Chapter Text
As troubling as Thomas’s words had been, and as unsettled as they had left her, by the time Sofia returned upstairs, irritation had risen and become her dominant emotion. When she reached the door, she held out her arm and turned it to and fro, checking to see if Jackson’s assault on her sleeve had left any lasting damage.
Her jaw clenched as she pushed open the door. She tilted her head just enough to see the nearest bed; it was still occupied, but there was no reaction to the small amount of light spilling in from the hallway. Jackson’s face was once more covered by her hat. Her chest rose and fell slowly; when she breathed out, Sofia could hear her respiration collecting noisily inside the hat, like a softer version of blowing into a bottle.
In that moment, Jackson would have been so easy to kill. She let that thought pass, however, and made her way back to her designated bed, taking a seat. After spending months without a bed, she would have expected sleep to come easily, no matter how unbearable the company.
Sofia could only hope that the woman wouldn’t start snoring, or thrashing in her sleep again. Even the soft muttering from before had been unnerving. At first she had thought Jackson was saying ‘bully’ and thus accusing her of being one in whatever dreams she may have been having about her. Then she recognised it to be the name Billy, and put two and two together: it was surely the name of her dead husband, one Captain William Jackson.
If she remembered correctly, there had been soldiers passing through Tottenham a few months before she herself married Lord Wilmot in 1701, and those soldiers – for reasons she could never quite comprehend, from the standpoints of neither logic nor desire – had on their way out of the village taken with them several eager young women, all of whom were willing to enter hasty marriages for the sake of... Sofia did not know. She never found soldiers to be intriguing in any sense, least of all as possible conversation partners. Perhaps the village had a distinct shortage of eligible men at the time – a number which was only made smaller by how many would join the soldiers with similar enthusiasm, excited to prove their mettle.
Even Thomas had threatened to join them, expressly to anger their father. He was, after all, the only Blancheford child that could possibly be considered as an heir.
Feeling like she should be doing something more productive than glaring at Jackson, she picked up the comb she had been given and set to work. She winced softly when it immediately got caught in a tangle. Her eyes watered as she fought her way through it. She cast another look at the sleeping woman, who had not stirred.
There was something so odd about thinking of Nell Trotter as ever having been one of those Tottenham girls who were so eager to marry; based on what she had heard and seen of her, Sofia found it hard to believe the woman had been willing to marry at all – to become Nell Jackson, a man’s wife. Sofia figured she must be quite a different person when in love – very different indeed from the boyish, roguish archetype she seemed to perfectly encapsulate, despite her sex. She assumed her husband must have been able to either smooth or else ignore her coarse edges.
It was difficult for Sofia to relate to love of the kind that would lead to voluntary marriage. She knew the protective love she had for her brother, and once for Rasselas. She had never been able to change the obedient, disappointing love she had for her father, but recognised it in the immediate grief she felt when she knelt beside his bleeding body. She knew the duller ache of mourning she still felt when she thought of her beloved mother. And Sofia knew all-too-well the misery of waiting for any semblance of affection to save her – to deliver to her that love she had been expected to develop for her husband. She knew the feeling of looking over at him in the night, wishing he’d disappear, or that she’d wake from her endless bad dream.
Marriage for her had nothing to do with love, only duty. She knew it not to be an uncommon sentiment; she knew marriage to be a contract, an exchange or rebalancing of status. It was more than that for some women, but it could never be for her.
At a very young age, Sofia had realised that she would never marry a man for love; she’d marry because it was expected – nay, required – of her, no matter how distressed just the thought of it made her feel. Even if her father wouldn’t explicitly use her for personal gain or status, she still had known herself to be something he would need to eventually give away – or else, what would a woman like her do with her life?
Besides, people would assume there was something wrong with her if she never married.
They would be right to assume that she was defective, in a certain sense, because there was something wrong with her: something deeply shameful that had always lurked at the corners of her mind; the thing which took her breath away when she passed by a certain painting kept – for modesty’s sake – in the least-used corridor of Broadwater Hall; the reason she had always been afraid to spend too much time amongst the girls her age in Tottenham. Sofia had vowed that she would never allow anyone to notice, thought that she could stamp it out – but it had only worsened with age. No matter what, she had refused to be a burden upon her family or the object of tawdry gossip. She knew that her best bet was getting married, no matter her personal feelings.
