For a heartbeat, she thought she had misheard. “I beg your pardon?”
“I cannot have children,” he said. “There will be an extension of this connection that we have between ourselves. This is what my final decision is.”
The room altered, and Maria’s fingers loosened from where they had gathered in the silk of her skirt.
“You cannot,” she repeated, carefully, “Or you will not?”
“Both. I made a vow before my father died. My line ends with me.”
Silence met the words and then filled up with her heartbeat. Somewhere inside her ribs, something small and hopeful put its hands over its ears as if the sound might stop the meaning.
“A vow,” she said. “You vowed….”
“Never to have an heir,” he said. “I am never to continue what he built.”
Her throat tightened. She had only just dared to set her hopes upon a table and a nursery and sunlight that belonged to them, and now that little handful of wishes felt as if it had been brushed carelessly off a table and left to shatter on the floor.
“Why,” she managed, “would you promise a thing like that?”
He dragged a hand over his mouth, and for the first time since she had known him, he looked not composed but wearied by memory.
“Because he ruined everything he touched,” Stephen said, quiet and flat. “He married my sister to a man who made her life a prison and then a grave.”
Maria stared. “Your…” She could not complete the sentence.
“She was two years younger than I,” he said. “He called it an advantageous match. I called it a sale, but of course, I was not given too much say on the matter. When she… when she died of it, I made certain the man paid. But there are debts one cannot settle. My father would have smiled at a grandson born to the title he worshipped. I told him I would never give him one.” He looked at Maria then, and something like a tired challenge sat in his gaze.
“I meant it,” he continued on.
The room pulled away from her, a foot or so at a time. Maria held very still because if she moved, she was not certain which part of herself would fail first.
“And when did you intend to tell me this?” she asked.
He closed his eyes, just briefly, and she heard what he did not say:Not at all, if I could have helped it.
“I ought to have told you sooner,” he said.
“Yes,” she agreed, and heard the calm in her own voice with a sort of detached awe. “You ought.”
He took a step toward her. She took one back.
“Maria…”
“You have had days to avoid me,” she said. “I am your wife, and it is things like this that would bring us closer. Why must you barricade yourself and punish me?”
He flinched. “Do not think I took any pleasure…”
“I do not think you took pleasure,” she cut in, “I think you made a decision. You decided for both of us. You put your past on the table and pushed our future off it.”
“I cannot undo what I promised.”
“And I cannot unknow what I want.”
Her eyes burned. She refused to let the first tear fall.
“Do you know,” she said, and the words came quicker now because if she did not say them they would choke her, “for years I did not permit myself to want anything at all. Wanting was punished. Now I learn that wanting in a marriage is also punished, only gently, only with an apology and a sad story.”
“I am not asking for your forgiveness,” he said. “I am asking for your company. For your trust. For your…” He broke off.