Page 84 of The Duke's Second Bride
CHAPTER 30
While Ava was slightly disappointed that her hopes of being with child had been dashed, she was relieved to make a quick recovery from her mild illness.
Moreover, the incident overall had filled her with a hope she had not thought possible for her.
She wanted a child. She wanted children with Christian. She wanted to give Luke a sibling, maybe two or three.
And for the first time she could remember, that felt like a possibility.
Christian seemed distant for the first few days after her recovery. At first, she assumed he was similarly disappointed as she was, that there was no baby on the way. And while she would have liked to commiserate about their disappointment together, she accepted that he had to process his emotions in his own way.
After all, Christian was reticent to express his emotions at the best of times. It made sense that he would need a moment to process the back-to-back shocks of believing there was a baby, and then finding out there was none.
But as the days went by, she stopped reading Christian’s distance as shock and started to view it as coldness. And it was a frost that showed no signs of thawing.
He withdrew from dinners entirely and spent hours at a time in his office.
The day after her recovery, she tried to visit him in his office, as had become her custom. She knocked at the door playfully.
He glanced up. But rather than letting his gaze trace across her body, as she was accustomed to him doing, he merely looked up at her for the briefest moment before fixing his gaze back on his desk and the paperwork atop it.
“Ah. Hello.”
She was taken aback. “Hello, husband,” she said, trying to keep her voice from sounding too stung. She slowly stepped into the office, trying to tempt him to look at her, but he kept his eyes resolutely attached to his work. “I am back in good health, in case you had not noticed.”
“I am glad to hear it,” he said.
She blinked. “I was wondering if you would perhaps like to celebrate,” she tried again.
Christian stiffened at that. It was such a slight motion that for a moment she convinced herself that she had imagined it. “You should not overexert yourself so soon after recovering,” he said shortly. “And unfortunately, I do have quite a bit of work to do this week.”
The papers in front of him were ten at most, not even a full stack. But Ava felt she could not point this out without looking foolish.
She let a moment of silence pass.
Finally, Christian turned his head back in her direction; however, he still avoided her gaze. “I will see you at dinner,” he said, as though to pacify her. For some reason, this stung most of all.
“Very well,” Ava said, bewildered. “I shall see you then.”
“Yes,” Christian said, his voice so stiff as to sound disinterested. He may as well have been talking about the weather.
It became clear he had no intention of continuing any kind of further conversation. Stunned, Ava returned to the hallway.
All their interactions in the days that followed had a similar tone. Christian was present, but colder. At dinner, he was there, butparticipated in conversations as briefly as he could, focusing on Luke’s studies and their progress with the garden.
He did not visit Ava’s rooms or invite her to his. And when they passed each other in the hallway, he would not so much as touch a hand to her waist, let alone kiss her.
She tried to content herself by spending time with Luke and with Pudding. But after several days had passed, it became clear that Christian was not going to change.
If she wanted to find out what was going on, she would have to go to him.
Late after Luke had gone to bed one night—after another dinner without Christian present—Ava knocked on his bedroom door. She wore the same nightgown she had been wearing the first time they kissed.
When she received no response, she gently pushed the door open … and found it empty.
“Surely he isn’t working at this late hour,” she murmured to herself. But she went to the library all the same.
Sure enough, he was there, bent over a desk. At the sound of the door creaking, he didn’t even look up.
