Page 84 of Lord Garson's Bride
After what felt like a long time, Garson finally spoke. “Marriage is harder than I expected it to be.”
Silas, to his credit, didn’t look smug—although Garson knew very well that his friend had manipulated him into confessing his worries. “Worth it in the end, though, especially with a good woman.”
“Jane’s a good woman.”
“I know. Are you unhappy that she’s become such a success?”
“She was such a quiet little thing when I married her.”
“She’s just kicking up her heels. I remember when Caro came out of mourning—she’d have danced all day and all night, if she could. She was making up for the time she’d wasted.”
As always when Silas spoke of his wife, love warmed his voice. Hugh stifled a pang of envy for his friend’s domestic contentment. “Jane’s life has been so restricted until now. I can’t blame her for wanting to squeeze everything she can out of her first season.”
He wondered if he was alone in noting the desperation behind her endless flurry of activity. As if pausing for even a moment’s reflection threatened annihilation.
“But that’s not what you signed up for.”
A grunt of unamused laughter escaped Garson. “Looking back, what I signed up for strikes me as completely unrealistic.”
“The marriage of convenience isn’t convenient after all?”
“No.” Garson was well aware that the world’s opinion was divided about his marriage. Some people were convinced he’d married Jane, while still in love with Morwenna. The more sentimental—boneheaded—members of the beau monde believed he loved his wife and made a new start.
“You appeared delighted with your choice when you came to dinner back in March. I know this started as a practical solution for both of you, but when I saw you together, I hoped thatyou might have fallen in love with your wife. That night, you certainly acted like you had.”
He shot Silas a dark look. “You should know better than that. Love was never part of the arrangement.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. You seemed so comfortable together.”
“We were.” He noted the past tense and felt like smashing something.
“Tell me—just what were you expecting, when you married Jane?”
Garson shrugged, although he felt anything but casual about his wife. “I’d pictured something like a friendship, with a bit of bed sport thrown in to spice things up.”
“But that’s not what you got?”
He thought he had. At first. But what intimate details could he share without betraying his wife? That was another unexpected result of married life—the way he and Jane had become a unit. Now his first loyalty was to her.
Anyway, he wasn’t even sure he was capable of defining the problem. Most people would say he had damn all to complain about. In bed, Jane was endlessly cooperative. When she was indisposed, she slept alone, but she invited him into her chamber readily enough afterward. If she held something back from him, something she’d once shared, the difference was so subtle that he’d be hard placed to describe it.
Perhaps it was that these days, she never initiated their encounters. He craved the return of the woman whose sensual curiosity prompted her to take him into her mouth. She’d taken him into her mouth since, but always at his request.
And there were no more jokes about the Tower of London. There were no more jokes at all. Damn it, he missed the laughter they’d shared more than he missed anything else.
He’d feel a fool trying to explain these hazy impressions to a friend, even if he was inclined to share such private matters.
“I don’t think she’s happy she married me,” he said in a low voice. Putting the oppressive truth into words twisted his gut into tangles of misery.
Silas looked thoughtful. “Are you talking to each other? I mean, really talking.”
“We talk,” Garson said. Although he knew what Silas was asking, and the answer was no, they weren’t. After his wedding, he’d spent a fortnight discovering an intriguing woman. But these days, the gates to true intimacy slammed shut in his face.
And left him outside on the empty road, starving and cold.
“Good,” Silas said. “Because if I’ve learned anything in all my years of marriage, it’s that a woman’s mind is a labyrinth where a man gets lost if he’s not careful. You need to find out what’s worrying Jane and fix it, if you want to have a prayer of making her happy.”
Garson gave a heavy sigh and set aside his brandy. Liquor wasn’t going to soothe his wretchedness. “I’ve asked her what’s wrong, and she says everything’s fine.”
