Page 107 of Lessons for Marquesses
He seemed far away, small, like she viewed him from the foot of a mountain and he balanced on a precipice, wavered at the decision before him. Jump or fall.
“Your aunt is right to distrust me,” he said. “I was accused of murdering my brother. My father forsook me, and so it was a regiment or a noose.”
“But you did not kill your brother.”
“How do you know?”
“Because there would be no reason for you to be angry at going to war.”
His voice was hollow, matter-of-fact. “I could have been angry for being caught. For my father disowning me.”
“But you would have been relieved to go to war if you had murdered. Because if you had killed before, there would be no reason to hate yourself for doing it in war.”
He halted, the sunlight striking his narrowed, golden eyes. Wolf, the real Wolf, stood before her. “I did kill my brother by not protecting him. I knew something bad would happen, but I chose to lay with a woman instead. A woman I thought I loved. I loved my brother. And I lost both of them.”
“Did she not stand by you?”
He dismissed her question with a wave of his hand. “She was not the regimental wife sort.”
She seethed with sudden offense. If the woman had stood by him, it would be a different man standing before her, one who would have been fortified by love. “And who is the sort? We do what we must. Do you think I was the sort to sell my furniture? My beloved Dearg and Spinner? Let go my staff? I did what I had to do. And she should have done the same.”
“I appreciate your passionate censure of my beloved?—”
“Your beloved? I assure you, that woman was not your beloved.”
“No, she is not. She was an illusion.” He studied her across the ruins. He stepped closer, his tone deeper, gruff like their time in the Hazard Room. When he had held her hand by the lake. When he had told her to leave his room at Chedworth. “And you? What would you have done?”
“Become a regimental wife,” she said firmly.
“You don’t even make your bed or put away your clothes, let alone know how to wash them.”
“Were you an expert at killing before the war?”
The answer was there in his eyes. He hadn’t been. He had learned to chase others down and kill them. She could not completely understand what had happened to him, but here she felt she understood him better. The long silences and dark wisdom. The gentle approaches followed by hasty retreats. The urging for her to fight.
She held out her hand to him. “I would never desert you.”
Twin furrows slashed like the weapon that had laid down his scar. He covered the ground in marshal strides, meeting her in the stairwell. His arm wrapped about her waist, drawing her hard against him. Her heart answered his pounding at his chest.
He brushed her cheek, regret curving his mouth. “I lied when I said I was not attracted to you. I saw how it hurt you when I said those awful things, and I kept lying. When all I wanted was you.”
She covered his hand upon her cheek. “One must persevere where there is fear. Remain loyal when there is doubt. Nurture where there is pain.”
His raven lashes swept low, lower until they were trained upon her mouth. Their noses grazed each other’s, his eyes so near to hers she could see the individual flames that forged the gold.
“Do not be like me, George. You are perfect as you are.” He kissed her, slowly parting her mouth as she looped her arms about his neck and bowed at her back, wishing to be closer, so close as to be one. His tongue trailed against her teeth, and she opened further to him, allowing him to explore and when passion assailed her, desperate for more, she tentatively touched her tongue to his.
He nibbled her upper lip. He brushed kisses across her jaw, her cheek, her temple, her neck. He groaned, holding her tighter, whispering how beautiful she was, how wrong it was, how much he wanted her.
He slanted his mouth over hers. “Will you do something for me?”
“Anything.”
“I want you to call me by my Christian name. Nicholas.”
“Nicholas,” she whispered.
“Or Nick. Whichever you prefer.”
