Chapter 3

July 1890

Robert had entered her room with another quick pull to the silken tie of his dressing gown. The blue of her space was warm, as it always was this time of night, bathed in candlelight. The gold of the drapes and the peachy hue of the duvet flickered around him, glinting and shimmering. The flowers, roses still fresh and white from a recent clip, made him feel, for a moment, like he had entered one of the fairy gardens Rosamund had sketched when they were quite young.

But it was no garden.

It was anything but a garden, especially tonight.

For the longer he listened to her, her softly measured words, the heavier Robert felt himself grow in the cream-colored chair near her window. He practiced deep breaths. He stretched his fingers over the short silken arms, and then straightened them wide and taut. He could feel the aggravation in his joints, the vexation like a pulse in the tips of his digits, and he let out one long breath.

"Cora."

He hadn't expected this. When he came into her room smiling and nodding and attempting some strange, forced small talk about his day, he hadn't expected the graveness of her features, the tension in the way her tall, slender body had stood awkwardly near her cold fireplace, seemingly waiting on him.

He knew now that she was, indeed, waiting on him.

"You're upset." He blinked down at his knees draped in his dressing gown. "Someone has upset you, and now you're saying things you don't mean."

He let the silence between them grow for an uncomfortable length before glancing upward at her, at where she now stood beside her bed, her long, white fingers touching the shimmering duvet covered in lace, her face - her skin as smooth and flawless as milk crystal - quiet and unmoving. She kept her eyes downcast, the long black fringe of lashes fluttering at the small shift of her gaze toward the rug.

"You speak out of … frustration. You can't mean it," he said again.

He watched as she shook her head, the red ribbon in her dark curls falling from her shoulder.

"No." She looked up to him, then, squarely, and repeated herself. "I've thought about it, Robert, and I think it best for now."

He felt his brows furrow. "But to wait? I don't understand."

"You don't want to understand."

The evenness, the quiet of her voice prickled the annoyance further. It flared inside his chest. It burned, and Robert buried his fingers in the arms of the chair.

"I don't understand, Cora, because it doesn't make any sense. Why on earth should we wait?"

The burn, it was a fire. And Robert let it lick at his lips, he let it cast its smoke in his eyes, and he found himself looking about her, incredulously, as if she were the one burning down the small house of hope he'd built inside his chest.

"I have been trying to expla-"

"We have a duty to perform, an obligation!"

Her eyes came to his again, and Robert saw in them an unmistakable grit, a stronghold in the clear blues of them, as if his wife had rooted herself to those words and was clinging to them.

"Yes." Her voice was terse, but soft; it angered him all the more. "So you keep saying."

"And what do we tell Mama? Hmm?" He shifted in her chair, he angled his elbows upon the arms of the thing, uncomfortably leaning upon them. "And Papa?"

He paused for only a moment as her eyebrows twitched, as if something he had said had stung her.

"Papa was expecting you pregnant when we returned from honeymoon. To have it all finished. Secured." He swallowed. He shifted again. He spoke out to the airy walls of her bedroom. "Am I to tell him that now you've decided your independence more important? Now that we've been married for nearly half a year, am I to tell him that you've decided against it all; that you'd like to wait?"

"I've not decided against it. Not in the least. You know how I look forward to it. As I explained, I -"

Robert stood from the chair, the candlelight behind him throwing his dancing shadow over his silenced wife. "For God's sake explain it, again, Cora! For every word that has passed your lips thus far has been met with nothing but confusion in me!"

His outburst startled her, he knew it, for he watched her eyes blink rapidly for a moment, and then she began again, stumbling softly over her words, her fingers touching the fabric of her duvet and then stretching out tensely to her sides.

"It's only we've tried for nearly six months without any success. Perhaps if we rested? If we gave it a moment's rest. I do feel so very tired of -"

"You're tired?" He took a step toward her vanity and then looked back to her, shaking his head, narrowing his gaze, his chest all aflame. "You're tired? Do you have any idea of how selfish you sound? How very selfish you're being?"

She stood still. But her voice was even stiller. "It isn't selfish. I'm not being selfish."

