“I won’t.” She would contain the darkness. She had to—she simply had no choice.
They walked in silence for a few moments.
“Let us imagine the worst,” Lady Augustine said. “You’re infertile.”
Charlotte’s heart had skipped a beat. “Yes.”
“It doesn’t mean you have to be childless. There are hundreds of children waiting to be loved. You can’t give birth, Charlotte. That’s only a small part of being a parent. You can still be a mother and know all the joys and tortures of raising a child. We get too hung up on bloodlines and family names and our own stupid notions of aristocracy. If someone dropped a basket with a baby on your doorstep, would you really hesitate to pick it up because the baby wasn’t of your blood? It’s a baby, a tiny life just waiting to be nurtured. Think on it.”
“I don’t have to. I would take the baby,” Charlotte said. She would take it and love it. Whether she carried it to term didn’t matter.
“Of course you would. You are my daughter in everything but blood, and I know you. I think you’ll make an excellent mother.”
Tears warmed the back of her eyes. Charlotte kept them in check. “Thank you.”
“What does your husband think of all of this?”
“Children are very important to him. His inheritance depends on producing an heir.”
The older woman rolled her eyes. “Conditional succession? Oh, the joys of having a noble bloodline and a little bit of money. Is this some new development? I don’t recall this being a condition of your marital contract.”
Charlotte sighed. “It wasn’t.”
“Did he mention at any point before your wedding that he required an heir?”
Charlotte shook her head.
Lady Augustine’s face iced over. “I do not appreciate being lied to. When did you find out?”
“When we realized there was a problem with conception.”
“This was a conversation the two of you should’ve had before either of you signed your name to the contract. Not only that, but it should’ve been formally disclosed.” She looked into the distance, the way she did when she was trying to recall things. “How could I have been so wrong? He seemed like such a solid match, a temperate man. Unlikely to cause any problems.”
A temperate man? “What does that mean?”
“Charlotte, you need someone steady, someone dependable, who will treat you with consideration. You’ve done over a decade’s worth of healing, and your magic is starved and tired of doing the same thing over and over. It doesn’t take much to upset this apple cart. That’s why I remained here.” Lady Augustine indicated the garden with an elegant sweep of her hand. “Serenity, beauty, and a low likelihood of psychological or physical trauma. That’s why after a bloody war, some veterans become monks.”
So what, she was somehow too fragile to live her life outside of College walls? Charlotte gritted her teeth. “Perhaps Elvei didn’t know about the conditions for succession.”
“Oh no, he knew. We grow up knowing, Charlotte. He deliberately hid it because I would’ve never given my consent to your wedding.”
Charlotte raised her head. “If he made that a requirement of the marriage contract, I wouldn’t have married him. I didn’t want to enter into a contract to produce a baby. I wanted a marriage, and I think he did, too.”
“He wanted children with a healing talent,” the older woman said.
Charlotte stopped.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Lady Augustine said. “I shouldn’t have said that. It was coarse of me. I’m so furious, and it’s clouding my judgment. It’s my fault. This was exactly the sort of thing I was trying to avoid, and I’ve failed you. I’m so, so sorry.”
“I’m not a child,” Charlotte said. “I’m almost thirty, and I’m responsible for my marriage.”
“You’re educated, but Ganer College hasn’t prepared you for the realities of the world outside these walls. It doesn’t matter how old you are, you don’t have the experience of interacting with people outside a controlled environment. You’ve never been betrayed, hurt, or tricked. You’ve never suffered humiliation. I look into people’s souls every day, and what I see there fills me with joy, but also with dread. I wanted so much to spare you.”
She was talking as if the end of her marriage was a foregone conclusion. “My marriage isn’t over, and Elvei isn’t some sort of callous villain. So he didn’t tell me about his succession. It’s a rather regrettable oversight, but we will deal with it. I understand that love doesn’t happen overnight, but I think he cares for me, and I care for him, deeply. We’ve lived together for almost three years. We wake up in the same bed. He told me he loved me when I began the fertility treatments.”
Lady Augustine studied her. “Perhaps you’re right, and he simply loves you. If he truly cares for you, he’ll deal with it.”
