Weston gritted his teeth and damned Albert Marshville to the devil yet again for having altered her life. “My first marriage was a love match.”
Patrina stiffened but remained silent.
“Oh, I’d imagined it was love.” His lips twisted with wry amusement. “In considering Cordelia now, I realize I was in love with the idea of her. She was beautiful as a carved ice sculpture you might see on display, yet, to truly know her, I found out too late what was concealed underneath.” Cordelia had never loved him. He’d allowed himself to believe she had, because his younger self had imagined to have something more than the cold, polite partnership evinced by his parents. But just as Cordelia hadn’t loved him…he realized he’d never truly loved her. He’d loved the dream of her.
Patrina, however, was no dream. She was real amidst a world of glittering insincerity.
He continued. “I presented the best option. A marquess, when there is a dearth of dukes available to title-grasping ladies.” He stared absently at the table littered with brightly colored scraps. He still recalled the precise moment when he’d come to the staggering, numbing realization that Cordelia not only hadn’t loved him, but that she detested him. “The moment I learned she was pregnant with Daniel was the happiest day of my life.” He shook his head ruefully. “Not very long after Daniel’s birth, we learned she was carrying our next child. Do you know what my wife said to me, Patrina?”
“What did she say?” Her quiet whisper barely reached his ears.
“She said now that I had gotten two brats upon her, after her confinement, she would carry on as she pleased.” And she had. After Charlotte’s birth, Cordelia had gone off to London and began living her scandalous life. He expected the familiar pain-like pressure to tighten about his heart, and yet, it didn’t come.
“Oh, Weston.” She covered his hand with her own.
All the tension drained out of him at the satiny softness of her touch. Somehow, in the span of days since he’d met Patrina, he was oddly free. He continued his telling, removed from the pain of that night. “The night she died, she’d left me and the children. She was going off with her lover.” He expected a gasp of shock. Horror. Pity. Instead, a kindred connection passed between them. Two people who’d given their love to wholly undeserving people. “Do you know why I’m telling you this, Patrina?”
She shook her head.
“After she left, I was filled with so much hostility. So much resentment and anger, it threatened to destroy me.” And if his children hadn’t hurled snowballs at Lady Patrina Tidemore in Hyde Park, then he imagined it inevitably would have. “Only in the last few days, since I’ve met you,” he clarified. “I remembered how very important it is to smile and laugh.” He touched a finger to her lips. “And do so as though you mean it.”
Her lips parted and he continued to rub his thumb over her fuller lower lip. “You made a mistake, Patrina. You needn’t spend the remainder of your days trying to atone for that one decision.”
She said nothing for a long while. Then, she touched his cheek. “Thank you,” she said softly.
Weston nodded and picked up the partially assembled kissing bough. He lifted the piece of evergreen with interwoven ribbons and paper flowers tied to its center. He held it above her head.
“What are you—?”
He kissed the question from her lips. Unlike the passionate explosion of their kisses before, this one was a gentle meeting of two people once broken who’d begun to put back the fragments of their life. And in this kiss, for the first time since Cordelia, he felt—free.
CHAPTER 15
As Patrina banged away upon the pianoforte at the chords of Good Christian Men Rejoice, she thought back to Weston’s visit yesterday afternoon. But for her brother and Albert Marshville, she had limited understanding and experience with gentlemen. Yet, as she reflected upon the kissing bough he’d helped her assemble, she could say with a good deal of confidence she couldn’t think of a single gentleman in the whole of the kingdom who’d have helped three young ladies with the fanciful Christmas décor.
The gold chain around her neck served as a warm reminder of Weston’s kiss, of his gift—of him. He’d given her a necklace. Her voice raised in a discordant harmony with Poppy’s. And it didn’t matter that it contained diamonds and was made of the finest gold. It mattered that the fragile gift, a small snowflake, harkened back to their first meeting.
Prudence cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted into the cacophony. “You do know, I’m not certain who is more dreadful? Patrina with her high-pitched squeal or Poppy with her husky, gasping attempt for breath.”
She ignored her sister’s deliberate baiting. Her marriage to Weston was to be one of convenience. Such an arrangement didn’t require the exchange of intimate gifts or passionate embraces. When he’d slipped the delicate piece about her neck, what was once convenient somehow signified more and her heart ached under the truth that she longed for more, craved it…but not to avoid the state of solitude she’d lived in. Weston represented her more…and all she wanted.
“I don’t have a husky voice.” Poppy paused mid-verse to glare at her sister, pulling Patrina back to the moment.
Her lips twitched with amusement mid-note and the key of E soared sharp.
Prudence winced.
Mother picked her gaze up from the embroidery frame upon her lap and frowned at her daughters. “Do behave, Prudence.”
The girl bristled at the reprimand. “I’m merely being truthful, Mother.”
“And you do remember Juliet’s lesson on being truthful?” Penelope called from her seat alongside Mother. She pulled the needle through her own frame and then gave her sister a pointed look.
Properly chastised, Prudence settled back in her seat with a flourish. “I didn’t intend to be mean,” she said solemnly to Patrina and Poppy.
Patrina took one hand off the keyboard and waved it about. “Do not worry about it, dear.”
The girls fell quiet as Patrina and Poppy resumed their song.
Give ye heed to what we say…
Prudence dropped her chin into her hand and propped her elbow onto the arm of her seat. “I merely thought if we weren’t singing then we could, should,” she corrected, “at least consider the very important, the essential chore of finding you a suitable wedding dress.”
Four pairs of eyes swiveled to Patrina. Her fingers stumbled over the keys and she quickly dropped her stare to the pianoforte, continuing to play. Her sisters had fairly oozed girlish excitement at the prospect of purchasing a bridal trousseau. With their youthful innocence and naiveté, they didn’t realize the terror in wedding a gentleman only to be thrust back into polite Society as the scandalous woman who’d had the poor judgment to elope.
“Yes. Though it does pain me to have to visit a modiste, I’d venture it is a sacrifice I must make,” Penelope said and threw a hand over her brow in a flourishing manner. “Er, a sacrifice we all must make,” she said. “That is, for the good of Patrina.”
All three sisters nodded.
“I don’t need a new gown.” And she didn’t. She only needed him. Until yesterday, when Weston had let her into the pain he’d known, she’d believed their marriage was merely a matter of convenience. Some subtle shift had occurred and she knew that just like the necklace signified more, so too did the sharing of his past. Silence met her somber pronouncement. She ceased playing and looked up at her family. “There is no need for fancy gowns and any kind of fanfare.”