“Because I loved you,” she replied, but the acid in her voice made the declaration rather brittle. “And because I didn’t want to see you die, which you seemed stupidly bent upon doing.”
He had no ready comment, so he just snorted and glared at her.
“But don’t try to make this about me,” she continued hotly. “I’m not the one who lied. You said you can’t have children, but the truth is you just won’t have them.”
He said nothing, but he knew the answer was in his eyes.
She took a step toward him, advancing with barely controlled fury. “If you truly couldn’t have children, it wouldn’t matter where your seed landed, would it? You wouldn’t be so frantic every night to make certain it ended up anywhere but inside me.”
“You don’t know anything ab-bout this, Daphne.” His words were low and furious, and only slightly damaged.
She crossed her arms. “Then tell me.”
“I will never have children,” he hissed. “Never. Do you understand?”
“No.”
He felt rage rising within him, roiling in his stomach, pressing against his skin until he thought he would burst. It wasn’t rage against her, it wasn’t even against himself. It was, as always, directed at the man whose presence—or lack thereof—had always managed to rule his life.
“My father,” Simon said, desperately fighting for control, “was not a loving man.”
Daphne’s eyes held his. “I know about your father,” she said.
That caught him by surprise. “What do you know?”
“I know that he hurt you. That he rejected you.” Something flickered in her dark eyes—not quite pity, but close to it. “I know that he thought you were stupid.”
Simon’s heart slammed in his chest. He wasn’t certain how he was able to speak—he wasn’t certain how he was able to breathe—but he somehow managed to say, “Then you know about—”
“Your stammer?” she finished for him.
He thanked her silently for that. Ironically, “stutter” and “stammer” were two words he’d never been able to master.
She shrugged. “He was an idiot.”
Simon gaped at her, unable to comprehend how she could dismiss decades of rage with one blithe statement. “You don’t understand,” he said, shaking his head. “You couldn’t possibly. Not with a family like yours. The only thing that mattered to him was blood. Blood and the title. And when I didn’t turn out to be perfect—Daphne, he told people I was dead!”
The blood drained from her face. “I didn’t know it was like that,” she whispered.
“It was worse,” he bit off. “I sent him letters. Hundreds of letters, begging him to come visit me. He didn’t answer one.”
“Simon—”
“D-did you know I didn’t speak until I was four? No? Well, I didn’t. And when he visited, he shook me, and threatened to beat my voice out of me. That was my f-father.”
Daphne tried not to notice that he was beginning to stumble over his words. She tried to ignore the sick feeling in her stomach, the anger that rose within her at the hideous way Simon had been treated. “But he’s gone now,” she said in a shaky voice. “He’s gone, and you’re here.”
“He said he couldn’t even b-bear to look at me. He’d spent years praying for an heir. Not a son,” he said, his voice rising dangerously, “an heir. And f-for what? Hastings would go to a half-wit. His precious dukedom would b-be ruled by an idiot!”
“But he was wrong,” Daphne whispered.
“I don’t care if he was wrong!” Simon roared. “All he cared about was the title. He never gave a single thought to me, about how I must feel, trapped with a m-mouth that didn’t w-work!”
Daphne stumbled back a step, unsteady in the presence of such anger. This was the fury of decades-old resentment.
Simon very suddenly stepped forward and pressed his face very close to hers. “But do you know what?” he asked in an awful voice. “I shall have the last laugh. He thought that there could be nothing worse than Hastings going to a half-wit—”
“Simon, you’re not—”
“Are you even listening to me?” he thundered.
Daphne, frightened now, scurried back, her hand reaching for the doorknob in case she needed to escape.
“Of course I know I’m not an idiot,” he spat out, “and in the end, I think h-he knew it, too. And I’m sure that brought him g-great comfort. Hastings was safe. N-never mind that I was not suffering as I once had. Hastings—that’s what mattered.”
Daphne felt sick. She knew what was coming next.
Simon suddenly smiled. It was a cruel, hard expression, one she’d never seen on his face before. “But Hastings dies with me,” he said. “All those cousins he was so worried about inheriting . . .” He shrugged and let out a brittle laugh. “They all had girls. Isn’t that something?”
