But he had not betrayed her. He had remained faithful to a woman from whose bed he’d been banned. Eloise wasn’t surprised, given his innate sense of honor and dignity, but she didn’t think she would have thought less of him if he had sought comfort elsewhere.
And the fact that he hadn’t—
It made her love him all the more.
But if his time with Marina had been so difficult and disturbing, why had he come here tonight? Why was he staring at her portrait, standing there as if he couldn’t move from the spot? Gazing upon her as if he were pleading with her, begging her for something.
Begging the favor of a dead woman.
Eloise couldn’t stand it any longer. She stepped forward and cleared her throat.
Phillip surprised her by turning instantly; she’d thought that he was so completely lost in his own world that he would not hear her. He didn’t say anything, not even her name, but then . . .
He held out his hand.
She walked forward and took it, not knowing what else to do, not even knowing—as strange as it seemed—what to say. So she just stood beside him and stared up at Marina’s portrait.
“Did you love her?” she asked, even though she’d asked him before.
“No,” he said, and she realized that a small part of her must have still been very worried, because the rush of relief she felt at his denial was surprising in its force.
“Do you miss her?”
His voice was softer, but it was sure. “No.”
“Did you hate her?” she whispered.
He shook his head, and he sounded very sad when he said, “No.”
She didn’t know what else to ask, wasn’t sure what she should ask, so she just waited, hoping he would speak.
And after a very long while, he did.
“She was sad,” he said. “She was always sad.”
Eloise looked up at him, but he did not return the glance. His eyes were on Marina’s portrait, as if he had to look at her while he spoke about her. As if maybe he owed her that.
“She was always somber,” he continued, “always a bit too serene, if that makes any sense, but it was worse after the twins were born. I don’t know what happened. The midwife said it was normal for women to cry after childbirth but that I shouldn’t worry, that it would clear away in a few weeks.”
“But it didn’t,” Eloise said softly.
He shook his head, then harshly brushed one dark lock of hair aside when it fell onto his brow. “It just got worse. I don’t know how to explain it. It was almost as if . . .” He shrugged helplessly as he searched for words, and when he continued, he was whispering. “It was almost as if she’d disappeared. . . . She rarely left her bed. . . . I never saw her smile. . . . She cried a lot. A great deal.”
The sentences came forth, not in a rush, but one at a time, as if each piece of information were being brought forth from his memory in slow succession. Eloise didn’t say anything, didn’t feel it her place to interrupt him or to try to inject her feelings on a matter she knew nothing about.
And then, finally, he turned away from Marina to Eloise, and looked her squarely in the eye.
“I tried everything to make her happy. Everything in my power. Everything I knew. But it wasn’t enough.”
Eloise opened her mouth, made a small sound, the beginnings of a murmur meant to assure him that he’d done his best, but he cut her off.
“Do you understand, Eloise?” he asked, his voice growing louder, more urgent. “It wasn’t enough.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” she said softly, because even though she hadn’t known Marina as an adult, she knew Phillip, and she knew that had to be the truth.
“Eventually I just gave up,” he said, his voice flat. “I stopped trying to help her at all. I was so sick and tired of beating my head against a wall where she was concerned. And all I tried to do was protect the children, and keep them away when she was in a really bad spell. Because they loved her so much.” He looked at her pleadingly, maybe for understanding, maybe for something else Eloise didn’t understand. “She was their mother.”
“I know,” she said softly.
“She was their mother, and she didn’t . . . she couldn’t . . .”
“But you were there,” Eloise said fervently. “You were there.”
He laughed harshly. “Yes, and a fat lot of good that did them. It’s one thing to be born with one dreadful parent, but to have two? I would never have wished that on my children, and yet . . . here we are.”
“You are not a bad father,” Eloise said, unable to keep the scolding tone out of her voice.
He just shrugged and turned back to the portrait, clearly unable to consider her words.
“Do you know how much it hurt?” he whispered. “Do you have any idea?”
She shook her head, even though he’d turned away.
“To try so hard, so damned hard, and never succeed? Hell—” He laughed, a short, bitter sound, full of self-loathing. “Hell,” he said again, “I didn’t even like her and it hurt so much.”
“You didn’t like her?” Eloise asked, her surprise pitching her words into a different register.
His lips quirked ironically. “Can you like someone you don’t even know?” He turned back to her. “I didn’t know her, Eloise. I was married to her for eight years, and I never knew her.”
“Maybe she didn’t let you know her.”
“Maybe I should have tried harder.”
“Maybe,” Eloise said, infusing her voice with all the surety and conviction she could, “there was nothing more you could have done. Some people are born melancholy, Phillip. I don’t know why, and I doubt anyone knows why, but that’s just the way they are.”
He looked at her sardonically, his dark eyes clearly dismissing her opinion, and so she leapt back in with, “Don’t forget, I knew her, too. As a child, long before you even knew she existed.”
Phillip’s expression changed then, and his gaze grew so intense upon her face that she nearly squirmed under the pressure of it.
“I never heard her laugh,” Eloise said softly. “Not even once. I’ve been trying to remember her better since I met you, trying to recall why my memories of her always seemed so strange and odd, and I think that’s it. She never laughed. Whoever heard of a child who doesn’t laugh?”