"You are." Robert's eyes widened. He nodded, sure of himself. For she was. How could she not see that she was? "Because of your own frustration, you've decided that this is what best for us. This isn't about us, Cora. This isn't about you."

"It's not about us?" And now the fire that Robert had felt inside his chest was growing at his wife's slippered feet. He could feel it there. Her eyes were alight with it. "This isn't about me?"

But he spoke over her all the same. "We have the entail to think of. Papa's already asked questions. We must do our duty -"

"Don't I have a say in any of it? I'm the one who will be carryin-"

"I must conceive an heir, Cora!"

"And we will!"

A shout. It was a shout, and Robert held his breath. Cora's chest heaved up and down tumultuously, but not in anger.

No. Robert could see that.

It wasn't anger, but perhaps … perhaps fear.

"But not yet. I won't." She shook her head again, and Robert stared at her. "Not yet. Not until I'm sure."

He wanted to remain silent, as he turned away from her, as he looked over her silver brush handle, and the little glass jewelry box that sat upon her vanity. He thought to remain silent, everything in his brain called for it, asked him to, everything. But his curiosity, and his petulance, forced his tongue.

"Sure?" He echoed back toward her, lifting his chin at her mirror and stool; he sniffed, irritably. "Sure of what? That you haven't made some horrific mistake?"

He looked to his feet briefly instead of her, not wanting to see her response, and then again to that tiny glass box, that silver brush, her mirror. But her reflection in her vanity gave him her answer. The answer he knew, really.

She stared at him, her face solemn and perfect. Her eyes stayed fastened, unblinking, on him. Her pink mouth remained a long, straight line.

It was a question she would not honor. It was a response she would not answer aloud, and Robert felt shame in his saying it.

Exhaling, he turned to her.

The volume that was in the room, that reverberated off of her blue walls, that shuddered over the golden thread of her curtains, it had completely evaporated, and in its place remained intimacy. Not the warm intimacy made of gentle touches and smiles. The intimacy of honesty. Of nakedness. Of bearing one's soul, and feeling a rush of heat.

At last, it was Cora who moved.

"In the end, Robert, it will be a child." She searched his eyes with her own, and Robert felt smaller beneath their gaze. "The duty. The obligation. The heir you speak of … it'll be a child."

She paused, and she let out a gentle breath.

"Our child."

There was another pause, and in it - oh in it - she searched his eyes again, the pale blue of hers seeming to look for something, something in his own, that he did not understand. He didn't understand. And when she did not find it, he watched her swallow and look toward her walls, blinking again.

"I … I'd like so much to have a baby, Robert. But you see we -" she interrupted her quiet voice with a quick inhale. "Oh, we hardly know one another."

"Of course we know one another."

But Cora shook her head. And she looked at him. "Carnal knowledge isn't really knowledge of someone. Not really."

Again, there was quiet between them, but it was her quiet. It was very plainly her quiet, and Robert waited for her to continue, his heart pulsing quickly behind his ribs.

"I want to wait." She lifted her chin, suddenly, resolutely. "I don't want to try again until … until I'm ready."

And his heart, his quickly beating heart, it faltered. He stumbled backwards two steps. He clenched his jaw, angrily. Suddenly angrily again, and lifted his brows.

"Very well," he clipped. "As you'd like," he spat again. He tightened the tie around his waist, he pulled down the front of his robe. He squared his shoulders and looked at her, stared at her, and frowned. "Then I won't bother you anymore."

Her face had fallen as he said it, as he turned away - he saw it - but he didn't care. He was retreating. He was going to his dressing room. He was slamming his door. He wanted to rip away his dressing gown, to fall into his bed, to punch his pillow, and to not see her face as he tried desperately to fall asleep.

But he could not. Of course he could not. For he ... he didn't want to wait. He didn't want to postpone it any longer, and the thing she'd said about it being a child ... about it being their child, he ... he knew that, didn't he?

Didn't he?

Why? Why was he suddenly so angry and so hurt and so ... so acutely ... broken-hearted.

He was broken-hearted.

Because he cared. Damn it all, he did.

He cared.