Still, it had shaken her when she had been informed of her first marriage proposal, not long after she had come out – that is, made her formal entrance into society as a woman. Immediately, she had pleaded with her father not to be forced to marry the man. She had been lucky, because he had disapproved of the match; the man was known to be less-than-honourable in his personal life, and Lord Blancheford would not see his only daughter degraded by such a person, no matter their wealth. Emboldened by his protectiveness of her and his lenience, Sofia had gotten away with rejecting the next three suitors, too – but she soon had seen that her father’s patience was waning.
In the end, it had bought her only three months of additional childhood, for soon there was another proposal: this from one Lord Wilmot; he was a wealthy, respected man – who just so happened to be old enough to be her father. But he did not live overly far from Tottenham, unlike some of the other attempted suitors, and was always spoken of positively by all who knew him.
Lord Wilmot had become a widower half a decade earlier and had ostensibly been too full of grief to seek a new wife until that point, but like the others who had asked for her hand, he had seen Sofia in court and... Well, she was never told specific reasons why she was desired by any of them, but as she had never interacted with a single one of them, she was left to assume they simply thought she was attractive – a thought which made her wish she had shown up in court wearing rags and speaking in tongues.
She knew Lord Wilmot was likely the best man she would find, yet her first instinct had been to plead – crying and whimpering pathetically – once more with her father to be spared.
Once her initial panicked, childish willfulness had been broken and her crying had quieted, her father had finally entertained her pleas to have a conversation about it with him; he had refused to take her seriously until after she had settled down and started acting like an adult.
‘Marrying Lord Wilmot, Sofia,’ her father had told her, his voice patient, ‘will guarantee a life of comfort for you that I will not be able to ensure you will have once I am gone.’
She had felt a tear slide down the bridge of her nose; it was shaken from the tip as she nodded to show she was listening. She had been afraid to sniffle again, in case it made him go back to ignoring her, punishing her for her immaturity.
Her father had continued, and like when he had spoken to his own mother on her deathbed twelve years prior, his voice was gentle: ‘Sofia, once you are wed, you shall be his responsibility. Lord Wilmot is not one to take his responsibilities lightly.’
Sofia had pressed her hand to her cheek to trap another tear as it slid.
‘He was, by all accounts, loyal to his last wife to the very end. Just as I was to your mother.’ As if he was talking to a child, he had asked, ‘Do you remember?’
She had bitten her lip to hold back her frown, to keep from showing in her expression how his comparison disturbed her.
‘What I’ve heard, too, is that he has raised a fine young man. Thomas and Lord Wilmot’s son are close in age – you’ve heard?’
How could she not have heard that the man she was to marry had a son who was nearly her own age?
When she had not responded, her father had sat up a little straighter and fixed his eyes upon her with more scrutiny.
‘Your alternative, of course,’ her father had said, his tone now normal once more – that is to say, sharp and authoritative, ‘is to stay unmarried, leaving you under Thomas’s care. I need not tell you that he is not the responsible sort.’
Again, she had given him a reluctant, obedient nod – a motion which had made her tight throat ache.
‘Please, Sofia. Accept Lord Wilmot’s marriage offer graciously, before he rescinds it. I do not want to have to worry about your future.’ Then he had put his hand on the crown of her head and began to stroke her hair awkwardly with his thumb. ‘I know... that you are...’
His words had made her look up at him with sudden anxiety. From his frown, it had been clear to her that he was trying to figure out how to bring up a difficult topic. The hairs on the back of her neck had begun to stand on end, and she had worried he’d feel a change on her scalp beneath his firm palm.
‘I know that women are, at times, put in situations that seem very unfair. Such is the duty of your sex, I’m afraid; just as we men have our own great burdens.’
Sofia had allowed him to speak, to compare her future as a wife to the futures of men her age who felt similarly ill-prepared to make their way in the world – the world of men. A world into which she would only ever be able to glance, furtively and covetously, and only while standing behind a man to whom it was being offered – often undeservingly.
Her father had continued to pet her hair clumsily; his artlessness at comforting her was, she had known, born from many years of limited physical affection towards his children. His petting merely had made a mess of her dark locks, at that point; she would later take her hair down entirely and redo it – even though she had not planned to be anywhere except shut away inside her room, and she would not care what the servants would think if they saw her in such a state. She simply disliked having messy hair.