They took another step. The mix of worry and anxiety roiled inside Charlotte. Heat rose behind her eyes, and she clamped her hand over her mouth.
Lady Augustine opened her arms.
Charlotte’s last defenses snapped. She stepped into the welcoming embrace and cried.
“My sweetheart, my precious one. It will be all right,” Lady Augustine soothed, holding her. “It will be all right. Let it all out.”
But it wasn’t all right, and now Charlotte had to tell Elvei about it.
What they said about coming to love a person you live with was true: she had come to love him. He was always kind to her, and she could use some of that kindness now. She felt weak and helpless. So helpless.
The path brought her to the northern patio. Her husband sat in a chair, drinking his morning tea and peering over papers. Of average height and muscular build, Elvei was handsome in that particular aristocratic blueblood way: precise features, carved with a perfection that seemed a touch distant, square jaw, narrow nose, blue eyes, brown hair with a hint of red. When she woke up next to him, with the morning light playing on his face, she often thought he was beautiful.
Charlotte came up the steps. Elvei rose and held out a chair for her. She sat and passed him the letter.
He read it, impassive, his pleasant face calm. She had expected more of a reaction.
“This is unfortunate,” Elvei said.
That’s it? Unfortunate? Her instincts told her something was seriously wrong with that placid expression on his face.
“I truly care for you,” Elvei said. “Very deeply.” He reached over the table and took her hand in his. “Being married to you is effortless, Charlotte. I have nothing but admiration for what you do and who you are.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. The logical part of her knew she had nothing to do with her infertility. She didn’t cause it, and she had done everything in her power to fix it. She wanted a baby as much as Elvei. But she felt guilty all the same.
“Please don’t be.” He leaned back. “It’s not your fault or mine. It’s just an accident of fate.”
He was so calm, almost cavalier about it. It would’ve been better if he cursed or threw something. He sat still in his chair, but every word he said was a small step back, increasing the distance between them. “We can adopt,” she said, hopeful.
“I’m sure you could.”
Alarm blared in her head. “You said ‘you.’ Not ‘we.’”
He pushed a piece of paper across the table to her. “I thought that things might turn out this way, so I took the liberty of preparing this.”
She glanced at the paper. “Annulment?” Her composure shattered. He might as well have stabbed her. “After two and a half years, you want to annul our marriage? Are you out of your mind?”
Elvei grimaced. “We’ve been over this before: I have three years from the beginning of marriage to produce an heir. My brother is engaged, Charlotte. I told you about that two months ago. He’ll have three years to produce a child. If I divorce you and remarry, I’ll have six months before becoming ineligible to inherit. You can’t make a baby in six months. I need an annulment, so my three years can restart, or Kalin will get there before me. He still might, all things considered, as marriage takes time . . .”
This wasn’t happening. “So you’re just going to pretend that everything we shared in these years doesn’t exist and discard me? Like trash?”
He sighed. “I told you, I have a great deal of admiration for you. But the purpose of this marriage was to have a family.”
“We are a family. You and I.”
“That’s not the kind of family I require. I can’t lose the manor, Charlotte.”
She was cold and hot at the same time, all hurt and anger iced over by shock. “Is it money? You do realize that I can make us as much money as we need.”
He sighed. “You’re so flawless most of the time that occasionally I forget you’re not a blueblood by birth. No, of course, it’s not the money. Whoever owns the manor rules the family. It’s my inheritance; I was born first, I studied most of my life to take care of our family interests, and I won’t let it slip away.”
“It’s just a bloody house!” Her voice snapped.
Elvei’s composure melted, the polite veneer sliding off him. His voice rose. “It’s my childhood home. My family goes back sixteen generations. Do you expect me to just let my idiot brother get it while you and I pretend to play house here, in this decrepit ruin? No, thanks. I have higher ambitions in life.”
The words burned. “Is that what we were doing?” she asked quietly. “When you and I made love in our bedroom, we were playing house?”
“Don’t be melodramatic. We both enjoyed it, but now we’re done.”
The outrage swelled in her, mixing with hurt. Last night he’d kissed her before they fell asleep next to each other. This was the man she woke up to every morning? “Elvei, you realize, you’re telling me that I have no value to you except as a broodmare?”