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“Brandy?” Archie asked and raised his eyebrows.
Gregory nodded and sank deeper into the chair by the fire. The rest of the family had finally retired and the two of them were able to have a moment alone. Gregory was one year younger than him and had always been his best friend, his nemesis and his conscience all rolled into one. Archie had not realized how much he had missed him until he had felt the urge to tuck him into his arms and hold him tightly as he had spotted him in the drawing room. Which was ridiculous because despite their closeness he could not remember the last time they had embraced.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t attend the wedding.” Gregory smirked as Archie handed him the drink. “But then again I was not invited.”
Archie sat down and had to suppress a sigh. Their usual way of talking to each other was through teasing and bantering but right now he needed... a more honest talk he supposed.
“Yes, well, that was not my finest moment,” he told his brother and took a large sip of brandy. He kept his voice even and could see how Gregory shifted in his chair and the smile slowly faded from his face. It showed Archie that Gregory had caught his changed tone. “I don’t know how I did not think of the consequences when I left with Cecilia. All I wanted was to lessen the blow of seeing Lord Lambourn and Hester together...”
“Are you unhappy together?” Since he was a doctor, Gregory jumped right to the most important question of the examination. “I mean, she seems like a sweet-tempered woman...”
His voice trailed off as he caught himself before saying anything that might upset Archie.
“She is sweet and funny and intelligent and beautiful and all the things I could wish for in a wife.” Archie looked at the rest of the brandy in the glass. “Or at least she was before we married.”
“Was it an act?”
“No!” Archie scowled at his brother for even suggesting it. There seemed no plausible way that Cecilia had been pretending with him as if her plan all along had been for him to marry her. The idea was absurd.
“No,” he continued in a more even tone of voice. “It’s simply... everything changed after we married.”
“You mean you started sleeping together,” Gregory said.
Archie cut him a scathing look, but did not answer, only swallowing the rest of his brandy.
“What? You have not...” Archie could see how Gregory was fighting not to smile.
“I hope you don’t do that with your patients,” Archie said and waved a finger at him.
“What?”
“Laugh at their illnesses,” Archie said.
“Oh, I doubt it’s an illness that is the problem of all this. Or is it?” his brother added in a more severe tone of voice.
“Heavens, no,” Archie said scathingly. At least impotence was not a problem. “It’s just... she does not want to be with me in that way I suppose.”
He rose as he was talking and walked to the side table and to pour himself another glass of brandy. The sentence needed to be said but he had no wish to sit still and watch the effect it had on Gregory’s face.
Whatever the expression was, it took a minute or more for Gregory to compose himself.
“Has she said as much?” he asked in a neutral tone that suited a doctor.
Archie stared at the different decanters that his parents kept on the side table. All of them filled for the upcoming wedding with liquids in different amber, golden and red shades.
“No, but she cried the first night and the second she just... went all stiff,” Archie mumbled. It felt as if he was betraying Cecilia, but when she would not tell him what the problem was, perhaps Gregory could deduce it. His little brother had always been better at analyzing others’ emotions and the consequences of actions.
Gregory cleared his throat behind him. Archie did not turn but kept looking at the decanters. Gregory cleared his throat again. Finally, Archie recognized it as a plea for him to turn around. He leaned gently against the side table as he watched Gregory’s expressionless face in the flickering light from the fireplace and the lamps.
“Did you force her?” Gregory asked almost gently.
Archie stood straight abruptly and walked towards Gregory, then changed his mind and headed for the window.
“Of course not,” he snapped as he watched the darkness outside. It was practically impossible to make out anything outside of the window, even though he knew the view by heart. He could see it if he closed his eyes. He did as he waited for Gregory to continue. He saw Cecilia with her long blonde hair spread over his pillow. Cecilia, that was crying and sobbing and telling him that she wanted to sleep with him regardless.
“Has another forced her?” Gregory asked in the same mild tone.
Archie opened his eyes and turned to him abruptly.
“What are you saying? Do you think Lambourn...?” He could hardly breathe at the thought of anyone having violated his wife. The thought that it might be the man that would marry his sister in only five days made his insides boil.
“Not Lambourn,” Gregory said as he rose. He came to stand by Archie’s side at the window and put a hand on his arm. “I don’t know Lambourn well, but I do not think so. And Hester is completely besotted with him.”
