Page 88 of The Marquess Wins a Wife
The cup of his hand nudged her face against his shoulder, muffling the ragged sounds against the fine wool of his coat. “Take a breath,” he prompted, and the cadence of his voice was soothing, compelling. “There, good. Once more. Again.”
She found herself obeying unconsciously, first in short, unsteady bursts, and then in long even draws, her starved lungs filling with air, her nose filling with the scent of washing soda and whatever herb sachets Luke’s valet packed with his clothing to keep it smelling fresh. Pennyroyal, she thought.
It was a long moment before she pulled away, wiping at her eyes, trying not to look at the dark wet splotch she’d left upon his coat. At least her brief flirtation with madness hadn’t woken Joanna. Embarrassment swept over her, heat stinging her cheeks. “Thank you,” she said stiffly. “I’m sorry.”
There was something oddly vulnerable about the slight curl of his lips. “It’s permissible to grieve,” he said, the timbre of his voice low and poignant. “Even for someone who was a disappointment. You’re still allowed to grieve.” He shoved his hand into his pocket and retrieved a handkerchief, which he pressed into her hand.
Lizzie blotted at her eyes with it. “I heard what you said to Joanna,” she admitted. “That evening you came to Ambrosia, I mean to say.”
A wry twist of his lips. “I know.”
Lizzie blinked, surprised. “How?”
“I knew you were there. I saw you—just the hem of your skirts—upon the stair. I hoped you were listening.” Luke’s head fell back, touching the seat behind him. His hands landed upon his knees, knuckles flexing. “There’s this…terrible miasma of feelings that come with the death of someone once loved. The shock of it first. Then the relief. And then, on its heels, the guilt. Somewhere there is grief, too, and then anger for it. Because why should someone likethathold such command over us?” His shoulders slumped as if the weight of the world had fallen upon them. “I wallowed in that miasma foryears—and I didn’t allow you even five minutes of yours before I chased you from our home.”
Our home. He had said it so easily. And there had been a time that she had wanted that. Did she still? Her hands curled in her lap, and she thought of how many times she had reached out to him, only to be brushed off time after time. Now they lay there in her lap, useless, unable to reach for the things she wanted for fear of that same rejection, and she didn’t know how to move beyond it—
Luke’s hand lifted from his knee, hovered over one of hers for a moment, and settled. Palm to palm, the warmth of his hand seeping into her cold digits. Loosely, his fingers threaded through hers, as if to give her the opportunity to pull her hand from beneath his. She could feel the strength and power latent in the clasp of his fingers, and yet he tempered it to hold her hand carefully, gently.
“You came to me forcomfort, and I sent you away,” he said. “I do regret that, Lizzie. And, in the future, when—if—you require it of me, I have got a shoulder for you to cry on.”
Her eyes were stinging again, and she mumbled something noncommittal, swiping roughly at her eyes with the handkerchief she had balled up in her palm. The wrong time, the wrong place—with Jo sleeping just on the opposite seat—and still there was something in her that was unbearably tempted.
Her fingers itched to have the comforting weight of that trick coin within them. For the promise it represented. For thesafetyof it. It felt like a talisman, an oath he had made not toherbut upon his own honor. A facilitator—trust traded for promises kept.
Too little still, toonewto have eased the ache of the wound he’d inflicted, and so she let her shoulders lift and fall in a shrug; neither acceptance nor rejection.
Luke’s fingers curled into her just a bit tighter. “I should have courted you properly,” he said. “You deserved that.”
“I didn’t expect it. We don’t have that sort of marriage.”
“Iwantto have that sort of marriage,” Luke said, and the squeeze of his hand on hers conveyed the warmth of his words through the gentle gesture, as if they had been pressed straight into her skin. “Will you let me court you properly? As I ought to have done?”
A shred of a laugh escaped her mouth. “How does a man court a woman who is already his wife?”
“I imagine with a bit more privacy than is generally permitted with a woman who isnothis wife,” Luke said, and the light, dry tone he employed coaxed forth a small laugh—the closest she had come to anything like humor or merriment in recent days.
With a sigh, she said, “I have had nothing but time with which to acquaint myself with your reputation, my lord.” It wasn’tquitesordid—but near enough to it. To say he had been a rake would have been a vast understatement. “I admit to some difficulty believing you do much of anythingproperly.”
“Animproper courtship, then, if it suits you.” But the vaguely licentious smile to which she had become so accustomed in Hatfield faded as guilt settled across his features in its wake, shame evident in the dip of his head, the hollow of his cheeks. “It is true that in recent years I have had more than my fair share of liaisons.” A muscle jumped in his jaw. “I know that certain ladies might have made some veiled allusions to the contrary, but, Lizzie, I was never unfaithful to Celia while she was alive, and I have not been—willnot be—unfaithful to you.”
Lizzie flinched from the unwelcome reminder. “But you said—”
“I know. I was angry.” His thumb stroked over hers. “You were the only woman I wanted in my bed, and you didn’t want tobethere any longer. Our marriage was becoming the polite, civil thing I had told both of us that I wanted—and Ihatedit. I realized too late that you had only given my own behavior back to me.” He blew out a disgusted breath. “I did not much like who I saw in reflected within that mirror. I have many amends to make to you, but infidelity is not among them. Nor will it be in the future.”
He wanted to be believed, Lizzie realized, as his hand tightened on hers. It wasimportantto him that she believed it. And she—she wanted to believe it. Flustered by both his revelation and her desire to believe it was in earnest, all she could think to say was, “I have never been in your bed.”
“A matter to be rectified, when you wish it.” Absently, he rubbed the palm of his hand across his knee, and his lips pressed together as if to hold back words that might prove unwise. At last he said, “I miss you. At home, I mean. I miss dinners, and hearing you in the halls, and escorting you to whateverTonevents my sister has bullied you into attending. It’s so dreadfully quiet now, and Willie is not what anyone would call a scintillating conversationalist over dinner—”
Lizzie startled to the leap of her heart in her chest. “You take dinner with Willie?”
“Of course. He’s family.”
“But your club—”
“I resigned my subscription.” This was offered sheepishly, apologetically. “I found I didn’t much like being there. I spent most of my time there thinking about being home, in fact. Only nowIam and you are not, and—I want you to come home. It’s so lonely without you.”
Lizzie chewed her lower lip. Ambrosia was a temporary home, and sooner or later she would have to leave it. Jo was already champing at the bit to do so, given that she had grown accustomed to the nursery in Luke’s house—which was a great deal larger than the small room they now shared—and to her governess and her tutors. There was only the question of where they would go when they left.
