The first of such days came a week after the first anniversary of their marriage, which passed unremarked.
She heard the sound of the sledgehammer from her sitting room, early in the morning. The answer to her question was found in the Times. Miss Pelham’s mother had announced the betrothal of her daughter to a Captain Englewood. The name was somewhat familiar. She dug up the guest list from her wedding and there was a clan of Englewoods. Captain Englewood, it seemed, was either an Eton classmate of Lord Fitzhugh’s or the elder brother of a classmate.
At noon she took a sandwich and a flask of tea to him. In his shirtsleeves, he sat on an empty windowsill, his head resting against the frame of the wall, Alice in his hand.
“I’m sorry,” she said. It hurt her to see him in pain.
He shrugged. “It was always going to happen.”
“But you would have preferred that it happened later—or not at all.”
“I won’t deny there is a part of me that never wants to let go of her. But I don’t wish her to go through life alone; it would be far better for her to marry. If only the thought of it didn’t make me so—”
He looked up at the sky. “I haven’t kept up with her news—when we married, I resolved to remove myself from her life entirely. So I don’t know the circumstances surrounding her engagement. On the one hand, I’m worried—terrified—that she said yes to Captain Englewood simply because she could no longer stand to be alone. On the other hand, she could be in love with him and he could very well turn out to be a wonderful husband to her. And does this thought make me glad? Not at all. If she is miserable, I am miserable. If she’s happy, I’ll still be here, taking a sledgehammer to a wall.”
Millie didn’t know what to do. Or what to say. Tears welled in her eyes and she let them fall. What was the point of not crying? His pain and her own seemed one strangely whole entity: a longing for what could not be regained, or gained in the first place.
She wiped away her tears before he could see them.
“Anyway,” he said, “thank you for my lunch. I’m sure you have much to do around the house.”
In other words, he wished to be alone now.
“I can—I can do those things tomorrow,” she ventured.
He shook his head slightly. “It’s very kind of you, but it’s hot and dusty out here.”
“Right,” she said. “I’ll go back inside, then, where it’s much nicer.”
He did not look at her. He had eyes only for Alice, his beloved Alice.
When would she remember that their pain was not the same? That while she would welcome any opportunity to be close to him, even if it was to hear of his love for another woman, he, on the other hand, sometimes simply could not bear the sight of her.
That although occasionally she proved herself an ally, always she was—and always she would be—the personification of all the forces that had kept him from the happiness that should have been his.
Millie resolved to fall out of love with her husband.
She didn’t know why she didn’t think of it earlier. Somehow, when she’d fallen in love, she’d accepted it as a chronic condition, something that must be endured for as long as she lived.
Such could not be true. She must recognize this: There was nothing special about her love. She was simply an ordinary young girl, dazzled by the good looks of an equally young man. What was her love but a desire to possess him? What was his love but a similar drive to own Miss Pelham body and soul?
Some things in life were truly difficult. Finding the source of the Nile, for example. Or exploring the South Pole. But falling out of love with a man who never looked at her twice, why should that prove an insurmountable challenge?
Alice was not quite right. It was September. She should be gorging herself, putting on weight in readiness for her long hibernation, but her appetite was poor. Fitz tempted her with seeds, berries, nuts of all descriptions. He took her on long walks and searched for aphids and other small insects she might find interesting. He had the gardeners germinate various plants so she might have fresh leaf buds, a delicacy she hadn’t enjoyed since spring.
Nothing had any effect. She ate poorly and spent the rest of her waking hours in varying degrees of listlessness, her eyes dim, her breathing labored.
She was getting old. But he’d counted on her to have at least another year in her, twelve more months of gentle snoozing and happy snacking, three hundred sixty-five more days for him to grow accustomed to the fact that she could not live forever.