Their eyes met and they exchanged a grin.
“She really is, isn’t she?” Archie said and felt the boiling feeling from before turn into a pleasant warmth at the thought that at least his little sister had found someone to love.
“Sleeping with a woman is not everything there is to a marriage, you know that, right?” Gregory asked after a moment.
Archie snorted.
“Yes, I know that, you asswipe,” he said. “It’s just that it seemed to have changed the easy air that was between us before.”
They stared into the darkness for a moment.
“If you are such an expert on marriage, why don’t you marry?” he needled Gregory. If he did not know him so well, he might not have caught the hurt expression that passed over his brother’s face before he grinned and stabbed Archie in the side with his elbow.
***
Archie tiptoed as he entered the dressing room between his and Cecilia’s rooms. Peters had helped him with his jacket and shoes, but he wanted to discard the rest of his clothes on his own to not wake Cecilia. As he entered, he saw immediately however that the light was still on in her room. He quietly unbuttoned his waistcoat as he thought of his conversation with Gregory. If someone had harmed her previously, that changed everything, although he could not for the life of him fathom why she had not simply confided in him. Could she be embarrassed and somehow feel that it was her fault? As far as he knew her, it would be an obvious way for Cecilia to react.
Without giving it more thought, he knocked on the door to her bedroom. There was a beat of silence, then another.
“Enter,” Cecilia called in a quaking voice as if her heart was in her throat.
He gently opened the door to not scare her and peeked in.
“I could see the light, I hope that I am not interrupting,” he told her.
She was sitting in the bed with a book in her lap and several candles lit around her to be able to read.
“No, not at all,” she mumbled. Her hand rose to her neck though as if her whole body was counteracting that statement.
Archie stepped inside and leaned against the closed door to keep as great a distance between them as possible. There was a door directly to the hall outside, so if she truly feared being alone with him, she would have an escape.
“I know we never really talked about what our expectations were for this marriage,” he began haltingly. Truth be told the only thing he had done to convince her to marry him was kiss her, which was not exactly an argument in itself.
“No,” was all Cecilia said. Her hand was still resting on her collarbones.
“I have to admit that I just assumed that our marriage would be like all others. That we would...” He made a gesture towards the bed since he did not know how to phrase “sleep together.” Which synonyms for it did she even know?
Cecilia’s eyes widened.
“That’s not why I am here,” he hastily said and turned his gaze toward the ivory-colored curtains as if he might relieve her of a burden by not looking at her. “I just thought that maybe it would be easier to talk about this now... when it’s dark. There are certain matters that are easier to discuss in the dark, don’t you think?”
He looked back at her in time to see her nod. Heavens, she really was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. The golden light from the candles almost made her blonde hair glow and seemed to form a halo around her head. Her gray eyes were large with trepidation though.
“But perhaps that was not what you had in mind? When we married?” he asked her and looked closely for her reaction but saw only confusion.
“What?” she asked hoarsely.
“That we would have...” he cleared his throat, “a normal kind of marriage.”
Cecilia’s mouth turned into a round O, and it really should not turn him on, although everything about her seemed to at the moment. She blushed profusely and looked at her hands that were closely knitted in her lap.
“It was, yes,” she practically whispered.
“Was?” Archie echoed and felt as if he had turned hollow.
“Yes, well, you know how I reacted. I thought I could do it, but perhaps I cannot,” Cecilia mumbled. Now it was her turn to look at the curtain and not at him.
“Cecilia,” he breathed and took a step closer to her, then caught himself as her head snapped up and she stared at him with wide eyes. He stepped back against the door, feeling the hard, cold wood through the thin linen of his shirt. “Did someone hurt you?”
“Hurt?” she echoed.
“Did someone force himself on you? Is that why you...” Archie clenched his fists and thought that even if she gave him the remotes hint that Lord Lambourn had hurt her, he would find the man and drag him from his bed and beat him into a pummel whatever his sister felt about him.
“Force me? No, why would you think that?”
Archie shrugged and unclenched his hands. He felt momentarily relieved but also as if he was standing at the precipice of a great abyss and that he could do nothing but jump into the darkness in front of him. Nothing had happened to her; it was simply that she did not want to sleep with him. He would have to be married to a woman that did not want him for the rest of his life. A woman he felt a burning passion for himself.