When he was ready, he stood and went back to the house. Marshall let him in; he found Free sitting at the table.
She didn’t rise as he approached her. She didn’t frown at him, but she didn’t smile either. He wasn’t sure how he made his way toward her, if anyone else was in the room. He couldn’t see anyone but her, couldn’t think any thought except that he no longer wanted to be towering over her, looking down.
It was a simple matter to get on his knees before her, and an even simpler matter to bend his head.
“Free,” he said. “I want to make you happy, but I don’t know how.”
For a long, fraught moment, she didn’t respond. And then, ever so slowly, she reached out and took his hands in hers.
“We’ll figure it out,” she told him.
Chapter Twenty-Four
FREE DID NOT KNOW what she was doing in this house, if one could call something so vast by so unassuming a name. The ceilings reached high over her head. Her footsteps in the huge, echoing space seemed to belong to a much larger creature. A horse, perhaps, or an elephant.
And the man at her side… She stole a glance over at him.
Edward strode beside her. He seemed as uneasy in this place as she felt, and maybe that was the only thing that kept her from running in horror.
Yesterday, he’d told her he wanted to make her happy. Today, she’d come with him to his estate in Kent. Because—she still didn’t quite believe this—the man she married had an estate in Kent, and that was now an inextricable part of her life. She’d married him for richer or poorer, but quite frankly, at the moment she would have preferred poorer.
He’d made every effort to make her feel comfortable. He’d not yet announced the marriage. He’d wired ahead and sent the servants away on holiday, because he knew that she’d be overwhelmed by a procession of people all wanting to meet her needs.
Yet somehow the absence of servants made the tour Edward was giving her even more bewildering.
This was what he’d kept from her: this vast empty space screaming of responsibility. This was what he hadn’t told her, because he’d feared she wouldn’t want it.
“The grand hall,” he told her. Then a few minutes later: “The blue parlor to the right; the yellow parlor to the left.”
“The zebra-striped parlor,” Free muttered as he paused at the door of the next room.
He glanced down at her, and the half smile on his face slowly died. “You…hate this.”
She’d been trying her best to imagine herself in any of these rooms, in any role except gawking seer of sights. She’d failed.
“It’s not really filling me with delight,” she admitted.
He turned from the room. “I’m doing this all wrong. Come with me. Let me show you the good parts.” He marched down the hall to an unobtrusive door set in the wall. He wrenched this open and led her into a bare hall, one not floored underneath by marble. Here, no massive portraits looked down in snooty disapproval.
“Oh, thank heavens,” Free said, breathing in relief. “I was going mad out there.”
“Here.” Edward jiggled a door to a room and then opened it wide. “The seamstress’s work area. Patrick Shaughnessy—he’s that friend I told you about—his mother was a seamstress.”
Free blinked. “Patrick Shaughnessy? Is he any relation, by chance, to…” She trailed off, and then she glanced up at him. “Of course he is. Of course. Stephen Shaughnessy—he’s why you came back in the first place.” She looked around the room. A small, dingy window let light spill onto the bare wood floor. A simply made chest of drawers stood against one wall.
“Yes. He is. He’s like a little brother to me.”
She frowned, recalling… “He lied to me about you. That little…” But she couldn’t muster up anger over it.
“Clod,” Edward suggested. “It’s what Patrick and I always called him. We referred to him as ‘the clod.’ But only when he was present. You’re not angry at him for lying, are you?”
“He hardly knew you were going to marry me,” she said dryly. “But I’ll have words with him.” It made sense of everything Edward had done in the beginning. “Then it wasn’t entirely about revenge when we first met, was it?”
He gave her a look. “It took about five minutes before it was about you, too. You’ve been the one easy part in all of this. If I didn’t ask you to join this uneasy future with me, it’s because I love you too much to ask you to come into this.” He gestured around him.