Trial by Desire (Carhart 2)

She hadn’t really been expecting him to answer—just to provide more obfuscation. But what he’d said well and truly shocked her into silence. If it wasn’t exactly like madness, how close did it come? His elbow jostled her, and she realized he’d removed his hat from his head and held it against his chest.

“I asked a physician,” he told his hat. “And so I know that much. It’s not madness. It’s madness if you can’t control what you do or say, or if you’re unaware of reality. I’m always aware of reality, when it happens. And I’m entirely in control of my own actions. All the time. I can do whatever I want.”

What he wanted was to sleep in the freezing cold, shutting her out.

“I can do whatever I want,” Ned repeated slowly. “I just… Sometimes I don’t want.”

“What don’t you want?” The carriage turned; as it did, Kate pressed full against him again.

She felt the shrug of his shoulders. “When it starts, I don’t even want to get up in the morning. When I was nineteen, it came for the first time. I stayed in bed for weeks. My mother thought I was ill, but the physician could find nothing wrong with me. I just didn’t want to get up.”

“That doesn’t sound like a thing.”

“It’s easier if I think about it as something separate. The alternative is that I am that thing. That every few years, I wake up one morning and I decide to act as if I’m a different person. No, Kate. I’d rather think of those times as if they were a brief, bitter winter. As if it were something outside me. I can’t explain it, except to say that I’m not mad and you shouldn’t ever have to worry about it.”

“Not worry about it? But—”

He raised his gloved hand to cover her lips. “No. Don’t make me into some sort of wounded creature, one that you need to tend to wellness. There’s nothing to heal here, Kate, no dragon for you to slay. There’s nothing but a beast that I’ve already managed to tame. It raises its head occasionally. In the past, it tried to defeat me. But it won’t. Not ever again. I don’t need help. I don’t like help—it makes me want to do even less.”

“But—”

“It’s nothing.” His hand hit the side of the carriage for emphasis, and the carriage rumbled to a stop. It took Kate a few moments to realize they were stopping not because of that ill-timed rap, but because the carriage had arrived at their London townhome.

Ned reached over and grasped the door handle, holding it in place to preserve that brief space of privacy. The door rattled, and then, as the servants realized it had been blocked from the inside, stood still.

“You don’t have to worry,” he repeated. “I don’t stay in bed any longer, when it comes. I’m prepared for it now. I practice for those mornings when I can’t bear to get up, because I know they’ll come again. I practice by doing things I don’t want to do.”

“Such as…”

“Such as running three miles in the morning, and when I don’t think I can possibly manage it, running three more. Like sleeping with the windows open, without a fire.” He met her gaze. “Occasionally, abstaining from intercourse when I desperately desire you. I make myself strong enough so that those times don’t matter.”

“That seems…” Kate trailed off, groping for a word. Odd? Inexplicable? Extremely cold? Nothing seemed to fit, and so she raised her chin. “That seems like something you should have told me about.”

She could have helped. She could have done something. The inkling of a plan started to assert itself.

In answer, he let go of the latch and pushed the door open. A footman greeted them; Ned turned his head, and like that, his tension disappeared into a wicked grin.

“Well,” he said flippantly, “I have much more fun making you laugh. Don’t you think?”

He stepped down; she stared out the doorway of the carriage in disbelief. He hadn’t—he really couldn’t have packed away the conversation as if it hadn’t happened. Kate stood so rapidly, she almost struck her head against the roof of the carriage. “Ned, you—you…”

Her words sputtered out into cold silence. Exhaling, she gathered her skirts and stumbled to the door of the carriage. But he hadn’t left her; he’d taken the footman’s place, and as she stood at the edge of the steps, he held out his hand to help her alight. His fingers were warm, even through both their gloves. “I’m good at jokes,” he said to her, his voice so quiet she strained to hear it even above the velvet silence of the night. “When we married, I was excellent at playing the buffoon. After all, it’s better to have your sins chalked up to tomfoolery than it is to have everyone realize that you occasionally succumb to this cloying thing that is not quite madness.” He grinned again, and that expression was so at odds with the seriousness of his tone that Kate shook her head.