‘As I’ve told you before, neither your mother nor I were eager to be married, when we first met. You feel too young, don’t you?’ He had waited until he felt Sofia nod against his palm, then continued: ‘Well, I would say that until a woman marries, she’ll forever feel like a child, and undoubtedly continue to be viewed as one. Don’t you want to grow?’
Sofia wanted to grow, but not like this.
‘A couple months into our marriage, I would say that your mother had become a new person.’
Sofia did not want to be a new person; she wanted only to have better options than were afforded to her. She had felt another whimper climb up her throat in search of an escape she refused to give.
Lord Blancheford’s hands had moved to take his daughter by the cheeks, handling her with all the cautiousness he would a fragile doll, and had tilted her head up so that she was forced to look into his eyes: pale blue and slightly glassy like her own – her only unconditional inheritance from him.
‘Your mother did grow to love me, Sofia, and I her. Love simply cannot be reasonably expected to happen before marriage. People need time, and believe me when I say that marriage will give you ample amounts of that.’ He had smiled down at her, although she had recognised the smile to be affected. ‘Children will also help, when the time comes.’
Her cheeks had grown bloodless beneath the cover of his hands. She had fought the urge to shudder. Her looming wedding night, and all that it would entail – many of the details still outside of her knowledge, at the time – had been so poignantly dreadful for her to think about, she had grown accustomed to separating her specific fear of it from the dread she held for all other aspects of marriage.
‘I don’t need to say that your mother loved you, I’m sure. You and Thomas.’ His mouth’s corners had tipped into a frown when he spoke his son’s name.
He put on another smile and, with such sincerity, went on to say something that Sofia would never forget: ‘You know, Sofia, I believe that a woman’s unique capacity for love is her greatest strength.’
His words had stolen the breath from Sofia’s lungs. She had blinked fiercely, fighting against the fresh tears welling up.
She had felt no comfort from his belief as he voiced it, but rather a sense of being stripped of something deep and unnameable which she cherished, but could not quite place. Nonetheless, with nowhere to hide due to the way his hands held her face, she had managed to keep her gaze soft, as empty as she could; feminine and palatable; the agreeable mask she wore, well-cultivated from a life of near-constant use.
Love. A woman’s greatest strength: love. For whom? A husband? Children? Sofia had felt a bubble of unvoiced laughter as she thought, Her brother? Thomas would have sniggered, had he been in the room. He would have been jeering at their father’s words the whole time.
Yet she had wished in that moment that Thomas had been there with her in the room. For all his deplorable manners, she had known that when it came to the subject of her marriage – and her accompanying dread – he had been her only ally. Though he had not yet met Lord Wilmot, he would insult him whenever he was brought up in conversation. The insults were completely baseless, often juvenile. Their father had scolded him repeatedly for what he presumed was Thomas trying to upset her – but she knew he wasn’t. Sofia knew her brother, and she knew he had been doing it to say, ‘She can do better. She deserves better.’
‘Love,’ her father had repeated, dragging her out of her thoughts again. He had said the word as if it would soothe her, when in actuality, something about his repetition only made the moment feel more unreal, more eerie and unsettling.
In that moment, like many others, Sofia had felt that her supposed feminine capacity for love only existed to be a shameful weakness; a dark bruise she needed to hide, lest its visibility tempt someone to prod it, just so that they might watch her squirm. Thomas would do that sometimes, when they were children, because he enjoyed getting her attention – even if that attention was in the form of a silent glare. She had always been expected to be mature, to compensate for his poor behaviour.
For as long as she could recall, she had always sought to be above him and his childish ways; to be recognised by others as being the more honourable of the two Blancheford siblings – even if they never were to be equals, socially, and thus she knew her efforts would never be rewarded with anything more than occasional praise. But praise given to her at her brother’s expense had been the most reliable praise she could get, and it became more abundant as Thomas’s relationship with their father soured. And God, was Sofia desperate for it. Of course, she would only come to realise the severity of her desperation years later, after shamefully reflecting upon how easily she had been cajoled by Poynton into his regicide plot.
Thomas’s habit of pestering her whenever she happened to have a bruise was something of which he had, blessedly, grown out – if only because she had taken revenge upon him for it when they were in their younger teenage years: She had been directed to spend time reading to him while he had been recovering in bed after taking a small fall from his pony – leaving him to her sisterly mercy. (He never did seem to forgive the horse; he wanted it replaced before he’d agree to go riding again.) He still didn’t trust her if her hand came too near to his left hip.