Simon shrugged. “Maybe that was why my f-father suddenly decided I wasn’t such an idiot. He knew I was his only hope.”
“He knew he’d been wrong,” Daphne said with quiet determination. She suddenly remembered the letters she’d been given by the Duke of Middlethorpe. The ones written to him by his father. She’d left them at Bridgerton House, in London. Which was just as well, since that meant she didn’t have to decide what to do with them yet.
“It doesn’t matter,” Simon said flippantly. “After I die, the title becomes extinct. And I for one couldn’t be h-happier.”
With that, he stalked out of the room, exiting through his dressing room, since Daphne was blocking the door.
Daphne sank down onto a chair, still wrapped in the soft linen sheet she’d yanked from the bed. What was she going to do?
She felt tremors spread through her body, a strange shaking over which she had no control. And then she realized she was crying. Without a sound, without even a caught breath, she was crying.
Dear God, what was she going to do?
Chapter 17
To say that men can be bullheaded would be insulting to the bull.
LADYWHISTLEDOWN’SSOCIETYPAPERS, 2 June 1813
In the end, Daphne did the only thing she knew how to do. The Bridgertons had always been a loud and boisterous family, not a one of them prone to keeping secrets or holding grudges.
So she tried to talk to Simon. To reason with him.
The following morning (she had no idea where he had spent the night; wherever it was, it hadn’t been their bed) she found him in his study. It was a dark, overbearingly masculine room, probably decorated by Simon’s father. Daphne was frankly surprised that Simon would feel comfortable in such surroundings; he hated reminders of the old duke.
But Simon, clearly, was not uncomfortable. He was sitting behind his desk, his feet insolently propped up on the leather blotter that protected the rich cherry wood of the desktop. In his hand he was holding a smoothly polished stone, turning it over and over in his hands. There was a bottle of whiskey on the desk next to him; she had a feeling it had been there all night.
He hadn’t, however, drunk much of it. Daphne was thankful for small favors.
The door was ajar, so she didn’t knock. But she wasn’t quite so brave as to stride boldly in. “Simon?” she asked, standing back near the door.
He looked up at her and quirked a brow.
“Are you busy?”
He set down the stone. “Obviously not.”
She motioned to it. “Is that from your travels?”
“The Caribbean. A memento of my time on the beach.”
Daphne noticed that he was speaking with perfect elocution. There was no hint of the stammer that had become apparent the night before. He was calm now. Almost annoyingly so. “Is the beach very different there than it is here?” she asked.
He raised an arrogant brow. “It’s warmer.”
“Oh. Well, I’d assumed as much.”
He looked at her with piercing, unwavering eyes. “Daphne, I know you didn’t seek me out to discuss the tropics.”
He was right, of course, but this wasn’t going to be an easy conversation, and Daphne didn’t think she was so much of a coward for wanting to put it off by a few moments.
She took a deep breath. “We need to discuss what happened last night.”
“I’m sure you think we do.”
She fought the urge to lean forward and smack the bland expression from his face. “I don’t think we do. I know we do.”
He was silent for a moment before saying, “I’m sorry if you feel that I have betrayed—”
“It’s not that, exactly.”
“—but you must remember that I tried to avoid marrying you.”
“That’s certainly a nice way of putting it,” she muttered.
He spoke as if delivering a lecture. “You know that I had intended never to marry.”
“That’s not the point, Simon.”
“It’s exactly the point.” He dropped his feet to the floor, and his chair, which had been balancing on its two back legs, hit the ground with a loud thunk. “Why do you think I avoided marriage with such determination? It was because I didn’t want to take a wife and then hurt her by denying her children.”
“You were never thinking of your potential wife,” she shot back. “You were thinking of yourself.”
“Perhaps,” he allowed, “but when that potential wife became you, Daphne, everything changed.”
“Obviously not,” she said bitterly.
He shrugged. “You know I hold you in the highest esteem. I never wanted to hurt you.”
“You’re hurting me right now,” she whispered.
A flicker of remorse crossed his eyes, but it was quickly replaced with steely determination. “If you recall, I refused to offer for you even when your brother demanded it. Even,” he added pointedly, “when it meant my own death.”
