Page 84 of The Duchess Audition

“Heartsick?” She blinked at him in alarm. “So, there is something wrong with my heart?”

He shook his head, smiling. “Not at all. It is perfectly normal. Perfectly human.” He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “My dear girl, you are in love.”

“Excuse me?” She almost spilled the tea herself, her eyes bulging. “I cannot be in love. Love is… a trick. Love is something that poets fall for, not scientists. I have read countless passages on the subject, and found myself agreeing with the skeptics. I… cannot be. No.”

Yet, her heart decided to flutter, taunting her.

Bernard rested his head on the highest pillow and closed his eyes. “I once thought as you did. I thought I was incapable of love. Your father would tease me for it, claiming I was an emotional rock. Meanwhile, he fell in love the very moment he met your mother. It was as easy as breathing for him, and I could never understand it.

“And then I met Angelica. You know that story already.” He smiled. “All it took was that walk around the lake with her to know I loved her.”

A frown pushed down his eyebrows, his smiled fading. “But I got in my own way, dear niece. I loved her, I know that now, but as time in her company wore on, I doubted myself and her. To this day, there was no woman in the world for me but her. We courted for a year, and it remains one of the greatest years of my life.”

“A year?” Marina stared at her uncle in disbelief.

How did I not know that? Then again, Bernard rarely liked to talk about the woman he once loved. And she had never pressed him on the matter, for she did not want to upset him.

He laughed bitterly. “She waited so patiently for me to ask her for her hand in marriage. She would tell me that she loved me and I, thinking myself above such things, would never respond.” He opened his eyes. “When she told me that she was marrying someone else, I took it as evidence that love was not real, that what I had felt was a trick, as you say. It was only in the years afterward that I realized it was just evidence of my stupidity.”

“That is why she went to Northumberland?”

He nodded. “I have heard, here and there, that she is very happy. She has children and grandchildren, and a husband who dotes on her. I missed out on something wonderful, not her.”

He met his niece’s stare with a sad smile. “I, too, felt that pain in my chest when she left, and for a long time afterwards. Even now, if I think of her for too long, it affects me as if it were yesterday. But I also felt many of your symptoms when she was still beside me. I just did not recognize what they were until it was too late.”

Marina stared down into the surface of the cooling tea, her reflection distorted. She had always known there was a great sadness between Bernard and Lady Angelica, but this was the first time her uncle had allowed her a few more details.

“It is not the same,” she said quietly. “Anthony sent me away, not the other way around. Yes, I said I would be absent for a while, but he is the one who told me not to come back.”

It was Bernard’s turn to gasp. “Is it truly so grave?”

“I fear so,” she replied, her throat constricting, her chest tightening once more. “He was… so cold. So different to how he has been with me. And I worry it is my fault, because… I suppose I forgot that I was married, and that other people might want to know where I am and what I am doing.”

Her uncle clicked his tongue. “No, dear niece, this is all my fault. I was too proud. I should have encouraged you to tell him that I was unwell. I made you keep secrets from your own husband.” His face fell. “I can remedy this, Marina. I can write to him and explain it all.”

“I did explain it, and he did not care,” she told him. “And you cannot write with your joints as swollen as they are, even if it would make a difference, which it will not.”

“Oh, Marina…”

She cast him a grim smile. “Anyway, all of that does not matter at present. All that matters is you getting better, so drink your tea and let us speak no more of love.”

With shaky hands, she passed the cup back to him. This time, he did not try to refuse or make excuses, gulping down the potent brew as quickly as he could: a complex concoction of eye-wateringly expensive Chinese herbs that she prayed would create a miracle.

He pulled a face as he sipped the final dregs, shuddering in displeasure. “That is vile.”

“That is good for you,” she countered, taking the cup back. “And you have another two measures to drink, so brace yourself.”

Glad to give her trembling hands something to do, she went back to the teapot and poured another cupful.

“You should talk to him,” her uncle said softly. “Make him listen to you, for if this is love, then you cannot let it go.”

She shot him a look. “What did I just say about the subject?”

He chuckled. “It is funny, but when you are older and you… feel the fragile nature of your mortality, as this sickness has forced me to do, you dwell upon your regrets more than your triumphs.” His eyes turned misty. “I have read thousands of books, crafted a hundred inventions, yet the first thing that comes to my mind is not astronomy or engineering or biology or anatomy or botany or zoology; it is her. Just her, and the great mistake I made. I do not want you to be on your deathbed, regretting like this.”

“You are not on your deathbed,” she retorted fiercely, all but shoving the teacup into his hands. “I am going to fix you and then, perhaps, I will try to fix whatever has broken between Anthony and me. But only one of those things is under my control, and I cannot be distracted.”

Bernard sighed and brought the teacup to his lips, hesitating. “Then, my dearest girl, I hope you have a remedy in your workshop for the heartache that will continue to plague you.” He smiled. “Nothing but resolution will solve it, otherwise.”