She closed her eyes to fight back the burning of tears. She wanted to tell him that he would always live in her heart, that he had already taken it all, but it would only confuse things. “He was the second son of a viscount, Lord Sansbury, whom you met. He had inherited a small estate with a decent income from an uncle, but he wasn’t the match my father had hoped for me. I was supposed to marry someone destined to become an earl or a viscount, an heir to a title, not a second son.
“I haven’t told Violet, but Papa even considered approaching Christian to arrange a match between us. He and Mama had a great row over it, which she won because soon after it became publicly known that Christian had invested his meager inheritance in Montague Club. Suddenly, he went from prospect to scoundrel in Papa’s eyes. I didn’t mind because, while Christian is handsome, I had already made my choice.
“All that to say that Arthur had to prove himself to my father. He did that by proving his affection for me. He made Papa believe that he was the best choice because he would take the best care of me. I don’t think I realized that that’s what won Papa over until you had to do much the same. Although, Papa already liked Arthur, so his hurdle wasn’t as high as yours.”
“Did Arthur take the best care of you?” The tone of his voice suggested that the story was making him suspect that Arthur hadn’t.
She nodded and crossed her arms over her chest to fight the cold coming in through the window. Almost immediately, Max’s coat settled over her shoulders, and she luxuriated in both the warmth and the fact that he was so attuned to her needs. “He did. He was a good husband. The first year was everything I had hoped for in a marriage. He was patient and attentive. We spent every free moment together. He took the time to learn my favorite things: my favorite dessert, my favorite wine, my favorite play . . . he knew it all, and I was certain that we would be happy for the rest of our lives together.”
“And then what happened?”
She took a deep breath. It was difficult to find the words because she had never said them out loud before and certainly never to another person. Her heartbeat was that of a rabbit being hunted.
“And then I never conceived a child.”
The words were loud in the quiet between them. She couldn’t look at him to see the disappointment that would start to slowly dawn across his face as she kept talking and he finally understood what this would mean for them. Instead, she kept her gaze focused on the moonlit glow of the silver birch tree outside.
“By the end of the second year, our marriage had lost the closeness I loved. There was a distance between us that I couldn’t cross. It only seemed to get wider, because I could not do the one thing I was meant to do in our marriage.” Fighting past the ache in her throat, she said, “Our marriage bed had become a place of desperation where there was little room for tenderness and affection.”
“But it could have been him—”
“No,” she said, squashing that bit of hope in his voice. “Two physicians confirmed that I will likely never bear a child. By that time, Arthur was sick with cancer. He went from healthy to on his deathbed in a period of six months, and it is my deepest regret that I was never able to give him a child before he died. He is well and truly gone with no part of him left here to carry on.”
Max’s hands were on her shoulders, and he placed a kiss to the top of her head. “My God, Helena,” he whispered, but she couldn’t determine how he felt beyond his distress for what had happened to her. She didn’t dare face him, knowing she couldn’t abide his disappointment, so she simply did not move. Even when he dropped his forehead to rest on her head and nuzzled his nose into her pinned-up hair, she stayed still, silently soaking up the comfort he offered. “Was he cruel to you?”
“Cruel?” It wasn’t the question she had expected. An ache welled in her throat that he would be concerned for her after what she had revealed. When she could speak again, she said, “He wasn’t violent or abusive. He was cold, distant . . . angry. He tried not to be angry at me. Please understand that he was a good man. He never wanted to be angry with me, but it was there. I understood it, because I had been angry with myself.”
The last time they had lain together had been not long after his diagnosis. Both of them had been reeling from what it might mean, and he had come to her bed in the night. She had hoped to comfort him, but without prelude, he had shoved up her nightdress and taken her. His grunts had been less those born of pleasure than desperation. She could still hear them. She didn’t know why this one night stood out in her mind, because it wasn’t that different from the others that had preceded it. Perhaps it was that he had seemed colder somehow, more distant. Or perhaps it was that she had felt shamed and humiliated as she had lain there and finally accepted that what they’d once shared was lost to her forever.
“It wasn’t right that he did that to you.” Max was before her, taking her face between his hands. “You know that, don’t you?”
She gasped and covered her mouth with a fist, unaware until that moment that she had relayed the shameful story out loud. “He had just found out he was dying, and he wanted a child,” she said when she could finally draw breath. “I never denied him myself.”
“Then you gave him your consent to be so cruel?”
She shook her head and moved away, uncomfortable with this new direction of the conversation. “My consent was given when I said I do. What other consent does a wife have?”
“You don’t believe that.” Pain and horror mingled on his face. “There is a difference between what is legal and what is right.”
“Of course there is, but . . .”
But had it been right?
If August had come to her and confessed that Evan had treated her in such a way, would she tell her that it was her duty to accept? No, never! Why had she been so willing to accept that treatment for herself? She knew immediately that it was because she had felt herself deserving of it. What right did she have to tenderness when she was such a failure? What right had her body to pleasure when it couldn’t perform the only thing it was made to do?
Arthur must have thought the same.
She didn’t realize how violently she trembled until Max’s arms came around her. “Come here,” he whispered and gathered her up into his arms. She buried her face in his neck as he sat them down in the chair he had vacated last night to hold her on his lap. No matter how she tried to keep in her tears, the incessant quaking only served to shake them out of her. It didn’t seem to matter, because Max appeared to be in no hurry. He stroked her back and pressed his lips to her hair, content to hold her as she had her cry. She didn’t even know why she was crying—this had all happened years ago—but once the tears started they wouldn’t stop until every last one of them had been wrung out of her.