‘Sofia?’
She had raised her eyes to her father’s, blinking back visions of a chestnut horse’s coat and the gentle hands of a familiar stableboy.
‘Yes?’ Her voice had come rougher than usual. She gave her throat a little clear, done softly so as to not be unpleasant – too softly to do anything to dislodge the lump in her throat. Bitterly, she had made the decision not to clear it again, at the risk that it would not be feminine of her.
Her eyebrows had drawn together as she waited for her father to speak his mind – something she feared she would never do again.
‘I want you to give your heart to him, darling, so that you may never live a life of uncertainty.’
The breath she had then taken drew the weight of her fate into her lungs, where it would stay, she thought, for the rest of her life.
‘I will.’
She had spoken those same two words a couple weeks later, but to a different man, and in an altogether worse context.
Sofia had been careful to never again show signs of her hesitation towards marriage – and later, towards her husband – after that day in her father’s office. Even more careful had she been to hide her unhappiness from her father and brother whenever they had visited her at the Wilmot estate. Only the servants would see her lethargy; would recognise her sighs and vacant stares as melancholy, rather than personality – although nobody in the estate ever attempted to help or comfort her. She had suspected it had been out of fear that if they drew her attention, she would take to making their lives miserable as a way to fill her time – as unhappy wives sometimes did when their own lives were beyond their control.
The worst days of her marriage were usually the ones where Wilmot’s son – the man she had to call her stepson – came to visit, when he had time off from his education. She had understood immediately upon meeting him that he could no more see her as a mother figure or family than she could see him as – well, anything to her, other than an unsettling reminder that she had been brought to her new home as a replacement of what had been lost.
Nicholas Wilmot was intelligent, ambitious, curious – and he held the sincerest conviction that a woman could be none of those things, for they were all traits limited to the realm of men. His own father would occasionally challenge him when he was being particularly antagonistic towards Sofia, so long as she did not first rise up to his taunts – but that required a level of self-control she did not always possess.
Usually, their fights would begin with Nicholas gloating about his schooling. Sofia would offer him an innocuous compliment or simply congratulate him; which he would then – making full use of his studies of philosophical debate – twist and turn into a slight against him.
Rarely would Lord Wilmot intervene once the quarrel had started. She was always perfectly aware of her husband’s annoyed and disapproving looks, but she had operated under the assumption that he would stop her if he decided that she had crossed any lines. She had always kept her tone mild, never raised her voice, and did not stoop to personal attacks – unlike Nicholas.
As much as she had despised him, there was a part of her that had almost felt relief the moment she’d see him begin to sneer; when he’d put his drink or his knife and fork down, very civilly, and straighten up in his chair to use his height against her, so that he may better look upon her with disdain. She had hated him and she had known that he took nothing she said seriously – besides, of course, the veiled insults he provoked. Least of all did he ever recognise her ability to keep up with him in a fight, despite the fact she had not been afforded the same higher education which he enjoyed. She held nothing but contempt for him and wished she never had to suffer his presence, but when they had fought, it had been the only time she had allowed herself to express her rage and misery – even if she still had to hold back considerably.
Usually, their fighting would end when Lord Wilmot finished his meal. Occasionally, if she was winning, Nicholas would rise out of his chair and smile bitterly at her; he would tell her that he was not going to expend any more energy in debating an ignorant person. Not once in her three years of marriage had Sofia been the one who gave up first.
The servants doted on him, the same way Mrs Belgrave would on the rare occasion that she returned to Broadwater Hall – usually directly after Christmas, once her duty to her new household was complete and the celebrations at the Wilmot estate had ended. To the servants who had watched him grow up, he was still the little boy who hid behind his mother’s skirts when dogs got too close; who picked flowers for her at every chance he got.
To Sofia, he was an obnoxious man whom she could not reconcile with that boy, no matter how many sweet stories her handmaid told her – against her wishes – as she dressed her; she talked about him the most on the days when they awaited his arrival. At least his presence had been only an infrequent torture for Sofia; there were times of the year when she did not have to see him for months.
The guarantee of his presence in December, however, made it a month she dreaded, and it was on Christmas in 1704 that Sofia and Nicholas had their worst fight of all.
