Lady Sarah's Secret

XXXVIII. Sarah Sleeps

Sir Charles Amesbury hesitated.

The door to his wife's bedchamber was inches from his hand, yet he stood frozen in their dressing room instead. Would she welcome his presence? He'd wondered it a thousand times since ordering up the tea tray he now carried with him. The tea she'd brought him on their wedding night, the tea she'd suggested to help with sleep. He knew it to be an excuse and a poor one at that, but he found himself more desperate a man today than he'd imagined possible. He needed to see her, he reminded himself of the reason for his venture in the first. With another breath of courage, Charles opened the adjoining door.

"Sarah?" he called from the doorway, wondering if he'd find her asleep instead.

"Charles?" she called back softly, and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness of her room. The moon shone through two large windows to reveal his wife, huddled in a pile of blankets, sitting in the window seat, that long braid hanging over one shoulder.

"What are you doing?" she asked, and he realized he'd been standing there like a numbskull, ogling her for several minutes.

"I -I brought you tea," he stammered like an idiot, would he ever regain his composure around her? Charles cleared his throat and abruptly crossed the room to deposit the tray on the table beside her. She stared at it, then up at him and he felt like fleeing.

"Thank you," she said, and Charles could see the glisten of tears in her blue eyes. How he longed to erase that sadness, to protect her, to love her. But he'd been such a fool lately, as his sister had so lovingly pointed out, instead he awkwardly cleared his throat and turned away from her.

"Will you stay and have tea?" she asked, and her voice sounded so little. Charles turned back without another hesitation. They didn't speak for the several minutes it took for her to serve the tea, and then Charles did at last settle himself on the window seat across from her. She looked tired, frazzled, worn - more tired than she had ever looked in her brief life as a housemaid. It was as if marriage to him had broken her.

"Are you happy?" he asked casually, as she returned to her mound of blankets across from him and tucked her feet up underneath them.

"Is it a surprise that he unsettles me?" she asked, still looking out the window, Charles was still looking at her.

"No, but I've observed a change in you since our marriage," he pressed, for what he was not sure.

"It is the lack of soot about my face, I am sure that is all you're thinking of," she replied easily, and then they both laughed.

"Perhaps that is it," he admitted, seeing that she did not want to tell him more than that, "Were you having trouble sleeping?" he asked, though he could imagine her answer well enough for himself. She let out a heavy sigh and looked away from him and out the window.

"I'd forgotten how much I disliked the man," she said as an answer, and a muscle clenched in his jaw.

"You have nothing to fear, Sarah, he has no power over you anymore," Charles reassured her adamantly.

"What if you had not been there to interfere today?" she asked in a very soft voice, and she was still looking out the window instead of at him. Charles did not reply right away as her words only gave voice to the fears he himself held.

"I shouldn't have left you alone, Love," he admitted finally, it was not a good feeling to reveal his own shortcoming in protecting his own wife.

"Charles," she admonished him instantly, and he watched her finally turn her attention back to him in the moonlight, "Are you to follow me around each time I got looking for ribbons with Amelia?" she posed the question gently, but he did not feel any absolution and she seemed to sense this.

In a rustling of blankets his wife moved from her spot on the window seat and moved to her bedside table. She returned to the window and held a volume out to him, their poetry he recognized instantly.

"Will you read to me?" she asked, and Charles searched her face for some kind of answer, some clue as to how to protect her, convince her that he did in fact like her. Taking the book in one hand, he reached for her with the other. She did not resist but a moment before settling alongside him in the window seat now.

"I vowed to protect you, and I will," he repeated, wrapping an arm around her waist to pull her close. Sarah laid her head against his chest and let out a heavy sigh.

"Read to me, Charles," she insisted, tiredness in her voice and he wondered for a moment if perhaps this was not the first night she had not been sleeping well.

"Have you had the nightmare recently?" he asked quietly, his lips brushed against her hair.

"This morning I did," she admitted, a familiarity in her voice that had been gone for several weeks between them.

"It's why I left the millinery to find you," she explained, "I just wanted to reassure myself that you lived. I am foolish, are I not?" she asked, snuggling her cheek closer to his chest, and Charles again felt what she seemed to do to him.

"You may be as foolish as you wish, Lady Amesbury," he murmured before kissing her forehead for a long moment, "But I wish you would come to me when you have these nightmares," he added quietly.

"It would be more often than you had like," she brushed him off quickly, "Have you forgotten how to read Italian, Charles?"

He opened the book of poetry and began, the memory of their days together in the library giving him hope that Sarah could once again trust him, and he her. As he read she leaned more and more heavily against him, until at length Charles paused to see that Sarah had fallen asleep.