The Marriage Bed (17 page)

"He does love it when you do that, though."

Daphne reached for the child, but Viola turned away, keeping the baby out of his mother's reach.

"Let me hold him," she pleaded. "I haven't had a chance to hold him all day."

"But it's time for his nap."

"Just a few minutes."
She hugged the baby tight against her shoulder, but he began to wriggle in her hold, so she stood him on her lap, gripping his hands in hers. The baby's fingers curled tightly around her own, and a frown of concentration puckered his forehead as he stood on her knees. "Steady as can be," she said, watching him. "He's going to be walking any day."

"He is very close," Daphne agreed. "He pulls himself up, but every time he takes a step, he immediately falls back down."

"He was doing that all morning." Anthony leaned around his wife on the bench to look at Viola and the baby. "When he was in my study with me after breakfast, he kept grabbing onto the edge of an ottoman and hauling himself up. Every time he fell down, he tried again.
Stubborn fellow, my son."

"That is no surprise," Viola said. "He—"

The clatter of wheels on the cobblestones interrupted her, and all three of them looked up from the bench as
John
's carriage came to a halt in front of Anthony's house about twenty yards from where they sat.

Viola watched as
John
came out the front door and climbed into the open landau, a frown like thunder on his face, and she was glad he did not glance in their direction.

"How fiercely
Hammond
is scowling," Daphne murmured as the carriage jerked into motion. "Whatever can be wrong with him?"

"Indigestion?"
Anthony suggested, sounding hopeful.

"Anthony, really!"
Daphne rebuked him. "That was a most unkind thing to say."

"I am the cause, I suspect," Viola murmured, lifting Nicholas to rest his head on her shoulder as she watched the landau roll away. It turned out of the square and vanished from view, and she wondered if
John
intended to spend his evening seeking out another woman for
consolation
. If he found one appealing enough, he might stay away. That thought should have brought hope, but somehow it did not. It only made a sick little knot form in the pit of her stomach. She held the baby tighter.

"Did the two of you have a quarrel?" Daphne asked.

Viola turned her head to look at her sister-in-law. "Don't we always?"

Anthony gave a sharp sigh and rose to his feet. "If the pair of you
are
going to talk about
Hammond
, I shall leave."

"We are not going to do anything of the sort," Viola assured him. "My husband is the last thing I want to discuss. Stay."

Anthony shook his head. "No, really, I should be going. I am meeting
Dewhurst
at White's to discuss our proposed revisions to the Reform Bill. I shall be back well in time to escort the pair of you to
Monforth's
rout this evening."

Viola shook her head. "I am not going. I cannot abide Sarah
Monforth
. I shall claim the
vapors
and stay home."

"I have more reason to dislike Lady Sarah than you do," Daphne said, laughing. "Anthony almost married her instead of me."

"A thought which still makes me shiver when I think on it," Viola said.

"Neither of you have
cause
to dislike Lady Sarah," Anthony protested. "I didn't marry the woman after all."

"Dear brother, even that blessed fact is not enough to make me like her. Daphne, I say we should both stay
home
. We could play piquet and get tipsy on
madeira
."

"And leave Lady Sarah an open field to flirt with my handsome husband?" Daphne asked with mock severity.
"Never!"

"As if it would matter."
Anthony pressed a kiss to the top of his wife's head. "I shall return by
seven o'clock
to fetch you." He walked away, leaving the two women alone.

"Are you really going to abandon me to Lady Sarah and stay home?" Daphne asked.

"Yes. I intend to spend a quiet evening." She kissed the top
ot
her nephew's head. Nicholas shall keep me company. He is a better conversationalist than Lady Sarah."

Daphne laughed. "When you say things like that, I almost feel sorry for the woman. I am so glad you never took a dislike to me!" Something past Viola's shoulder caught her attention, and she made a sound of dismay. "Oh, Viola, there goes your bonnet!"

Viola turned and saw that the spring breeze was sending her hat tumbling across the grass. She handed Nicholas back to his mother and ran after it. She had to chase it for quite a few yards but was finally able to catch it by the brim just before the wind whipped it out of her reach again.

Breathless, she returned to her seat beside Daphne.

"You'd best put it on," her sister-in-law advised, patting baby Nicholas on the back as Viola sat down beside her.

"I shan't!" Instead, she put the bonnet in her lap, wrapping the ties securely around her fist. "With this wind, I should have to use my hat pin, and that would surely give me a headache."

"You do loathe hats. You are forever taking them off."

I remember how you'd always tear off your hat and toss it up in the air, laughing.

She had forgotten about that, about riding horses on the downs with
John
. She had forgotten so many things.
The blackberry jam.
The way he kissed her neck.
The way he used to trap her in corners and steal kisses from her.
The way he made her laugh.
The hot desire in his eyes.
How much he could hurt her.