Daphne didn’t contradict him. They both knew he would have died on that dueling field. No matter what she thought of him now, how much she despised the hatred that was eating him up, Simon had too much honor ever to have shot at Anthony.
And Anthony placed too much value on his sister’s honor to have aimed anywhere but at Simon’s heart.
“I did that,” Simon said, “because I knew I could never be a good husband to you. I knew you wanted children. You’d told me so on a number of occasions, and I certainly don’t blame you. You come from a large and loving family.”
“You could have a family like that, too.”
He continued as if he hadn’t heard her. “Then, when you interrupted the duel, and begged me to marry you, I warned you. I told you I wouldn’t have children—”
“You told me you couldn’t have children,” she interrupted, her eyes flashing with anger. “There’s a very big difference.”
“Not,” Simon said coldly, “to me. I can’t have children. My soul won’t allow it.”
“I see.” Something shriveled inside Daphne at that moment, and she was very much afraid it was her heart. She didn’t know how she was meant to argue with such a statement. Simon’s hatred of his father was clearly far stronger than any love he might learn to feel for her.
“Very well,” she said in a clipped voice. “This is obviously not a subject upon which you are open to discussion.”
He gave her one curt nod.
She gave him one in return. “Good day, then.”
And she left.
Simon kept to himself for most of the day. He didn’t particularly want to see Daphne; that did nothing but make him feel guilty. Not, he assured himself, that he had anything to feel guilty about. He had told her before their marriage that he could not have children. He had given her every opportunity to back out, and she had chosen to marry him, anyway. He had not forced her into anything. It was not his fault if she had misinterpreted his words and thought that he was physically unable to sire brats.
Still, even though he was plagued by this nagging sense of guilt every time he thought of her (which pretty much meant all day), and even though his gut twisted every time he saw her stricken face in his mind (which pretty much meant he spent the day with an upset stomach), he felt as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders now that everything was out in the open.
Secrets could be deadly, and now there were no more between them. Surely that had to be a good thing.
By the time night fell, he had almost convinced himself that he had done nothing wrong. Almost, but not quite. He had entered this marriage convinced that he would break Daphne’s heart, and that had never sat well with him. He liked Daphne. Hell, he probably liked her better than any human being he’d ever known, and that was why he’d been so reluctant to marry her. He hadn’t wanted to shatter her dreams. He hadn’t wanted to deprive her of the family she so desperately wanted. He’d been quite prepared to step aside and watch her marry someone else, someone who would give her a whole houseful of children.
Simon suddenly shuddered. The image of Daphne with another man was not nearly as tolerable as it had been just a month earlier.
Of course not, he thought, trying to use the rational side of his brain. She was his wife now. She was his.
Everything was different now.
He had known how desperately she had wanted children, and he had married her, knowing full well that he would not give her any.
But, he told himself, you warned her. She’d known exactly what she was getting into.
Simon, who had been sitting in his study, tossing that stupid rock back and forth between his hands since supper, suddenly straightened. He had not deceived her. Not truly. He had told her that they wouldn’t have children, and she had agreed to marry him, anyway. He could see where she would feel a bit upset upon learning his reasons, but she could not say that she had entered this marriage with any foolish hopes or expectations.
He stood. It was time they had another talk, this one at his behest. Daphne hadn’t attended dinner, leaving him to dine alone, the silence of the night broken only by the metallic clink of his fork against his plate. He hadn’t seen his wife since that morning; it was high time he did.
She was his wife, he reminded himself. He ought to be able to see her whenever he damn well pleased.
He marched down the hall and swung open the door to the duke’s bedroom, fully prepared to lecture her about something (the topic, he was sure, would come to him when necessary), but she wasn’t there.
Simon blinked, unable to believe his eyes. Where the hell was she? It was nearly midnight. She should be in bed.
The dressing room. She had to be in the dressing room. The silly chit insisted upon donning her nightrobe every night, even though Simon wiggled her out of it mere minutes later.
“Daphne?” he barked, crossing to the dressing-room door. “Daphne?”