Sofia had needed only to survive one more party: just one more evening of being ignored by Lord Wilmot’s friends of his own age, who did not know how to speak to such a young woman; one more evening of hearing Nicholas loudly boast about his quickly-growing list of academic accomplishments; one more night of sleeping so far away from her husband that she was in danger of falling off the bed.
Then she would be free, at least for a couple weeks. She’d be on her way home to receive her twice-yearly hug from her father. She’d get to sleep in her childhood bed, one in which no man had ever slept. She’d see Rasselas, however fleetingly. Mrs Belgrave would call her a sweetheart and show Sofia in a dozen little ways that she was by far her favourite Blancheford child. Thomas would no doubt be drunk most of the time, but she knew she could handle whatever moods the alcohol put him in; that he would somehow still be better company than anyone at the Wilmot estate. Sofia would politely avoid questions about her life away from Tottenham, out of the simple want to spend as little time as possible thinking about the place and people to which she would all-too-soon be returned.
But before her trip, Sofia had needed to get through that last party.
Christmas had been the previous Lady Wilmot’s favourite time of year, according to the servants and guests who would incessantly inform Sofia of that fact, with ample tales of her goodhearted cheeriness, every single year. The woman had apparently been the very embodiment of what all ladies should aspire to be: hospitable and dedicated to making others around them happy.
With each passing month of being a wife, Sofia lacked more and more of those qualities for which her predecessor had been lauded. It got harder to get out of bed each morning, and it was only the idea of her husband returning to the bed and wanting something from her that made her get up some days.
Still, she had tried her best to make a good impression upon the guests that Christmas, to limited success.
‘And you, Lady Wilmot? Pardon, but how old did you say you were?’
She had looked up from her wine, searching the faces of the small crowd that had gathered, which she had forced herself to join. The wine had not helped as much as she had hoped, and had only made her feel slow and numb. She did not know how the conversation had arrived there, nor if she had said her age already.
Nicholas had unfortunately been within that crowd, and the usage of her title made him sneer.
‘I’ll be twenty-four in three days,’ she had answered the group as a whole, because she had not been able to decipher who had posed the question.
When a few people murmured their congratulations, she had put on a smile and bowed her head graciously. No matter how uncomfortable she felt at such parties, it was rarely the fault of any of the guests; they were tactful enough to keep any gossip beyond her earshot. Even if she had suspected that many of them found her to be aloof, boring, and overall lacking in most qualities that had endeared the late Lady Wilmot to them, they were too polite to show it.
‘You know that many consider it to be obscene to be born on the same day as Christ?’ said Nicholas. While she had fought to keep her immediate flash of anger invisible, he had raised his voice so more people would hear him: ‘You certainly cut it close, didn’t you?’
‘You understand that the day on which a person is born is not something they can control?’
‘Only twenty-four,’ he had said with a tut, flashing a white-toothed grin at everyone – except Sofia. ‘You wasted no time, did you?’
Sofia had turned her face away in an attempt not to let him goad her into responding.
‘What do you mean, sire?’ had asked one of the men, a puzzled smile on his powdered face. He had been unfamiliar to her when he arrived, and the wine muddled her memories of their introduction. But he clearly had not yet picked up on the animosity between stepmother and stepson that the others so deftly ignored.
‘What, is it not every little girl’s dream to marry young? Marry rich, if they can.’ If Nicholas had noticed the uncomfortable way some of the women had looked down at their glasses or towards their husbands, he had ignored them. ‘To burden a good man with her company, to stifle his intellect and ambitions with her feminine presence.’
Even the men who had been listening had begun to look uncomfortable. She saw one man take his wife’s hand, lacing their fingers together; the sight had only made her more bitter.
‘Your father will be pleased,’ she said with a tight smile, ‘to see how much you’ve enjoyed the punch tonight, Nicholas.’
‘Don’t,’ he began sharply, ‘you scold me. I am no child.’
‘Thank the Lord for small blessings,’ she had said into her glass as she took another long sip of wine. Shutting her eyes, she had willed for him to stop talking to her; to find some other conversation; for someone to intervene and redirect his attention. But if will alone could have gotten her anywhere in life, she never would have ended up married in the first place.
‘Oh, but you’re too selfish to be a mother, aren’t you? Although I’m sure if my father didn’t already have an heir, then you’d be willing –’
‘You’re dishonouring your father.’
Anyone slow enough to have thought them only bantering before had by then realised, no doubt with great discomfort, that there was no love or even teasing respect behind their interactions.
