afterward to our guests, discussed it with our families and friends later, and explained fully to you when we were alone.”
“You did not know it was going to happen,” she said. “You had no chance to prepare an appropriate response. You behaved with dignity nevertheless.”
He stooped down on his haunches before her. He would have taken her hands if she had made them available, but she continued to hug her elbows. She had not moved at all. She was deeply withdrawn into herself. If she could have disappeared into the chair, he believed she would have done so.
“Dora,” he said, “there is no grain of truth in anything he said. I swear to you there is not.”
“I did not even for a moment believe there was,” she said. “No one did.”
Perhaps not. But at the time there had been those who chose to believe, including a small clique of his neighbors at home who had indulged the deplorable human urge to convert a simple tragedy into a lurid sensation. Being accused of a heinous crime when one had no incontrovertible proof of one’s innocence was surely one of the worst feelings in the world. One wanted to go about proclaiming one’s innocence, but, knowing that to be futile, one retreated instead into the deepest, darkest core of oneself—and more or less stayed there forever after. That was what he had done, anyway, even though he was convinced that all the more sensible elements of society had long ago absolved him of all suspicion of guilt.