“You get enjoyment from pestering the woman, Cam, and I’m asking you to stop.”
He dropped the innocent smile on his face, since it hadn’t served him well, and reluctantly agreed to stop antagonizing the biddy. Though it was a rare bit of entertainment in this place.
“Fine. I’ll relent.”
“Thank you. Now, why don’t you bring her down so she might eat with us this evening?”
He stood and bowed. “Certainly, wife.”
He left the room and went upstairs. After knocking on the door twice before he entered, without a word he went to the dowager’s bed and picked her up.
“What are you about?” she complained in alarm and squirmed in his arms like a slippery pig.
“I’m taking ye downstairs so you can sit at the table and eat like the civilized lady you are.”
“Put me down at once!”
Of course he did no such thing but instead carried her down to the dining room so they could share a meal together. He didn’t do it just because his wife had asked it of him, though that would have been reason enough. He did it because he understood why a person might want to wrap themselves in bitterness and not allow anyone else to enter.
When his Mari was gone, he could see how such a refuge might offer him protection from those who wanted to force him to move on when he didn’t wish to.
He was in a perfect position to become just like the dowager. He only hoped if he did give in to the pain and anger, someone would try to help him find his way back to life.
The days turned into weeks. He and Mari visited the dowager daily so she wasn’t alone all day. She wasn’t much for conversation, but she thanked him each time when he left.
Eventually she was well enough to leave her bed and regularly join them for dinner. Sometimes she’d even stay as they sat next to the roaring fire enjoying an evening together. She always said it was because of the warmth, but he thought it was a different kind of warmth that drew her.
“Tomorrow is Christmas,” he said to test the waters a few days later.
As expected, the dowager’s head shot up and her eyes went wide. “You can’t possibly think to celebrate in this house.”
Cam chuckled at having prodded a response from her. “I’m an unwanted war chief married to a murderess. Do you not think I’d risk Cromwell’s rule to ensure a good pudding?” He laughed harder when she just glared at him.
“While it’s true there’s to be no public celebration for the holiday, you must be aware that every house on the block is secretly planning private festivities,” Mari said. “Even the duke demanded goose for dinner on Christmas Day.”
“I forbid it.” The dowager went back to cutting her food into the tiniest of pieces. Cam wondered if she even had a need to chew.
He said nothing else. He planned to do as he wished, regardless. As for ordering the meal, if he and Mari had to stay in their room to eat it, he didn’t see that as such a terrible idea. Having her near a bed was always his favorite thing.
But Mari was upset. While she was not usually one to push things with the dowager, she did this time. “I plan to have a proper Christmas meal and share stories in front of the fire tomorrow,” she declared resolutely. “If it’s my last holiday on earth, I’ll bloody well celebrate it the way I see fit. What will they do? Hang me?”
Cam couldn’t help but smile at her joke. He loved to see his wife all afire. She’d spent too many years being subdued. The fact that she felt safe enough to rant in her displeasure gave him much joy. Especially since, for once, he wasn’t the cause of her annoyance.
But as she went on, he feared this outburst was more than simple irritation. His wife cried more than normal now that she was with child, but he thought the tears he currently saw lurking in her fierce eyes were something other than a maternal shift in her emotions.
The dark thing they tried not to speak of still lurked on the edges of their lives, finding small ways to wear them down and destroy their fleeting happiness.
“I don’t understand why you stay here if you hate us so much.” Mari’s voice trembled as she spoke. “You have the means to go back to Sussex or Chiswick, or lease a different house here in town. Why do you tarry here? You never stayed here before. Not once in all the years I lived here in this hell with the duke.” Mari halted her tirade and looked at the other woman as a bird might examine a worm.
And then her face cleared, as if she’d had a major epiphany. Which, perhaps, she had.
“You never stayed here,” Mari repeated as her eyes went wide and accusing. “You never stayed here because he was here. Isn’t that true?” she demanded.
“I have no idea what you’re babbling about. I’ve been in this house many times.”
“You occasionally visited for a few hours, but you never stayed. And come to think of it, I cannot help but notice you never once asked me why I killed the duke.” Mari narrowed her gaze on the dowager. “Because you knew all along how he was. What he was.”
The dowager’s thin lips pursed in displeasure, but she didn’t refute Mari’s claim.
Was it really possible the woman knew what a violent bastard her son had been?
Cam reached for Mari’s hand, suspecting she would need his strength to get through the rest of this conversation.
“Could you not have warned me, so I’d not be put through hell as his wife?” she accused.
The older woman laughed without humor. “You came here with bright eyes and dreams of being a duchess. I tried to save you. I tried to stop the marriage. But your parents were blinded, too enamored of an alliance with such a prize.”
“But if you’d come here to help me, maybe he wouldn’t have—”
“Oh, he wouldn’t have stopped on my account, I can assure you.”
“But if you’d been here, I wouldn’t have felt so all alone.” With that, Mari burst into tears and fled the room.
Cam would give her a moment before going to her. For now he needed to deal with the prideful, unfeeling woman before him. So, she hadn’t ever visited while her son was alive. Cam didn’t think it had anything to do with Mari. If so, the dowager wouldn’t be staying here now.
Something else was the cause.
Someone else.
“Did ye fear him?” Cam asked quietly. “Was he so far into evil that he’d raise a hand against the woman who bore him?”
The dowager said nothing, just sat there looking at him as her eyes glistened. But no tears fell, even as she clenched and released her fingers.
“I see,” he said and reached over to place his large hand over both of hers. She flinched, but he kept her gaze. Her backbone seemed to be made of steel, the way she sat there so stiffly.