Phillip was silent for a few moments, then he said, “I don’t think I ever heard her laugh, either. Sometimes she would smile, usually when the children came to see her, but she never laughed.”
Eloise nodded. And then she said, “I’m not Marina, Phillip.”
“I know,” he said. “Believe me, I know. It’s why I married you, you know.”
It wasn’t quite what she wanted to hear, but she stifled her disappointment and allowed him to continue.
The creases in his forehead deepened, and he rubbed them hard. He looked so burdened, so tired of his responsibilities. “I just wanted someone who wasn’t going to be sad,” he said. “Someone who would be present for the children, someone who wouldn’t—”
He cut himself off, turned away.
“Someone who wouldn’t what?” she asked urgently, sensing that this was important.
For the longest time she thought he wasn’t going to answer, but then, just when she’d quite given up on him, he said, “She died of influenza. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes,” she said, since his back was to her and he wouldn’t see her nod.
“She died of influenza,” he repeated. “That’s what we told everyone—”
Eloise suddenly felt very sick, because she knew, absolutely knew what he was going to say.
“Well, it was the truth,” he said bitterly, surprising her with his words. She’d been so sure he was going to say that they’d been lying all the while.
“It’s the truth,” he said again. “But it wasn’t all of the truth. She did die of influenza, but we never told anyone why she fell ill.”
“The lake,” Eloise whispered, her words coming forth unbidden. She hadn’t even realized she’d been thinking them until she spoke.
He nodded grimly. “She didn’t fall in by accident.”
Her hand flew to cover her mouth. No wonder he’d been so upset that she’d taken the children there. She felt awful. Of course she didn’t know, couldn’t have known, but still . . .
“I got her just in time,” he said. “Just in time to save her from drowning, that is. Not in time to save her from lung fever three days later.” He choked back bitter laughter. “Not even my famed willow bark tea could do the job for her.”
“I’m so sorry,” Eloise whispered, and she was, even though Marina’s death had, in so many ways, made her own happiness possible.
“You don’t understand,” he said, not looking at her. “You couldn’t possibly.”
“I have never known someone who took their own life,” she said cautiously, not certain if these were the words one was meant to say in such a situation.
“That’s not what I mean,” he said, almost snapped, really. “You don’t know what it’s like to feel trapped, stuck, hopeless. To try so hard and never, ever”—he turned to her then, and his eyes were flashing fire—“break through. I tried. Every day I tried. I tried for me and I tried for Marina, and most of all for Oliver and Amanda. I did everything I knew how, everything everyone told me to do, and nothing, not one thing made it work. I tried, and she cried, and then I tried again and again and again, and all she ever did was dig herself deeper into her damned bed and pull up the covers over her head. She lived in darkness with her curtains drawn and the lights dimmed and then she picked the one goddamned sunny day to go and kill herself.”
Eloise’s eyes widened.
“A sunny day,” he said. “We’d had a bloody month of overcast skies, and then finally the sun came out, and she had to kill herself.” He laughed, but the sound was short and bitter. “After everything she’d done, she had to go and ruin sunny days for me.”
“Phillip,” Eloise said, placing her hand on his arm.
But he just shook her off. “And if that weren’t enough, she couldn’t even kill herself properly. Well, no,” he said harshly, “I suppose that was my fault. She would have been quite good and dead if I hadn’t come along and forced her to torture us all for three more days, wondering if she might live or die.” He crossed his arms and snorted in disgust. “But of course she died. I don’t know why we even held out hope. She didn’t fight it at all, didn’t use even an ounce of energy to fight the illness. She just laid there and let it claim her, and I kept waiting for her to smile, as if she were finally happy because now she’d succeeded in the one thing she wanted to do.”
“Oh, my God,” Eloise whispered, sickened by the image. “Did she?”
He shook his head. “No. She didn’t have even the energy for that. She just died with the same expression on her face she always had. Empty.”
“I’m so sorry,” Eloise said, even though she knew her words could never be enough. “No one should have to go through something like that.”
He stared at her for the longest time, his eyes searching hers, looking for something, searching for an answer that she wasn’t sure she had. Then he turned abruptly away and walked to the window, staring out at the inky night sky. “I tried so hard,” he said, his voice quiet with resignation and regret, “and still, every day I wished I were married to someone else.” His head tipped forward, until his forehead was leaning against the glass. “Anyone else.”
He was silent for a very long time. Too long, in Eloise’s estimation, and so she stepped forward, murmuring his name, just to hear his response. Just to know that he was all right.
“Yesterday,” he said, his voice abrupt, “you said we have a problem—”
“No,” she cut in, as quickly as she was able. “I didn’t mean—”
“You said we have a problem,” he repeated, his voice so low and forceful she didn’t think he’d hear another interruption even if she tried. “But until you live through what I lived through,” he continued, “until you’ve been trapped in a hopeless marriage, to a hopeless spouse, until you’ve gone to bed alone for years wishing for nothing more than the touch of another human being . . .”
He turned around, stepped toward her, his eyes alight with a fire that humbled her. “Until you’ve lived through all that,” he said, “don’t you ever complain about what we have. Because to me . . . to me . . .” He choked on the words, but he barely paused before he continued. “This—us—is heaven. And I can’t bear to hear you say otherwise.”