Page 24 of The Spy Who Loved Her
“When I thought he loved me,” she admitted in a small voice. “Or—when I imagined he might grow to love me.” Her nails dragged against the sheet, a solemn scratch in a room gone too silent.
“Is that why you married him? Love?”
The silky strands of her bright hair, turned nearly auburn in the darkness, teased his chest as she shrugged. “I did,” she said slowly. “I thought I did, at least. But now I wonder if I married him because he was the only one who asked.” She sounded shaken by the confession, as if it were a deep truth she had never before allowed herself to acknowledge. “My title doesn’t come from him. My father was an earl. Ambrose was common, but wealthy—my father was noble, but impoverished. My dowry was little more than a pittance, by the standards of theTon. So I never attracted much attention, you understand.”
No, he damned well did not. She ought to have had hordes of admirers, despite her modest dowry. She was a lovely woman, kind and intelligent and generous, worth so much more than whatever monies a man might have gained in marrying her.
“Ambrose was the only man who courted me. He was witty and charming. Amiable. We shared similar interests. Poetry, literature, music. He brought me flowers and sweets, took me on drives, danced with me.” A sigh, long and low and despairing. “It wasn’t until after we had married that I began to understand the truth.”
“Which was?”
“The depths of his feelings for me were quite shallow indeed. I was simply the best he could do. A well-born wife who could not expect to marry into a more prestigious title. I’m certain he must have liked me, at least a little. As one would have a fondness for a valuable possession. A vase, or perhaps a painting.” The tiniest sniffle, as if that fact pained her still. “Those courtship rituals which I had so cherished—I had to contend with the fact that they had been false. Only a means to an end.”
And marriage had been that end. Ambrose had got his well-born wife, and that had been enough. There had been no need, thereafter, to go to any particular trouble to make her feel loved, wanted, needed.
“He was never cruel to me,” she said. “But he was—distant. He didn’t want me underfoot, in his company any more than he deemed necessary.”
That was, in itself, a form of cruelty. To betray the tender regard of thewoman who had agreed to place herself into his keeping with indifference, with apathy. She had given him her heart, and he had crushed it in his hands.
“Now I wonder if I ever loved him,” she said. “Or if I was only so desperate to be loved that I told myself Imustlove him. If I convinced myself of it.”
She had had ten years to torture herself with such thoughts, but Rafe remembered with startling clarity that horrible, piercing wail of grief. No one could make a sound like that and nothave loved. It had never mattered whether or not Ambrose had deserved it. Emma had loved him all the same.
Then, at least.
“I suppose he must have held me in somesmallesteem,” Emma said. “He left everything to me in his will. He didn’t have to, of course. His family was quite put out by it. They came swarming in before he was cold in the ground, eager to claim what they had been certain was to be their portion of his estate. But all of it had been left to me.” A small shrug, as if she had long grown to understand the nastiness that had come about in the wake of her widowhood. “Of course, I supported them nonetheless. Provided an income for those who had depended upon him for their living. Returned the heirlooms that—that we had never had children to whom to pass down.”
Bloody vultures circling carrion. Preying upon a grieving widow in the service of carving out a slice of Ambrose’s wealth. They wouldn’t have got it, even if he and Chris had not secured it for Emma. Everything Ambrose had owned, every last farthing within all of his accounts, would have been forfeit to the Crown.
And Emma would have been completely and utterly ruined. Not only within the eyes of society, but financially as well. She wouldn’t have had so much as a penny to her name. A husband and wife were one person under the law, inseparable. Ambrose’s ruin would have been her own.
“That feels quite nice,” she murmured, and he could feel the hint of a smile on her lips as she pressed her cheek against the arm he’d shoved beneath her head. He’d been absently stroking her as she spoke; just gentle, soothing motions along her arm, the curve of her hip, her thigh. Like he might’ve petted a cat—or a woman he’d wanted in his bed for well over a decade. She gave a soft sigh that ended on a hum, which told him she was edging toward the borders of sleep. “You’re very warm.”
Probably he seemed so. But more likely she had simply been alone in her cold bed for far too long.
∞∞∞
The door to Rafe’s study eased open silently, cutting through the light shed by the lamp on his desk. He didn’t lift his pen from his paper or his eyes from the page before him. He’d been home only a half an hour on the outside, and it had gone past three in the morning. Far too late for any regular visitor. “I had wondered if I might expect a visit.”
“I thought ye might.” Chris nudged the door closed again with the toe of his boot and dragged a chair across the floor to sit near the edge of Rafe’s desk.
“She left her door unlocked this evening. I won’t let it happen again, but perhaps you should tell her also.” At least until they could ensure that she was truly safe. “Planning to hit me again?”
“Sooner or later. Thought I’d let my knuckles heal a bit first. Damn, but ye’ve got a hard head.”
“Should have gone for the nose.”
“What, and ruin that pretty face wiv a broken nose?”
“It’s been broken before.” Rafe said, scraping one hand over his jaw, which still ached. Between the two of them, Chris was, by far, the prettier. He bore a closer resemblance to his father than Emma did, in fact, with similar patrician features—straight nose, impeccably carved jawline, brows that could manage an elegant, supercilious arch when offended. Glacially cold eyes, several shades lighter than Emma’s.
His features were too striking for him to blendthe way Rafe did. Instead he commanded attention, attracted notice. Inspired reverence, awe...fear. He was just as comfortable with using his fists as he was with using cutting words. A cudgel, in every sense of the word.
“Incidentally,” Rafe said, “I’ve employed the little urchin you sent to me as a messenger for the time being. You need no longer play intermediary between your sister and me.”
“Oh? Shuttin’ me out, then?” Chris flexed his knuckles in a vague suggestion that perhaps he already considered them sufficiently recovered.
“Considering that I don’t particularly fancy coming out with a fresh injury for every night I pass with your sister, I’d call it lessbeing shut outand moreminding your own damn business. Should I have something pertinent to share withyou, I’ll send Dannyboy round.”
