He had been content. He had not known this woman existed in the world, and so he had not known how much more he could crave.
“No,” he said. “I wasn’t happy.”
Her blue gaze was long and searching, and it was a moment before she spoke. “You need not be alone, you know. I would stay with you. If you asked.”
They were here again, Matilda holding out her hand, and he powerless to take it.
He swallowed against the sudden tightness of his throat. “I couldn’t bear it,” he said. “Not with you.”
“What do you—”
“Grace. My wife. I—” He swore and pulled Matilda against his chest, burying his face in her hair.
He could not look at her and say this, but he had to say it. He had to make her understand why he could not give her what she wanted, what she asked for without words.
“Grace wasn’t happy,” he tried again. “Not from the first. She was too young, too vivacious. I wanted to put her in a box, and the box did not fit her. She—”
He did not want to speak ill of her. It had been a very long time ago, and she had been only twenty years old. He set his teeth. “After the first few months, she realized what a mistake she had made. We did not suit. She decided—she decided she wanted a divorce. Surely you must know this part.”
Matilda turned her face so that her cheek lay against his chest. “I do not.”
He rubbed his chin on her head, pressed a kiss into her hair. He was a great fool, he knew—telling her this story that must drive her away, and wanting to hold her while he did so.
“She could not have a divorce of her own accord. I had to be the one to sue for it, and I told her I would not.” He had been so damned selfish, so certain Grace would come round to the marriage in time. He had been determined to think he had not chosen so wrongly. “To convince me, she made a great show of it—her indifference, her love affair. She’d found someone else, that first Season in London, and she was dead-set on having him.”
His fingers traced the nape of Matilda’s neck, the map of freckles beneath the pinned-up red-gold hair. “I was so pleased when she came to the estate in Devon that day. I thought perhaps—well. It does not signify. She didn’t. She wanted to tell me that they were leaving for the Continent. I was furious. I told her I couldn’t stand the sight of her.”
He dropped his hands and stepped back from Matilda’s floral-scented warmth. “I did not know she hadn’t made it back to the village until the next day, when her lady’s maid turned up at the house. If I had known—if I had searched for her sooner—she might have lived. But I didn’t know, and so we did not find her until nearly two days after. She’d taken a blow to the head while riding along the river. I nearly did the same.”
He put a hand to his cheek, where the low branch, half-hidden in the shadows, had cut his face. He’d tasted blood in his mouth as he’d carried Grace home. The sight of him, his face bleeding and his wife’s body in his arms, had been too much for the country folk who’d grown up with Grace, lively and elegant, in their midst.
It should not have been a shock, what they’d thought of him. It should not have hurt so much.
“I didn’t kill her,” he said, “but I was not blameless in her death. I could have done better. I could have done so much better by her, and I—”
Matilda stepped back up to him and put her fingers over his mouth. Her hand was soft and cool.
“You’re wrong,” she said.
He wrapped his fingers around hers and took her hand away. “You have to understand—”
“No,” she said, and he realized that her face wasn’t fearful or alarmed. She wasangry.“I am so sorry for what you went through, Christian, but I am also starting to grow quite—quite furious, if you must know. I am not Grace. We are not the same. At what point in our acquaintance have I struck you as a woman who does not know her own mind?”
“Never. But—”
“Enough.” She linked her fingers with his and then drew his hand up to her face, bringing his palm to her cheek. “I know you, Christian de Bord. I want you as you are, with all your scowls and your looming. I like your dreadful old house and your absurd reaction to cats. I see all the kindness and carefulness and love that you try so hard to hide.” She gave him a clear-eyed steady look. “It did not work, you know. You didn’t hide any of it from me.”
He stroked a thumb over her cheekbone, then slid his hand down to touch the freckles beneath her ear. “You are too damned naive. You ought to be afraid of me.”
Her lips curled up, a real smile, and it was so sweet he could taste it. “I’ve never been afraid of you. You’ve never given me any reason to be.”
“The rest of the world would tell you otherwise.”
“Let it burn.” She turned her face to kiss his palm. “The only world I care about is here.”
It was not precisely true. She had other cares: her brother and sister, her art and her animals and her friends. And he, too, cared—about Bea and Mrs. Perkins, his estates and the tenants who lived there.
But in that moment, it felt true. There was no other world but this: the night sky in the small windows, the glint of moon off the sea. The fantastic impossible pleasure of Matilda here with him, her dusky voice in his ears telling himyesandyoursandyou need not be alone.