‘He dishonoured himself by marrying you!’
At the sound of his son’s raised voice, the elder Lord Wilmot had finally taken notice. Sofia could see him frowning in their direction from across the room.
‘Look at you! Twenty-four. What kind of awful woman marries a man with a son her age?’ He had put a balled fist to his chest, making eye contact with a man standing near him, clearly trying to appeal to him when he said, ‘I’m twenty-one! This woman, this girl – She thinks she’s my mother’s equal, just because my father lets her wear her jewels, her gowns, use her title –’ he hissed, ‘– sleep in their bed!’
‘Your mother is dead,’ Sofia snapped. The wine had loosened her tongue. ‘Get over it and grow up.’
‘Stop trying to replace her! You’re nothing, nothing compared to her!’
‘Look at you!’ she had echoed his earlier words, mocking him. ‘Twenty-one, highly-educated, and yet wailing like an infant over your mother! Then again, she was, I’m sure, the only woman that will ever love you.’
His face had grown redder than it already had been under the effects of the strong punch. He had suddenly gasped for breath, so greatly had his anger begun to affect him.
‘I hate you!’ he had shouted at her, taking a step towards Sofia. He sounded so petulant, she had nearly laughed.
Lord Wilmot had already begun to make his way over to them, and his pace had picked up at the sound of his son’s outburst.
‘Sir, please! It’s Christmas,’ someone had pleaded. Some people had stared at Nicholas, others at Sofia, and others at their own shoes or into their glasses of punch.
Sofia had felt her arm being taken by Lord Wilmot; his grip on her was not rough at all, but she still could not have shaken it off without a struggle. He began to take her to the nearest door.
‘Merry Christmas!’ she had called back to Nicholas. Judging by their hushed gasps, everyone in the room had recognised the venom with which she had said the words, and knew that she meant it as a veiled curse.
‘Fuck you!’ Nicholas had bellowed after her, with far less subtlety. So childish he had looked as he had glared and pouted, brandishing his empty glass as if he wished to throw it after her. Sofia had finally been unable to hold back her laughter, and it poured from her in a mad yelp.
‘Good night, everyone,’ her husband had drily bid their guests as he took Sofia out of the room with him.
The two of them had swept through the corridors, with Sofia following closely behind her husband. She quickly had begun to sober – not because the wine had faded, but because of her dread; the possible ramifications of the scene she had just made alongside her stepson had begun to sink in.
With unhappy obedience, she had made her way into their bedroom when Lord Wilmot opened the door for her. Immediately after he closed it behind him, Sofia turned around, ready to defend herself.
‘Anthony, I didn’t –’
‘Don’t.’
Reluctantly, she tried an apology, instead: ‘Then, I’m... sorry.’ She could not help but speak the last word as if it had a bad taste.
‘Of all days to ruin, you two had to pick Christmas? Good God! Could you not have shown restraint?’
‘It’s not easy for me to be polite when your son treats me like I am worthless – calls me nothing – in front of an entire room of people. You’ll have to forgive me,’ she had told her husband through gritted teeth, ‘if I can’t find words that he won’t be offended by.’
‘Then don’t speak at all!’ Lord Wilmot had said, gesturing angrily with one hand as he began to undress with his other. He had never been a man who enjoyed wearing clothes any fancier than those which he wore on typical days, and his eagerness to remove the finery he had donned that night meant he had wasted no time in freeing himself of it as soon as he had the chance. ‘Simply let him have the last word! You’ve embarrassed me, Sofia.’
‘And he humiliates me at every opportunity!’
‘He needs more time to accept you,’ he had said dismissively.
‘I’ll never –’ It had been close, but she had caught herself just short of saying something regrettable. Instead, she had said, ‘We’ve been married three years, Anthony.’
It had been nearly exactly three, as they had married in late-December.
At some point during their hurried walk to their room upstairs, tears had begun to form in her eyes. In the gentle lighting of the bedroom, her damp cheeks had burned with humiliation and rage.
‘My relationship with him is never going to change,’ she had told him. ‘I’ll never find it in me to love him. It’s impossible.’
Anthony had not known it, but when she had said those words, she had not only been speaking of Nicholas. Under the cover of speaking about his son, she had finally said aloud what she knew even before she married him – and he had no idea, even if he no doubt had become aware, at some point, of her lack of love for him.