"One of your blossoms is torn." Daphne shifted Nicholas to her other shoulder and reached over to touch the shredded edge of one of the purple and yellow pansies that trimmed her bonnet. "I don't believe it can be mended."

Viola stared down at the bouquet of silken blossoms.
Violas.
Her namesake flower.
She'd had them in her wedding bouquet. "Some things can never be mended," she whispered.

"Perhaps we should go shopping tomorrow so you can get a new one. You can accompany me to
Bell
's while we are out."

Viola's fingers clenched around the brim of her hat.
"The drapers?"

"I heard they had some fine
velvets
just now. I wanted to have a look at them."

The image of a pretty woman in a red hat laughing over bolts of velvet flashed through her mind. "They are not so very fine."

"Have you seen them, then?"

"Hammond and I were in
Bell
's this afternoon." She paused. "Lady Darwin was there. That was why
John
and I
quarreled
. She was his mistress four years ago.

"He has no mistress now. He broke from Emma

Rawlins,
and I heard she has gone to
France
."

"It doesn't matter, Daphne. He'll just find someone else. He always does. And then I will have to see her, and hear people talk about her, as I have all the others." Viola could feel Daphne's steady gaze on her, and she sighed. "It should not have hurt to see Lady Darwin in
Bell
's today, but it did.
The look on her face.
She was in love with him once. I know it. And I know she is in the past, but it still hurts, Daphne. It hurts every time.
With every woman.
Yet he expects me to begin living with him again as if none of that ever happened."

Daphne was silent for a long moment, patting Nicholas's back and staring dreamily into space through her gold-rimmed spectacles. After a moment she returned her gaze to Viola and asked a wholly unexpected question. "Would it be so very terrible living with
Hammond
again?"

Viola stared at her sister-in-law, astonished. "After what he has done, how can you ask me that?"

"I know all about Lady Darwin, and Emma Rawlins, and all the other women, but would it be possible for you to put that behind you? Can the two of you not make a fresh start? Begin anew?"

She didn't want a fresh start.
Or a new beginning.
She did not want
John
. He wasn't worth the pain. "One cannot have a fresh start with a man who is a liar and a philanderer," she said, trying to harden her heart again. "He has proven himself unworthy of trust time and again."

"Trust takes time, something you two have had little of, apparently, despite being married nearly nine years. Perhaps time is what you need to find common ground and learn to live amicably."

Viola stirred on the bench, feeling prickly and defensive. She tugged at the torn pansy, ripping it out of the bouquet. "Hammond and I have no common ground and we never lived amicably, even when I still had romantic stars in my eyes about him. We fought all the time."

When we weren't making love.

She made a fist around the silk flower in her gloved hand, thinking of the topsy-turvy days when she and her husband had lived together— the passionate quarrels and the equally passionate reconciliations. She did not want to fight with
Hammond
, but she did not want to make up with him, either. And she most certainly did not want to talk about him.

Daphne, however, seemed determined to have a conversation on the topic. "Both of you are older, wiser now than you were then. Is there no way the two of you could just learn to get along?"

"Is that what a marriage is?" she asked, looking at her sister-in-law. "Merely getting along?"

Daphne's violet eyes were grave behind her spectacles.
"Believe it or not, yes, most of the time.
Not very romantic, I suppose, but true."

Getting along with
Hammond
not only sounded unromantic.
It sounded impossible. "You are happily married. You don't understand."

"I understand your pride, and you have good reason to mistrust him after what he did. But men have pride, too, a great deal of it.
Hammond
more than most, I suspect. And he is certainly not one to wear his heart on his sleeve."

"He does not have a heart."

"I think he does. He hides it well. He is, in fact, a great deal like me."

"What? That is nonsense!"

"It is true. You are very different from me, Viola, for you are openly affectionate and trusting toward every person you meet. Until they give you a reason not to be. Then you can be—pardon me for saying this—you can be as cold as winter in
Scotland
."

That stung. It echoed
John
's description of her. She swallowed hard. "You are saying I am unforgiving? That I am… that I am some sort of ice queen?"

"I am saying your passions are very strong and long lasting. You see things in very stark terms.
Black or white.
Good or bad.
Right or wrong.
Friend or foe.
Not everyone is like you, dearest. I am not. I have the impression the viscount is not. We are both more moderate, I think, than you.
More temperate.
We have just as much pride. We simply express it differently. Usually by hiding how we feel."

"I cannot believe you compare yourself with him. You are nothing like him! You would never lie. You would never toy with someone's affections. You would never be unfaithful to those who love you. You would not walk away from difficult situations. If you wronged and wounded another person, you would acknowledge it and regret it and try to make up for it. I know
Hammond
better than you, and you don't know what you're saying."