His arm came about her as they walked up the steps.

“But—”

“I didn’t tell you, Kate, because I didn’t want you to know. I won’t have you looking at me and seeing weakness. I don’t need anyone to feed me gruel and wipe my chin. Besides, the more people know, the more real it seems.”

The last seemed like such a superstitious thing to say. Kate frowned at her husband. But he wasn’t looking at her. Instead, he swept through the front door, as if he could guide the conversation as easily as if he were leading her about a dance floor. He was shunting her aside again. It was a different sort of abandonment, compared with traipsing off to China, but it was an abandonment nonetheless. It was a denial of what their marriage could be, of what she could be to him, if only he would let her.

If he thought she could not even hear the truth, he didn’t really trust her at all.

Kate locked her knees and braced her slippers against the floor, and he stopped.

“No.” Bare denial was all she had.

A second footman paused behind her, in the act of reaching for her wraps.

“My lady?” A hint of bewilderment touched his voice.

“No,” Kate repeated, her tone subdued, “we won’t be needing your services any longer tonight.”

Ned didn’t contradict her. Instead, he leaned against the drawing room door and watched as the footmen departed. After they were alone, he pushed off the wall and wandered into the parlor. A low fire flickered in the grate, but gave off barely a glow. Ned made no move to take a candelabra with him, or to light the oil lamps.

It would be a mistake to think he was pushing her away. No; he was holding her as close as he dared. But she wanted him to dare more. Kate held her breath and waited.

He seemed nothing but a silhouette to her, his back lit by the gleaming lamp in the hall beyond. She almost couldn’t fit his features to the shape of his profile; the sharp line of his nose, the stubborn jut of his chin. The silence seemed smoky with possibility.

“Well?” he finally said. “I thought you wanted to pose some questions. Is there anything you should like to know?”

“I thought you didn’t want to answer me.”

“I don’t.” His breath hissed out, a faint approximation of a chuckle. “So I’ll do it. Lovely how that works, isn’t it?”

There were a thousand things she might have asked him. When did this “thing” come? How had it started? Was there anything to be done about it, besides accept his suffering? But in the darkness and the silence, nothing mattered except one small detail.

“Will you not let me help because you think I’m not capable of it? Because you think I’ll break if you lean on me?”

He shook his head. “Kate,” he said quietly, “you are the most indomitable woman I know.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“Really. If you were tossed in a den of lions, you would order them to sweep the bones of the lambs they’d devoured for breakfast out into the refuse pile—and they would not dare disobey. If you were abandoned in a wilderness, you’d rebuild ancient Rome, from the humblest fountain to all its marble halls. And you’d do it using your bare hands, and perhaps a pocketknife for assistance.”

“I have no interest i

n being left in the wilderness, Ned. If I’m as capable as you keep saying, why don’t you trust me to help?”

For a moment, he didn’t respond. And now the silence preyed upon her, resurrecting old doubts, older hurts.

He’d been lying. All those fine words about lions and Rome and indomitability—they’d been tales, spun to comfort her.

Kate didn’t want comfort, and she didn’t particularly care for lies. Not now.

“Ah,” he finally said in tones of amusement. “I suppose…I suppose that some of it is what jealousy looks like.”

“Jealousy?”

“I told you men were beasts. Do you want to know how unworthy I really am?” He turned to her quietly; she took a step back. Her backside hit a sharp edge—her hands splayed out behind her onto polished wood. She’d bumped a table, just above her hips in height.

“Jealousy? But—”

He straightened and moved toward her. She could not see his features, but his shoulders were held rigidly as he walked. He seemed a tall blaze of smoldering emotion. And he was coming closer. She swallowed.