“Please, continue your dinner,” Darius said. “I will attend her. Perhaps something simple delivered to the library will help.”
With that, he left in pursuit of his one hope of keeping his creditors at bay.
Chapter 15
Blanche stood by the window in the library. She twisted a handkerchief in her hands and looked deeply distressed.
“Blanche?” Darius made her name into a question. “What is really wrong?”
“I wish I knew,” Blanche replied. “I am following all my physician’s orders, yet I continue to feel pale. I am always a little sad. What is wrong with me, Darius? Why do you not love me?”
This question took Darius aback. Somehow he had never considered that Blanche might have feelings of any sort. She was simply a destination, a thing he had to do in the future.
Love her? People married for convenience, for advantage, but rarely for love.
“I am sorry, Blanche. It had never occurred to me that you desired love. It seemed to me that you were focused on your gowns, on jewels, pretty flowers, and holding the perfect conversation that is all about nothing.”
“Of course that’s how I seem,” she replied. “That is what they teach us in finishing school. Featherhead, feather-light, sweet and charming, with not so much as a solid thought between our ears. But I do have them, Darius. I do have solid thoughts, and I do feel ill, and no one believes me.”
Darius stared at her for a moment. “Just how ill do you feel, Blanche?”
“Oh not unto death, just weary, as if I have no life, no energy.”
“That is a terrible feeling,” he said, recognizing some of his own apprehensions and discomfort in her statement. “Perhaps we should try a different physician. Not all of them ascribe to the same school of thought.”
“Do you think it would help?” she asked
“I think it would not hurt to ask,” he said. “Is there a reason why you have not?”
“Physicians are very expensive,” Blanche replied. “My mother and father have already spent a great deal on treatments and experimental medicines. I do not know what to do. I do not want to beggar my parents, so that when I marry they will have nothing left on which to live. The dowry is set aside and cannot be touched or changed.”
Darius felt the blood drain from his face. “Your parents are in financial difficulty.”
“And have been for some time,” Blanch replied. “That is why we have not hastened this marriage. Although the dowry cannot be touched, the proceeds from it constitute a large part of their yearly income. My father made some bad investments, and although he is slowly recouping, he has a good way to go before he and my mother will be secure.”
“Blanche, I had no idea,” Darius said. “Why did you not tell me this sooner?”
Blanche gave him a thin, rather wan smile. “Darius, do you think that I do not know that our pending nuptials are holding off your creditors?”
This was a side of Blanche that Darius had not seen before. He paused, wordless.
“Do you think I have not seen how you look at your mother's latest companion? She is everything that I am not. She is pretty, has a lovely figure, is well-spoken and well-read.”
“You are well-read,” Darius put in trying to put as good a face on this situation as he could.
“I am,” she replied, “but perhaps not as well-read as Mrs. Swinton. You will make her your mistress, will you not?”
“I’m not sure she will allow it,” Darius said, not denying the charge. “She has told me rather pointedly that she is not interested in such an arrangement.”
“Yet you keep trying,” Blanche said bitterly, “and you keep pushing me away.”
Darius said, “If you were honest with me more often, as you are being now, I would be less inclined to push you away. I believe that this is the first frank conversation we have had since we were ten years of age.”
“As I recall,” Blanche said, “I told you, at that point, that you were horrible and I never wanted to marry. And you told me that it did not matter, girls did as they were told.”
“I did say we were honest,” Darrius remarked. “Then it was not long after that our fathers announced that they had arranged this. It is supposed to conjoin your estate and mine, and create a solid situation for both of us.”
‘What shall we do now?” Blanche asked.
