Her expression dissolved into a more relaxed smile, one he wasn’t sure he believed. Reaching out, she patted his arm reassuringly. “I don’t need to wonder and speculate, especially not about our marriage.” She met his eyes, and hers held what appeared to be genuine assurance. “I know exactly what you meant.”
He eyed her with increasing trepidation. “You do?”
She nodded. “Clearly, you thought that in marrying Ellen, Christopher had been driven by the same reasons that motivated you to marry me, namely to secure the generally acknowledged benefits of the married state.” Her lashes veiled her eyes, and she arched her brows. “As we both know how our marriage came about, obviously, my subsequent questions—my assumption—was theoops, the mistake to which you referred. I’d misread what you were alluding to as the motivating force that drove Christopher to marriage.”
His mind racing, Devlin searched for some way of salvaging his first step.
Therese’s smile returned, and she leaned closer to confide, “Don’t worry. You didn’t flummox me—I worked it out.” She patted his arm again, then turned away. “And now I must be off, or I’ll be late to Lady Kettering’s at-home.”
In a state of utter disbelief, Devlin stood in the corridor and watched as, with a swish of her silk skirts, his exasperating wife swanned off.
Devlin stalked into his study and carefully shut the door. After a moment, he walked to the large leather chair behind the desk and dropped into it.
Faintly stunned, he reviewed what had just occurred. “Damn!” He was looking at the complete and utter failure of what he’d fondly imagined would be an easy, if impulsively instigated, first step in guiding Therese along the path to realizing that he loved her.
“Huh.”
Although her interpretation of his words hadn’t occurred to him, he could see how she’d come to her conclusion. Unfortunately, that she’d sought and found a different explanation rather than even suspect his truth didn’t bode well for her readily following any subtle hints he might make.
Oops.
He’d made a mistake, true enough. He’d thought he would be able to use the same approach he’d employed five years ago and, by giving her a tantalizingly oblique clue and engaging her curiosity, lead her to ferret out the truth. He knew he was correct in thinking she would believe in his love if she uncovered it herself, but clearly, that approach was doomed.
Doomed by his success in convincing her that hedidn’tlove her.
In his mind’s eye, he replayed the recent scene. Something about it had made him uneasy. Several minutes passed before he identified what that was—her tone and the way she hadn’t quite met his eyes while she’d explained what he’d meant by his unwise, impulsive words.
Brittle was the description that leapt to mind. That, along with a certain vulnerability.
He shifted in the chair. He didn’t like to think he might have hurt her in any way yet… He forced himself to look again, to relive the moment and look deeply and searchingly, then softly swore.
He closed his eyes. He’d acted impulsively and hadn’t thought his actions through. By essentially forcing her to examine the reasons she believed were behind their marriage, he’d forced her to face and acknowledge what she thought was the truth, namely that he didn’t love her.
Vulnerable. He’d made her feel vulnerable; that was what had been behind the brittleness he’d sensed.
He knew all about the vulnerability caused by love, by owning to love; at base, such love-induced vulnerability was the reason he had for so long refused to admit that he loved her.
Ironic, perhaps, but where did that leave them? Leave him?
“Obviously,” he muttered, “I’m going to have to be much more careful and exercise more caution over triggering any adverse feelings.”Thatwas going to require a greater degree of finesse and attention to detail than he’d hitherto employed.
After he’d spent several minutes castigating himself over his clumsiness in provoking that unintended reaction, it occurred to him that her still feeling vulnerable over her belief that he didn’t love her was, in fact, reassuring. “At least she still loves me.” If she didn’t, she wouldn’t feel that way.
One positive outcome from my first disastrous attempt to rescript our relationship.
He considered anew. Although the fragility he’d sensed beneath her customary steely armor haunted him, given it arose out of her love for him, it wasn’t, of itself, something he wanted to change. It wasn’t a symptom he wished to eradicate, not that he could.
What he did wish to erase was the cause, namely, her entrenched belief that he didn’t love her in return. Once he’d achieved that, her current wariness and uncertainty over openly showing her love for him would vanish, along, he hoped, with that dreadful vulnerability.
He’d already constructed a mental picture of what success would look like—Therese gloriously confident in her love for him and openly showing it, bolstered and supported by the absolute and unassailable knowledge that her love was fully and completely reciprocated, that he loved her as she loved him.
Essentially, him and her in a Cynster-style marriage.
That was the goal he was determined to achieve, to claim for them both.
He looked inward and found nothing but rock-solid determination and unflinching resolve.
He drew in a breath and shifted to a more comfortable position. “So, how?”
