Page 127 of A Wicked Kind of Husband

And now her warm welcome was gone.

“Then go,” she said. “Go and stay gone. I’m not keeping you here.”

She pushed past him, gathered up the shadow baby, her movements rough and awkward as she shoved the fabric back into the basket. And when she straightened and looked at him, a stranger lay behind those changeable eyes.

“You’re right: You aren’t my husband. We just happen to be married. So if you’re going to leave, you may as well leave now. You’ve had one foot out the door since you arrived anyway.”

She was sending him away. Of course she was. She had never needed him; she had only wanted a child. Those plans—yes, the dutiful wife. What a hypocrite she was: accusing him of always leaving her, when she had been leaving him too. Once the baby came, she would have no time for him and whatever they had would have crumbled. She didn’t mean to be cruel, but she had never truly loved him. It was his own fault, for being so hard to love.

No matter. They had what they wanted. This is what they had agreed. Separate lives: him with his work in Birmingham, her with her baby. This had been nothing but a foolish interlude. Real life called. Five minutes in his factory, in the life he had forged from nothing, and he’d know himself again and forget this nonsense.

“If you have no further need for me, then, madam,” he said.

“What I need from you is something you cannot give. Go. Go to your home in Birmingham.”

She turned away, her shoulders straight and cold. He could go to her, put his arms around her, join them again as they were meant to be joined.

But he didn’t.

He picked up his coat and went. He went and went and kept on going until he reached his house in Birmingham.

* * *

The housekeeper looked putout when Joshua came barreling into his house without warning, and he suspected it had something to do with the dust sheets over the furniture and the piles of clutter throughout the main rooms.

“We didn’t realize you’d be here, Mr. DeWitt,” Mrs. White said. “We pulled everything out of storage to clean and make sure there was no damage. There were rats, you see. All gone now—the rat catcher came—but I thought it best to do a right thorough spring clean anyway.”

Rats. Worse than sisters, were rats.

Go and stay gone. I’m not keeping you here.

“Carry on,” he said. “Get my rooms ready and put out a meal. I want to be alone tonight.”

The housekeeper looked around helplessly, more embarrassed than the clutter merited. A closer look revealed why.

These were not Joshua’s things.

He had had them take away all Rachel’s and Samuel’s clothes, her books, his toys, but here were the things he had kept. Rachel’s blasted clock collection, a dozen of the things, mercifully silent. He had never understood her fascination with clocks, the way they ticked ticked ticked all the time. And there was the horrid tiger-skin rug. Blazes knew why he had kept that.

The clutter took up too much space and made him fidget.

You aren’t my husband. We just happen to be married.

“Will you be traveling again soon, sir?” Mrs. White asked. “We’ve not got a full staff on, but I can have them back here by morning.”

He waved a hand, seeing not clocks and clutter but a private garden, alive with flowers and bees, with a fountain and a woman.

What I need from you is something you cannot give. Go. Go to your home in Birmingham.

“I have to get back to—” He stopped in time. If he had finished, she would think he had taken leave of his senses. Because he’d been about to say “Birmingham.” It had been his refrain for so long that it was all his brain seemed to know.

What he sought wasn’t here. Because—

Of course not. He only used this house for dressing and sleeping.

“Never mind,” he said. “I don’t need much. I’ll spend most of my time at work.”

* * *

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