“Obfuscating, oblique, elliptical?”
He grimaced. “Yes. All that.”
Truly puzzled, she shook her head at him. “Why didn’t you simply tell me?”
He raised his gaze from their hands and met her eyes. “Would you have believed me? Or would you have thought I was up to something in trying to make you believe in a scenario that you were convinced beyond question wasn’t true?”
She blinked at him. He waited. He’d been blatantly honest; she had to be, too. “I…don’t know.” After a moment, she grimaced and acknowledged, “Probably not.”
He nodded. “And if you didn’t believe me, there wouldn’t have been any easy way to win back the trust I would have lost by trying.” He drew breath and went on, “So reasoning that actions spoke louder and more convincingly than words, I set out to show you that I loved you.” He arched a brow at her. “Did I succeed? Before my declaration of yesterday morning?”
The events of the past weeks flowed through her mind, and she smiled. “Yes. Before you told me you loved me, I certainly suspected something had changed in the way you thought of me.”
“Thank heaven I got that right, at least.”
She smiled slightly, but the events of yesterday and all the powerful, turbulent emotions that had rushed through her had jerked open a mental door she’d firmly shut more than a decade ago. His revelations, his honesty in making them, his push to change the acknowledged foundation of their marriage to reflect what she now accepted was their true reality…all that demanded that she face her own demons.
He was studying her face, no doubt worrying over what she was thinking; when she forced herself to meet his eyes, he was frowning slightly. She drew breath and said, “As confessions seem to be the order of our day, it wasn’t only you pretending to something that wasn’t true—it wasn’t only you keeping up a false façade.”
Shaken by what she now understood of herself, for a second, she closed her eyes, then she opened them and, clinging to his gaze and the anchor of his touch, said, “Long ago—long before we met—after the end of my second Season, I made up my mind what my marriage would be like. And it wasn’t a typical Cynster love-match. By then, I was absolutely convinced that would never come my way. I knew, by then, how others, but particularly the male of the species, saw me. I was too bossy, too determined, too willful, too strong-willed. Too so many things that it was clear that no gentleman would ever love me—not as I wished to be loved.”
While she’d spoken, he’d shifted closer. Now his eyes flared in protest, and raising her hand, he pressed a kiss to her knuckles, but before he could speak, she rushed on, “Like you, I harbored an entrenched belief. With all the evidence around me, I had to accept that the adage that all Cynsters marry for love was true, but I’d never heard it said that we had to be loved in return, only thatwewould love. So”—she drew in a breath and forged on—“I quartered the ton, searching for the man I could and would love, and found you.” She smiled rather ruefully at him. “In oh so many ways, you wereexactlyas I’d imagined you would be.”
His eyes, locked with hers, widened in understanding. “My tack in pretending not to love you while you loved me fitted the prescription you’d created for your husband.”
She nodded. “You were perfect ineveryway. So, you see, like you, I, too, turned my back on love—on the love-match we could have had—and happily accepted you as you pretended to be. I told myself I would be content with that and that such a one-sided love-match was all—” Her voice broke, but she swallowed and forced herself to go on, “All I deserved.”
“No, my darling.” His voice was low and fierce. “You have that wrong—every bit as wrong as I’ve ever been. You deserve to be loved exactly as I love you.” He pressed a fervent kiss to her fingers. “To madness and beyond.”
A smile threatened to break through her seriousness, but determinedly, she went on, “Be that as it may, as a result of my, apparently misguided, acceptance of our half love-match, I never pressed for more in our marriage. I never looked for your love or did anything to encourage it, because that would have meant admitting that beneath my bravado, behind my attempt to dictate my own expectations, I really did want a proper Cynster love-match, one with love on both sides.”
She closed her other hand over their linked fingers and looked into his eyes. “You showing me you loved me, then declaring that and convincing me you truly did, opened a door in my mind and pushed what I really yearned for into the light. Over the past day since you told me you loved me, through my assumption that you’d betrayed me, through my heedless flight and all that flowed from that, I’ve realized that, no matter how often I’ve told myself that I’ve been happy with the way our marriage has been, underneath, I’ve always craved the full Cynster experience—to love and be loved.”
He searched her eyes. “That was why seeing me with Madame Faberge affected you so powerfully. You thought I’d offered you the most shining of prizes—the one that your heart has always truly craved—only to cruelly snatch it away.”
She nodded. Turning her hand in his hold, she squeezed his fingers. “You’ve told me your truth. My truth—the one I’ve finally seen clearly and that I’m ready to own to—is that Iwantto be loved by you as much and to the same extent as I love you. What you’re offering me now is all and everything my heart truly desires.”
His smile was everything she needed it to be. Raising their linked hands, he brushed a gentler kiss to her fingers. “It seems that in the matter of loving each other, we’ve been playing games—two separate, idiotic, and unnecessary games—you and I.”
She nodded again. “So it seems.”
There was a glow in her eyes, a softness in her features, a quality in her smile that Devlin had never seen before—as if, through the exchange of their hearts’ secrets, the true Therese had been freed.
Freed to love—freed to be loved.
He drew in a breath and, all but lost in the glory of her eyes, declared, “We are a pair, right enough. But our reality, my darling, is here and now. Whatever our past mistakes, our past weaknesses and shortcomings, we’ve seen the light. Can we go forward from here?”
Her smile conveyed all the joy and ready agreement he could wish for. “That would be my greatest, most fervent wish.”
He basked in the warmth of her silver-blue gaze. “It’s mine as well, so I believe that settles it.” He rose from the chair and, without releasing her hand, swung to prop his hip beside her on the bed, then leaned over her and kissed the lips she tipped her head back and offered.
A long, slow, achingly simple kiss ensued, one laden with love, acknowledged and claimed, and with the shining promise of a glorious future informed by, anchored by, and invested with the irrefutable power of mutual love. The caress spun out and on, each feeding the other, each hungry and needing, until reluctantly, he raised his head.
He drew in a strained breath, glanced at the white band encircling her head, and grimaced. “Sadly, your wound precludes any immediate demonstration of our mutual ardor.”
Therese stared at him. “Really?” When he tried to ease back, she gripped his hand tighter. “It doesn’t hurt that much. Truly.”
He hesitated, and she hoped, but then his features firmed and he shook his head. “I’ve no doubt that Sanderson will call later today to check on your recovery, and if he discovers his handiwork dramatically disarranged, he isn’t above hauling me over the coals, earl or not.”
