Page 68 of The Lady Tempts an Heir
“Then talk.” His grin firmly in place, he proceeded to stalk her as she backed up until her skirts touched the wall.
“How am I supposed to talk with you looking at me that way?”
“Are you saying I’m a distraction? That being alone with me makes you lose your head? Forget your chaste intentions?” He leaned forward, pressing a hand into the wall next to her. His scent very nearly overwhelmed her as he leaned in. It wasn’t only his cologne. It was that she could smellhimunderneath the fragrance. She could easily source his scent from the artificial now because she had tasted it on his skin and breathed him in.
“Yes, that is precisely what I’m telling you. I have to say this, and you are not helping.”
He leaned forward, almost touching her but not. The heat from his body warmed her front. It was as if he’d unleashed the magnetism he kept bottled up inside him so that she had to fight to keep herself from moving into him. His breath caressed her cheek when he said, “That’s because whatever you have to say will not change the way I feel about you. I want us to be more than this, Helena. I want you in my bed every night and by my side every day.”
A sharp pang tightened her chest, and she covered his mouth only to have him kiss her fingers. “Max, please, you’re not making this any easier.”
“Good, because I believe you are about to tell me all the ways we do not suit, when you know perfectly well that we do.”
“We do suit in many ways. I admit that,” she said. His brown eyes were so warm and hopeful that she had to look away as she scooted past him. Her instinct was to turn up the light, but as soon as she reached the sconce, she stopped. This was a conversation best held in half-light and shadow.
He had turned to stand silently as he watched her. The grin had changed into that delightful scowl she loved so much. Looking at him as she spoke was not an option. Instead, she walked past him and back to the window.
It took her a moment to recall the words she had practiced in her head all afternoon. The only way to make him understand was to tell him about her first marriage. Then he would know why she wasn’t willing to try it again. The first time had been almost too painful to bear; this time—with Max—it would be so much worse. She sensed that if she truly allowed herself to fall in love with him, then his inevitable rejection would shatter her, splintering her into too many tiny fragments to ever be put back together again.
“I was nineteen when I married Arthur. Our family’s friendship stretched back for decades, so we grew up on summer holidays by the sea and winter sleigh rides through the hills. We were friends first, long before we ever even understood what marriage was. He was honorable and good,and when his older brother and mine would play pranks on me and my sisters, he never failed to step in and defend us. He wasn’t like them. He was quiet and kind.”
“I know you must miss him.” Max had walked closer than she had realized. His voice was right behind her, close enough that he could touch her if he chose. Close enough that it vibrated through her when he spoke. “I would never presume to push him from your heart. I only ask for a small piece for myself.”
She closed her eyes to fight back the burning of tears. She wanted to tell him that he would always live in her heart, that he had already taken it all, but it would only confuse things. “He was the second son of a viscount, Lord Sansbury, whom you met. He had inherited a small estate with a decent income from an uncle, but he wasn’t the match my father had hoped for me. I was supposed to marry someone destined to become an earl or a viscount, an heir to a title, not a second son.
“I haven’t told Violet, but Papa even considered approaching Christian to arrange a match between us. He and Mama had a great row over it, which she won because soon after it became publicly known that Christian had invested his meager inheritance in Montague Club. Suddenly, he went from prospect to scoundrel in Papa’s eyes. I didn’t mind because, while Christian is handsome, I had already made my choice.
“All that to say that Arthur had to prove himself to my father. He did that by proving his affection for me. He made Papa believe that he was the best choice because he would take the best care of me. I don’t think I realized that that’s what won Papa over until you had to do much the same. Although, Papa already liked Arthur, so his hurdle wasn’t as high as yours.”
“DidArthur take the best care of you?” The tone of his voice suggested that the story was making him suspect that Arthur hadn’t.
She nodded and crossed her arms over her chest to fight the cold coming in through the window. Almost immediately, Max’s coat settled over her shoulders, and she luxuriated in both the warmth and the fact that he was so attuned to her needs. “He did. He was a good husband. The first year was everything I had hoped for in a marriage. He was patient and attentive. We spent every free moment together. He took the time to learn my favorite things: my favorite dessert, my favorite wine, my favorite play... he knew it all, and I was certain that we would be happy for the rest of our lives together.”
“And then what happened?”
She took a deep breath. It was difficult to find the words because she had never said them out loud before and certainly never to another person. Her heartbeat was that of a rabbit being hunted.
“And then I never conceived a child.”
The words were loud in the quiet between them. She couldn’t look at him to see the disappointment that would start to slowly dawn across his face as she kept talking and he finally understood what this would mean for them. Instead, she kept her gaze focused on the moonlit glow of the silver birch tree outside.
“By the end of the second year, our marriage had lost the closeness I loved. There was a distance between us that I couldn’t cross. It only seemed to get wider, because I could not do the one thing I was meant to do in our marriage.” Fighting past the ache in her throat, she said, “Our marriage bed had become a place of desperation where there was little room for tenderness and affection.”
“But it could have been him—”
“No,” she said, squashing that bit of hope in his voice. “Two physicians confirmed that I will likely never bear a child. By that time, Arthur was sick with cancer. He went from healthy to on his deathbed in a period of six months, and it is my deepest regret that I was never able to give hima child before he died. He is well and truly gone with no part of him left here to carry on.”
Max’s hands were on her shoulders, and he placed a kiss to the top of her head. “My God, Helena,” he whispered, but she couldn’t determine how he felt beyond his distress for what had happened to her. She didn’t dare face him, knowing she couldn’t abide his disappointment, so she simply did not move. Even when he dropped his forehead to rest on her head and nuzzled his nose into her pinned-up hair, she stayed still, silently soaking up the comfort he offered. “Was he cruel to you?”
“Cruel?” It wasn’t the question she had expected. An ache welled in her throat that he would be concerned for her after what she had revealed. When she could speak again, she said, “He wasn’t violent or abusive. He was cold, distant... angry. He tried not to be angry at me. Please understand that he was a good man. He never wanted to be angry with me, but it was there. I understood it, because I had been angry with myself.”
The last time they had lain together had been not long after his diagnosis. Both of them had been reeling from what it might mean, and he had come to her bed in the night. She had hoped to comfort him, but without prelude, he had shoved up her nightdress and taken her. His grunts had been less those born of pleasure than desperation. She could still hear them. She didn’t know why this one night stood out in her mind, because it wasn’t that different from the others that had preceded it. Perhaps it was that he had seemed colder somehow, more distant. Or perhaps it was that she had felt shamed and humiliated as she had lain there and finally accepted that what they’d once shared was lost to her forever.
“It wasn’t right that he did that to you.” Max was before her, taking her face between his hands. “You know that, don’t you?”
She gasped and covered her mouth with a fist, unawareuntil that moment that she had relayed the shameful story out loud. “He had just found out he was dying, and he wanted a child,” she said when she could finally draw breath. “I never denied him myself.”
“Then you gave him your consent to be so cruel?”
