Page 36 of A Kiss Gone Wylde
Gordon rose, drained the last of his brandy, and placed the glass back on the table. “Then simplify it. Do not waste a minute, Davenport. Take it from me. You’ll never regret the apology you give, but you may regret the one you do not.”
“That may be easier said than done.”
“Do you love her?” Gordon asked.
“What is love?”
Gordon laughed bitterly. “You’re overcomplicating it. Do you love her? It’s a question that can be answered very simply, Davenport.Can you imagine living your life without her?”
Just thinking of such a thing was an anathema to him. In the span of one week, from first meeting to last altercation, she had turned his whole life upside down—and despite all the conflict and difficulty in that, it was for the better. Even at odds as they presently were, he could see that. “No, I cannot,” Payne said, mystified at the whole of it. “I love her. I do really love her.”
“Do not tell me, Davenport, tell your wife. That will go a long way toward clearing your account with her.”
With that last parting bit of wisdom, the viscount left the club. Payne remained where he was for the moment thinking. Planning. Hoping.
22
With the nuggets of wisdom from her conversation with Mrs. Turley still germinating in her mind, Benny made her way to Payne’s study. Perhaps a conversation was in order—one where they were both honest and no one was trying to score points against one in another in some sort of worthless game that would only leave them both unhappy. She didn’t want her marriage to be a series of skirmishes, after all.
Knocking softly on the door, she frowned when he did not answer. Perhaps he’d gone riding again, she thought. Knowing she shouldn’t, knowing that she should simply wait to speak with him when he returned home, Benny nonetheless found herself opening the study door.
Finding it unoccupied, she moved to the desk and stood there for the longest moment. With her hand on the drawer pull, she hesitated. She didn’t want to snoop and spy. She didn’t want to bethatwife. Torn, she debated and argued with herself for several minutes.
“Go ahead.”
Benny’s head came up so quickly that it made her a bit dizzy. Payne stood in the doorway that opened from the library.Caught precisely as she had been the time before.
He was leaning negligently against the frame, so unbearably beautiful to look upon that she could not stand it. She wanted nothing more than to round the desk and hurl herself into his embrace. But then what he had said penetrated the haze in her mind that his presence had induced.
All that inner turmoil and conflict, she thought, and there he was giving her permission to rifle through his belongings. “No. I shouldn’t—it’s wrong. You are entitled to your mementos without your wife prying into every closed or locked drawer.”
He stepped forward a bit, just inside the door, and shut it softly behind him. “It isn’t locked. It’s closed because it’s in the way if I leave it open. Nothing like banging your knee on it to remind you that drawers ought to be closed… but there’s nothing in it that ought to be hidden from you. So, go ahead,” he urged, as he crossed to the other door, the one where she had entered. He closed it as well, leaving them cocooned in that small space that she could only imagine had been his only refuge with his mother in the house.
Caught and seeing no way out of it, Benny did as he’d commanded. She opened the drawer. There was no well worn brass case containing a miniature. Nothing remained in that drawer but bits of paper, a few nibs for quills and sticks of wax. Lifting her head, she met his gaze and asked, “What did you do with it?”
“After I saw you in here, I realized that I had no reason to cling to that reminder of my past. I didn’t want to destroy it because I thought perhaps Anne’s family might want to have it back. I had Barrett wrap it and have it delivered to Mrs. Bardwell.”
“Oh,” Benny said. Realizing that more than ‘oh’ was required of her, she added, “That was very thoughtful of you. I’m certain her mother appreciates it greatly.”
“I think she will. In truth, I should have done that long ago. I didn’t realize how much holding onto that portrait was keeping me mired in my past… I do not want to live in the past, Benny. I want very much to focus on my present.”
She was afraid to hope, afraid to read any meaning into what he’d said lest she be wrong. So silence settled between them, expanding until it filled every last inch of space in the room. Thick and impenetrable, like the heaviest of winter blankets, it was beyond uncomfortable. When she simply could stand it no longer, Benny closed the drawer and turned on her heel to leave.
“Do not,” he said, placing his hand flat on the door, preventing her from opening it.
The words were uttered as a command, but there was certainly something imploring in his tone. Reluctantly, Benny turned her head to look up at him. “Why shouldn’t I go? There is naught left to be said between us.”
“But there is. There is a great deal left be said… I like you, Benny. I like your charm, and your humor. I like your passion for life and your thirst for adventure. I like that even when faced with a termagant like my mother, you do not cower. Or when you’ve been abducted by a monster and I come to rescue you, I find you fighting like a wildcat. I like that when I am being stuffy and priggish, you challenge me at every turn.”
“You are my husband. I should hope that you like me,” she snapped.Like.What a terrible and underwhelming word that was! Here she was thinking that she loved him, that he could be—if he stopped being an idiot—her entire world and he spoke of her the way someone discussed preferring peas to turnips.
“Yes, as your husband, I should like you,” he replied in such a reasonable tone that he clearly had missed the bite to hers. “And I do. So much. You make me laugh. You make me smile. And until I encountered you on that fateful night at Vauxhall, I had not laughed for a very long time. Longer, perhaps, than I had realized. I’d allowed myself to be so wrapped up in the past, and in my mother’s machinations, that I forgot to even consider what my present and future should be. Is that better?”
Benny shrugged though she did not feel nearly so nonchalant. “It is marginally better. Go on.”
He grinned—wickedly, temptingly. “I like the way you sigh when I kiss your neck… just here,” he stepped forward and stroked one finger over the curve where her neck and shoulder met.
Benny tried to fight back a shiver and failed. “It is rather nice.”
