“Blast it all,” he said, “you don’t have to tell me. I know I’m a goddamned coward, Margo.”
Her lips parted. “What?”
“I’m a coward. I’ve cocked everything up because I was too damn terrified to tell you anything. Because it seemed safer never to tell you, and I wanted what was safe. I would have rather”—his voice went choked and raspy, and he hoped he would not cry—“I would have rather kept what little I had of you. I would have rather talked to you like a brother, like afriend,and watched you from across the room, and ridden beside youforever, than tell you how I felt and lose it all.”
She bit her lower lip, and the tiny overlap of her front teeth made him want, made anguish and hunger and loss rise in him.
“You’re right,” he said. “I would not have spoken. I would not have acted were it not for you. But I did. We did. And I can’t go back.”
Ohfuck,this was a mistake. He heard the words as they came from his mouth, and he wanted to drag them back in. He wanted to shake his head and go down on his knees and beg her to pretend he’d never said anything at all.
But he couldn’t.
“I don’t have very much to offer you.” She opened her mouth as if to speak, but he raised a hand to forestall her. “But not nothing. I want to marry you, Margo Halifax. I want you—in my bed or on the ground or—hell, against a wall, anywhere. I want to give you six redheaded babies. I want to carry you when you have a blister and bring you a hundred glasses of champagne to make up for the one I dumped in the grass. I want you and your light and your names for cows and your reticule full of cheese.”
Somehow he’d gotten close enough to brush his thumb against the curve of her lips, where her freckles gilded her, the place where he most wanted to put his mouth. “I want your soft, tender heart, and I want your passion. I want itall,Margo. No more half-measures.”
It did not seem entirely rational, the way he could watch her lips tremble and want to hold her and comfort her and tell her everything would be all right—and at the same time want to press his thumb into the wet heat of her mouth.
But that was how he’d always felt with her—off-balance, ravenous, careful and ferociously demanding at the same time. He wanted her—he’d had her and still he wanted her with the same keen edge. He could be inside her and it still would not be enough.
When she finally spoke, her voice was low. “It’s not fair to me, Henry.”
He dropped his hand.
He couldn’t imagine why disappointment had him about the throat. He had known. Hadn’t he known—what she would say?
Surely it was not possible that somewhere inside his chest he had still allowed himself tohope.
Her lashes fell again over her eyes. “It’s not fair to put all of this on me—with no warning, with nosuggestionof how you felt—and expect me to answer right away.”
“Of course,” he said mechanically.
“I’m not”—her voice cracked—“I’m not sayingno,Henry. I need time tothink,that’s all. I need time to sort out these last seven years, and Matilda leaving, and who I am by myself, without you or Matilda or Spencer or Aunt Lavinia or the scandal sheets.”
“Certainly.” His voice sounded stiff, but he did not care. He was holding himself together by sheer force of will. “That’s more than fair.”
He could wait. He’d waited seven years. It seemed possible that he would still be waiting for her when he was a dried-up husk, a solicitor made of nothing but bones and the memory of Margo beneath him.I had it all,he would say to the fresh-faced law students, his hair white and his voice hoarse with age.I knew the most extraordinary woman in the world, and for two perfect days in 1821 she was mine.
“I want to go back to the village,” she said. “Will you ride with me?”
“Go on alone.” He could be patient and calm—he could do this—hecould.But not just yet. “You and the gelding know the way. I’ll be right behind you.”
Chapter 13
Margo had imagined that it would take longer to determine what she wanted out of her life.
There were, after all, several fairly large revelations to contend with, and it had been a very long day.
Yet by the time she and the chestnut gelding made it back to Darley Dale, things had become quite clear.
She and Matilda had, somehow, grown up. What had amused and delighted them at eighteen no longer held the same satisfaction. They wanted more—both of them. And that didn’t mean they’d been wrong in the past, only that things were different now. Matilda had not left her forever. Things were going to be all right.
And Henry—Henrylovedher. He had loved her from a distance for years, and when their proximity had tipped him over the edge, the passion between them had burned swift and strong.
There had never been a moment when she did not respect him. He had always been Henry—dear, smart, serious, true, precious Henry. And now that their relationship had shifted, like a lens slipping in front of a beam of light, she could name her feelings for what they were.
Love. She loved him in return.
