Something Old, Rebecca Connolly [ebook reader for laptop TXT] 📗

he could remember with any degree of fondness, and certainly no childhood sweethearts to laugh over.

He’d never given great thought to the sort of parent he would be when the day came that he and Lily should have children, but the matter was certainly making itself more considered of late.

“The Trembath family is one of the most respected families in all of Cornwall,” Mrs. Roskelley told Thomas quietly, as the man in question was sitting closer to them than their host was. “And Gage has only improved upon that reputation. Not necessarily a man of great fortune, but in the last few years, his prospects have improved with the prosperity of his estate and mines. As loyal a man as you could hope to find, and one of the least changeable I have ever met.”

“Steady, then,” Thomas suggested, nodding in thought.

Mrs. Roskelley hummed in thought, not seeming entirely convinced by the word choice. “Yes, I suppose, though I was thinking more of stubborn and immovable.” She gave Thomas a quick smile. “I know him too well to find it entirely positive.”

“I’m sensing a trend in my new Cornwall friends,” Thomas mused. “Stubbornness, is it?”

“It’s a Cornish tradition, sir, and not always to our credit.” She peered across the table toward Trembath, then returned her attention to Thomas. “Perhaps it is not for me to say, Mr. Granger, but Gage had an understanding a few years ago with a wealthy young woman in our circles. Margaret Teague, now Lady Hastings in Devon. She chose to marry Lord Hastings rather than pursue an official engagement with Gage, which shocked many, though the prospects of Lord Hastings outweighed Gage in all temporal means.”

Thomas carefully cast his eyes over to the man, now laughing comfortably with those around him, even leaning forward to comment on something Miss Moyle or Lily had said. “Was he very disappointed?”

Mrs. Roskelley nodded, taking a bite of her dinner and chewing delicately. “I daresay he felt betrayed. He withdrew entirely for a time, even went to work in his own mines to keep himself from going mad. But he has since rallied and never speaks of her. I cannot say he does not think of her, but…”

“You think he will put off getting married until he has fully recovered?” Thomas asked, looking at the man again.

“I do not see how he can,” she confessed, looking truly concerned for the first time. “He may never fully recover, and he must take a wife soon. He must.”

Thomas exhaled softly, his previous feelings of envy evaporating as he thought of such pressures. He had not been pressed into matrimony by family responsibilities or duty or heritage. He could not even claim his marriage had been the obvious choice in his previous financial predicaments. It had been the easiest, certainly, but he could have built his circumstances back on his own. He’d still be fighting his way into true solvency now, he had no doubt, but he’d had no understanding to betray or to follow through with.

He’d known shame but hardly betrayal. He had known hurt but not disappointment. He had known withdrawal but not loneliness.

However much he might have hated his situation, he suddenly felt rather fortunate in it.

Not once had he ever doubted his wife’s loyalty nor felt any wound by her hand. He never had cause to curse her name nor wish he’d never planted his affections on her. She’d never chosen someone else over him.

Then again, he’d never given her the option to. He’d never asked her to marry him, come to think. He’d asked her father, then gone and done it. He had no idea if she’d have married someone else, given the chance.

His eyes shifted down the table to her, to the glorious image of resplendent finery, smiling and perfectly at ease. She would have made any man a perfect wife and treated them with the same loyalty and respect. It simply was her nature, and her goodness would have given any husband of politeness reason to adore her.

If she were free of him, where would she go? And to whom?

“Sober expression, Mr. Granger,” Mrs. Roskelley suddenly broke in, the desolate-trending muddle of his thoughts cracking with her words. “Anything the matter?”

He shook his head, wrenching his eyes from his wife and returning to the meal at hand. “Not at all, just considering my good fortune compared to the tragedy you’ve just relayed.”

“He’s no martyr, sir,” she assured him with a laugh. “If ever the pair of you grow close enough for confidence on the subject, he’ll insist it prompted him to grow up, and he’ll be better for it in the end.”

“We tell ourselves all sorts of things, Mrs. Roskelley,” Thomas assured her. “Anything to reduce the pain and give ourselves distance.”

“That sounds like the voice of experience.”

He made no reply to that, taking a sip of wine and allowing himself to meet the eyes of the man across the table about whom they had been speaking.

“Oh, dear,” Trembath muttered with a good-natured smile. “I don’t like the looks of this. What have you been telling him, Julia?”

Mrs. Roskelley shrugged, grinning with a warm familiarity. “Only how you jilted me and left me with no option but to marry John.”

He coughed in mock distress, bringing laughter from all around them, and turning all attention onto their discussion with anticipation. Clearly, this was a long-held joke many of them were well aware of, and this argument one of entertainment.

“I beg your pardon, madam, but I was not the one begging to be let out of our arrangement to wed another.” He shook his head, sighing dramatically and looking down at Lily. “Mrs. Granger, I will have you know that Mrs. Roskelley had been my wife for fifteen years before she left me for him. Fifteen years of my life I gave her, and now she blames me.”

Lily adopted an appropriately doleful expression. “You have my most sincere sympathies, sir. I cannot imagine how you have suffered.”

Trembath nodded