“Theo,” she whispered. “Please, just tell me what is wrong.”
“Not now.”
“Why? Theo!” Margaret pulled on his arm. “You’re being rude to your cousin, there’s blood on you, and I heard your mother yelling foul things at you. What does all this mean?”
He flung the door to the carriage open and helped her inside.
“It means there’s a reason I stay home. There’s a reason that it’s best not to let anyone in.”
“What do you mean by that?”
He closed the door and said nothing else.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Theodore kicked the front door of his house open. Fortunately, it was so late that neither Yates nor his butler was in the hallway waiting for their return home.
He marched across the hallway, with Margaret hurrying on behind him, few candles flanking them to offer feeble white light on their return.
“Theo, please?” she called after him. “Can’t we just talk of what has happened here tonight?”
He hastened into the sitting room, snatching off his frock coat. He folded it as neatly as he possibly could, then laid it down over the back of a chair.
“What has happened between you and your mother that she would shout at you so? That she would dothisto you, too?”
“What?” He turned to face her, startled as her hand reached up toward him. There was a clean handkerchief in the palm of her hand, and she used it to mop the blood from his cheek.
Momentarily, he leaned into her hand. It was a soft touch, something he was so unused to, that he felt starved of such touches. He closed his eyes as she mopped it away.
“Explain it to me. Please,” she begged in a low voice. “You don’t have to shut me out so.”
He jerked his head back. That soft touch was suddenly gone. Any sort of warmth that had accompanied it evaporated fast.
She has seenfartoo much of me.
He thought of all the emotions he had felt since she had come into this house. The worry, the fear, the concern, the laughter… she had wormed her way under his skin. What could that lead to?
He may have had no liking for his mother, even less liking for her sanity, but she was right in one regard.
This was never to be a marriage of love.
“We have done what we needed to accomplish,” he said coolly to Maggie as her hand fell limp at her side with the bloodied handkerchief clutched tight in his grasp.
“What do you mean?”
“We have attended two events recently. We have presented ourselves as a married couple. Any hint of scandal between us will now be gone.” He stepped back from her. “There is no need for us to continue to live together anymore.”
“What?” Maggie dropped the handkerchief.
Fearful of blood ending up on his floor, he hastened to snatch it up. He stuffed it into his pocket, so the blood could no longer be seen.
“I shall leave. First thing in the morning.” He walked toward the door of the sitting room.
“Leave? What do you mean leave?” She grabbed hold of her skirt, lifting it high in order to run after him. He hurried across the hallway, reaching the bottom step of the staircase, just as she caught up to him. “You can’t just leave this house.”
“I have other houses. You have made this one your home.” He sneered, looking around the house. “Let it be your home. I’ll find my place elsewhere.”
“You cannot just leave like that!” She scrambled up the stairs faster than him, halting in front of him, her arms out wide to block his way. He had never seen her in such a flustered panic, the whites of her eyes now pink. “We were building a home here together.”
