Gill did not, however, ask her the reciprocal question. Seeing her impassively watch the distant horizon, he did not need to.
Though even as he watched her, her expression did not change, while her eyes filled with tears. “I loathe this time of year.”
He’d mentioned the child. Not well done of him. Gill rose, intending only to pass her his handkerchief, though he wanted desperately to take her into his arms, into his lap, and simply hold her.
She put up a hand, and she might as well have slapped him.
“I hate that you suffer, my lady. I hate that we lost our son. I hate that my father had the bad grace to expire two weeks later, when I was already reeling and hardly in a position to… Damnation, Penelope.”
The first tear trickled down her cheek. She wiped it away with her fingers. “I tend to forget that yours was a double loss. The baby and then his lordship. Bad timing, as you say. Terrible timing. The worst.”
Gill switched seats so he was beside her, and they could both gaze upon the eternal vastness of the sea. He passed over his handkerchief.
“Papa was so happy to know we had a son,” he said. “I worry that when the baby died, the old man gave up too. That, somehow, the two deaths were related.”
Penelope frowned at him as she dabbed at her cheeks. “Your father had lived his three score and ten, Vergilius, and Bella and Tommie already had two sons. The succession was and is secure, and your father was not overly given to sentiment. Besides, your mother lost a child at six months of age. She has mentioned this repeatedly. His lordship of all people knew that such things happen.”
Gill barely recalled the sibling who’d died. He recalled a small, wheezy scrap of an infant, one whose presence had inspired the nurserymaids to prayers and hushed voices. At least the sickliest one was a girl, they’d said, though Master Tommie had been none too robust. At least his lordship had his heir and spare.
At the time, Gill hadn’t understood those comments. Now they offended him mightily.
“I abhor those words,” he said. “‘These things happen.’ War happens, and nobody suggests that’s a passing triviality. Famine, influenza epidemics. Just because something happens with tragic predictability doesn’t mean it’s of no moment.”
Penelope folded up his handkerchief and offered him a small, sweet smile. “You are angry.”
And that caused her to smile at him? “Furious. With nurserymaids who’ve probably long since gone to their Maker. With my father, for dying when I needed him terribly. With my mother, for being so casual about her own bereavement. This is not charming talk, though, and I promised myself that I would be a charming companion to you on this sortie.”
Penelope passed him back his linen, her fingers brushing over his hand.
“Keep it, my lady. A wife should not be without a token of her husband’s esteem.”
That earned him another smile, this one sad, but Penelope tucked the handkerchief into a pocket of her dressing gown.
“I am angry too, Vergilius. There is strength in rage, and it means much to me that I am not the only one still caught in a whirlpool of fury from time to time. I swim free, but the currents are devious, and I never know when I will again be struggling against the tide.”
“Well put. I can tell you this—parliamentary committees are no consolation when I’m caught in one of those whirlpools, Pen. None at all.”
They ate side by side, simple fare—oranges, tea, and apple tarts with cream cheese—the most enjoyable breakfast Gill could recall sharing with his wife in years. Penelope had smiled at him, a special smile that suggested, with luck and effort, he might also make her laugh again soon.
“What shall we do with ourselves today?” he asked, pouring a second cup for them both. “Mrs. Cartwright claims we’ll have clouds this afternoon, but the morning should be fair.”
“You’ve been up to the inn already?”
“Wandered up there at first light.”
Penelope resorted to brushing invisible crumbs from her voluminous dressing gown. “I thought perhaps you’d return to London today.”
“Why would I…?”
Penelope’s newfound fascination with the toes of her slippers answered that question plainly enough. Gill should return to London because Penelope was through tolerating his company.
“I’m sorry, Vergilius. This is awkward, and the awkwardness is my fault. I should have told you I was coming here, but I did not want the drama of a confrontation.”
Gill’s meal abruptly sat uneasily. “Why would I object to you taking a short repairing lease by the sea, Penelope? This is a hard time of year for us both, and we have good memories of this place.”
“The best,” Penelope said, brushing at her cheek and turning her head so Gill could not see her expression. “The very best.”
She rose, her chair scraping loudly against the peace of the morning. “I came here because I am leaving you, Vergilius. I could not face one more year, one more Season, one more anything. Not our stilted breakfasts, not your polite smiles down a table set for thirty. Not your mother’s blasted hovering or her great good cheer over Bella’s every confinement. I’m done. I’m worn out. I have n-nothing more to give.”
Gill was on his feet, and his arms were around his wife before she could hurl any more thunderbolts. He was no longer a young husband put off by tears. He had learned that please don’t cry was the last thing a weeping wife needed to hear, but he had no idea what to say.
“You are leaving me?” he asked, drawing her close.
She nodded against his shoulder. “We are miserable, my lord. I thought I was the sole malcontent in our marriage, that you were making do with your politics and amusements, but I see now… We cannot go on like this, Vergilius. It’s not fair to either of us, and you deserve a chance at a real marriage.”
Couples lived apart, they cultivated different friends, they became cordially distant. Penelope wasn’t talking about any of those accommodations.
She was talking about leaving him.
“You want an annulment?” he asked, even as he treasured the feel of Penelope burrowed against him.
“Tell the bishops I am barren, that I’ve become barren, that we were too young to knowingly consent to our vows, that your father objected to the match. There are ways to do this. I know there are.”
Gill said the first, stupidest thing to pop into his head. “You are not barren.”
Penelope stiffened and stepped back. “By now, I might be.”
“You aren’t yet thirty years old, Pen.” I don’t want an annulment. I don’t want to lose you.
But perhaps he’d lost her long ago, and she’d simply been waiting for him to gather the strength to acknowledge that loss—that loss too.
“I’m crying,” Penelope said. “I thought I was beyond tears. Must be the sea air.”
“You have much to cry about, Penelope. But I had hoped…” Gill fell silent as a particularly loud wave crashed against the beach. The tide was coming in, and it would take any pretty green ormers out to sea when it receded.
“I had hoped too, Vergilius. I hoped and hoped and hoped, and now we have been married ten years, and I have no more hope in me. I am sorry. I am sorry for so much, but I cannot change the past.”