An Exquisite Marriage by Darcie Wilde Page B

Good.
    â€œIt doesn’t matter,” he said. “I have my duty. I will not neglect it.”
    â€œYou’ll get bored,” she said.
    He laughed, but there was a grim edge to it, and Helene knew at once she had touched a nerve. “You make boredom sound like the plague,” he told her in an attempt at lightness. “No man has ever died of boredom.”
    â€œOn the contrary,” she said. “Many have. Boredom is one of the most corrosive of the spiritual conditions. What do you think makes the young blades of our class run so badly wild? They have everything in the world, except interesting and useful work. They have energy and imagination and are actively forbidden from putting them to productive use. It’s even worse for the girls. We are so utterly constrained by the identities that family ties and the requirements of gentility force upon us . . .” Helene bit the sentence off before she became truly angry. “Is it any wonder why the men fall to gambling and drink and ridiculous affairs and duels and carriage races? Or why the women work so hard to force their own visions upon the lives of their children? It’s all to fill the empty hours and feel like they’ve actually done something with their lives.”
    Marcus swirled the last of the coffee in his cup. “I had never considered it.”
    â€œI’m thinking of writing a paper on the subject.”
    â€œOf course you are.” He set his cup down and got to his feet. His face had hardened. “I think you must excuse me, Lady Helene. I am needed elsewhere.”
    Helene had no choice but to stand as well, and curtsy and show him to the door. She stood at the window for a long time and watched Marcus hurry up the street, until he vanished around the corner.
    She’d put him off balance and she knew it. She’d shown him a truth in his situation that he had not wanted to contemplate. His change in manner and his abrupt retreat told her as much, but Helene could feel no triumph in it. Because she also might have just put an end to whatever intimacy had been growing between them.
    She tried to tell herself this was a good thing. Their friendship must end eventually.
    â€œBetter it be now,” she whispered. She also touched the corner of her eye.
    Foolish
, she told herself as she turned around.
Foolish.

VI
    Helene was not the only one having difficulty setting aside the conversation in the parlor. Over the next several days, Marcus’s own thoughts seemed stuck fast to that single point. He told himself repeatedly that so trivial a condition as boredom did not enter into any consideration of his. His duty was eternal and implacable. He was the Duke of Windford. That single fact defined his entire life and always would.
    But that definition had been feeling increasingly tight. He hadn’t wanted to face it, but he had been aware of a growing restlessness. Seeing Marius in the midst of his frustrated dissipation and hearing Helene speak so calmly of the constraints of life amidst the haut ton had thrown it all into unusually sharp relief.
    Or perhaps it was just the presence of Helene herself that changed things. She’d come into his life, their lives, and it was like the clouds had parted to reveal a new star shining down. A clear, hard, elusive sort of star with very decided opinions, but a bright star nonetheless.
    One that might light a man’s path for far more than one night, if he was free . . .
    But Marcus wasn’t free. Simple desire and boundless frustration might fill his thoughts, but they did nothing to change his responsibilities to his family, to his estate, to his name. It was for him to take care of them all. There was simply no one else.
    And yet, the argument that had been so persuasive for the ten long years since Father died had begun to fail to instill in him his usual resolve. This had become most evident just a couple of days ago. Marcus had