When she had finally looked at him, she had seen only mild pity on his middle-aged face.
‘That’s very disappointing to hear, Sofia,’ he had said unsympathetically. ‘Don’t share these thoughts with anyone, including my son.’
‘He already knows,’ she had said with a thick, miserable laugh. ‘He doesn’t care.’
‘He’ll grow up eventually, and maybe then, you two will have a better relationship. You must remember how young he is.’
‘He’s less than three years younger than me.’ In that moment, she had finally refused to disguise the disgust in her voice.
‘Women mature faster,’ he said with a wave of his hand. ‘He’s still unmarried. You were less mature, too, when we first married.’
She had waited for a moment, wanting to see what other terrible excuses for his son’s behaviour he would rattle off next. But he had merely stared at her, looking at her face more closely than he normally did; she had wondered exactly what he saw in it.
‘Do you regret marrying me?’ she had then asked, keeping her tone neutral.
He had appraised her with an unfathomable expression. He had finally stripped down to just his shirt; the sight of the chest hairs peeking out from the top of it made her feel ill.
‘No.’
She had felt the muscles in her cheek twitch at his short answer.
‘You can say it if you do.’
‘I do not,’ he said emotionlessly.
He had looked old and tired as he had sat down upon the bed. Without his wig, his growing number of grey hairs were visible; the sight of them had made her grimace. But even if he had been young, she still would not have wanted him; no matter his age, she still would have regretted marrying him. Not that he had asked; not that he had even thought about her feelings enough to turn the question back upon her.
‘Sofia, get ready for bed,’ he had instructed, like she was a child.
‘I’d prefer to sleep in another room tonight,’ she had said as she turned towards the door.
‘No,’ he said in a tone that had made her stop. ‘There are no vacant rooms. Every last one is filled with people whom you’ve embarrassed me in front of tonight.’
She had known for a fact that there were still one or two available rooms in the large, usually-empty manor, but she had not wanted to keep arguing.
‘Then I’ll find some other room with a chair or sofa.’
‘No. You’re staying here. This conversation is over.’
She had felt the rage build inside her as she glared at the back of his head with undisguised hatred. Standing there, clenching and unclenching her fists, she had looked at him and wished more than ever that she was not shackled to him, that she did not have to suffer the life to which she had been sentenced – one as his wife. Despite his claim otherwise, she had been certain he hated their marriage, too.
Then she had finally realised just how angry he was at her and her rage was replaced with sorrow.
‘Am I still to see my family in two days?’ When at first he did not answer, a sob had come. She stepped towards him, begging, ‘Please, Anthony, I can’t bear it... I only want to see them.’
She had held her hand over her mouth, trying to stifle the sound of crying – to stifle the urge to scream in grief and revulsion over what her life had become. The time in which he withheld his response felt immeasurable and cruel.
‘Yes.’
Her exhale had come with such desperation, one would have thought his hands had been around her throat.
As was the case for so many men, he needed only to say one word – just one, and the world would move for him; all of her happiness was held within the space of a single breath of his.
Sofia would have given anything to have that kind of power.
Just as had been the case that night – and what felt like almost every night of her marriage – Sofia now found herself again sharing a room with someone she did not wish to be anywhere near. At least Jackson wasn’t near enough to touch her; at least they were not sharing a bed. Especially considering where the woman had accidentally touched Sofia earlier, upon her breast. Sofia still wasn’t wholly sure why she hadn’t slapped her hand away immediately, besides that it had stunned her.
She rolled her eyes when she heard Jackson groan softly in her sleep. Her combing slowed, then stopped, so she could listen more intently. She wondered if she’d hear the name Billy again. Thomas was prone to thrashing during his frequent nightmares, or otherwise sniggering in his more pleasant sleep, but he never said anything interesting.
In sleep, Nell Jackson did nothing more than breathe – and the simple fact that she was alive, was able to draw breath, had once been a source of Sofia’s resentment. Even now, she did not take great pleasure in it as she watched her chest rise and fall – watched it rise and fall again and again – even if Jackson was helping them.
But Sofia was tired and sore, and it was the first time in months she had a bed to sleep in. Even if it was small and threadbare, it was more comfortable than she remembered a bed could be. The last thing she thought about before falling asleep, however, was the absurdity of sharing a bedroom with her enemy, and how foolish it was that she still preferred it to the idea of ever again being married.