“What is it that you were doing last night?”
Phillip seemed caught off guard by this question which sent a jolt of pain through Marina’s heart. Had he come there thinking that she was merely cross about the incident with his uncle, still? Was he so arrogant to think that she would look the other way from his sudden departure?
“I had an urgent matter to attend to.”
“You did not so much as leave a note. I had to inquire with the staff.”
“There was no time.”
“What could have been so urgent?”
This was not what Phillip Hayward expected to find when he left to fetch his wife from her friend’s home. Running away seemed, to him, exceptionally childish. He watched her set her brow in a hard line, and it dawned on him that every inconvenience he had come face to face with the night before when seeking out his wife had been laid out intentionally. She had done to him precisely what he had done to her. This realization did not release him from his agitation, however.
“Have you been privy to my business matters before, Marina? Did you sit around the dinner table with your father and discusshisbusiness?”
“I—”
“It is simply not your place. You have asked that I be more communicative—fine. You wish that I make my presence more known about the house—whenever I am able, I will do so. But this is asking too much. You are a duchess, Marina, and you ought to behave like one.”
CHAPTER 22
“You are a duchess, Marina, and you ought to act like one.”
Marina muttered the phrase under her breath, mockingly, as she dressed the next morning. It had been playing on a loop in her mind. At first, she was devastated; Phillip had once claimed to enjoy that she was different from other ladies of the ton, and now, he was weaponizing that fact against her. But slowly, her melancholy made way for anger. Marina felt as though she had two husbands—one who was kind, witty, and adoring and another who was very much like the monsters in children’s tales.
There was a knock upon her door just as she finished dressing, and she moved at a slow, dastardly pace to open it. Phillip waited for her, his shoulder leaning against the doorframe. Marina knew that her sister had been right—the Duke was remarkably handsome, and while sometimes the former Lady Linfield found herself captivated by his dark forest green eyes and proud jawline, today she was irritated by the way the sun from thewindows seemed to be at his beck and call, illuminating his fine features in just the right way.
“Good morning, Duchess Hayward.”
“For what reason have you come to call on me?”
“I have thought quite a bit over these last few days about how to repair things between us.” Marina gave him a skeptical glare. “Mathilde has packed our breakfast in a basket, and I would quite like it if you would accompany me for a picnic this morning?”
“A picnic? Where?”
“On our grounds.”
Marina frowned, and Phillip hid his chuckle behind his hand. “You wish to hide me away from the world,” she accused. “Perhaps I should attend some formal training as a duchess. You should ask my father for suggestions on good finishing schools. I shall be the tallest student there.”
“Your jest wounds me, Marina. Come. The sun is bright and warm, and your new dress is splendid. Perhaps after our picnic, we can take a stroll into town and go shopping. Then you cannot wrongly accuse me of hiding you away.”
Marina scoffed, but when Phillip extended his hand, she took it and allowed him to lead her outside. They sat together on ablanket on the bank of a small pond near the road to town. From their position, they could see the road clearly, but passersby would not see them unless they walked toward the pond. Marina watched her husband unpack their breakfast and tried, for a moment, to imagine that they were a happy couple as they would seem to onlookers.
She could not bring anything to mind.
“I spent all afternoon out here.” Her eyes flickered up to his face, curious. “I was hoping to find a place like this one—like the corners you and Miss Harrington haunt at balls.” She had to press her lips together to keep from giggling. He was right. If she had taken Kathrin on a picnic, this was exactly the place they would have wanted to sit.
“Whatever for?” she asked, her pout now pulling at her features just for show. “Perhaps I do not enjoy the same trivialities as a married woman that I once did as a spinster.”
“If you are now a married woman, you were never a spinster.”
Marina could not help herself—she laughed, a soft and brief sound, but it was enough for Phillip to have hope. He turned from her, so she would not see his smile as he sat down beside her. For a while, they ate together in silence, and it felt as though all was not lost between them. They were still able to make one another laugh. They still possessed the capacity to sit next to one another amicably.
It was all that he needed to know that he could fix this.
At first, Phillip had left their conversation at the Harrington home feeling vindicated. But when he returned to the Hayward Estate and his relationship with Marina grew cold and distant once more, he began to see his father’s face when he looked upon a mirror. He had wondered whether they sounded alike. Was the tone he took with his wife the same one the late duke had taken with Phillip’s mother?
It took him a bit to come around—in denial, mostly, that he could never be anything like the wretched man who raised him. But it was her—Marina—who swayed him. He watched her while she was in the garden one day, and he recognized his mother—a beautiful woman held captive in her own home by a bitter marriage. He was determined to make things right and end her suffering, one way or another.
