Page 46 of The Spy Who Loved Her
Chris fell silent, his knuckles going white around the glass he held in his hand. “Ye got what ye wanted of it,” he said finally. “No sense in scruples now.”
No, he hadn’t. He had got the damnedshadowof what he had wanted. A pale imitation, a bloody ghostof a secret, cherished dream. And God, it hurt so damned much to know that it would end. That it had always been boundto end. That the only thing real in it washislove, and he could not give it to her, because when she learned the truth, she wouldn’t want it.
He and Chris had agreed so many years ago that they alonewould bear the burden, to spare it from falling upon Emma’s shoulders. A secret they would take to their graves, because they both loved her, because it would have been an act of cruelty to pry from her the illusions she had held about her marriage, about her husband.
And he might have been able to shoulder that burden indefinitely, only now—now hehad betrayed her, too. With every day that passed between them, every hour he spent in her company, the stain upon his soul grew a bit darker. It didn’t matter that he had loved her. Still he had used her. And that—that would be unforgivable.
Chris said, slack-jawed with disbelief, “Ye want to tell her.”
And Rafe could only give a doleful nod, his shoulders hunching.
“She’ll ‘ate us, then,” Chris said.
But he had known what the consequences would be when he had come to this decision. “I can’t do it any longer,” he reiterated, his voice pitched low. Because Emma deserved to know who she had welcomed into her home, into her bed. And he had made certain she did not, because he had known she would never wanthim.
He had always known it, but it hurt, somehow, to acknowledge it. Because he had come to learn how well they might have suited one another if he hadn’t ruined any chance of it years ago. But now she loved the man she imagined him to be. The man he deceived her into believing he was.
It was there in her relief at his arrival each evening, in the way she curled into his arms. In the very trust she had extended toward him—a trust he had violated in more ways than she could possibly know. A trust he had surrendered any right to long before she had even learned his name.
“She willhateus, Rafe,” Chris said again, enunciating it clearly, as if by exercising proper diction, he might make Rafe better understand the perils of their situation.
“No,” Rafe said. “She’ll hateme.” Because Chris was her damned brother, and she would, in time, forgive him. She would extend that grace to him because she would understand why he had done it, that he had only wanted to spare her the pain, the humiliation, the damned agonyof betrayal. Chris had placed all of them in this wretched mess, and Rafe was bitterly aware that among them, he was the only one who would walk away relatively unscathed. “She deserves to know, Chris. Hasn’t she been deceived enough? FirstAmbrose, and now us.”
Emma was going to be destroyed.
Hewas going to be destroyed.
Chris swore vividly, throwing back the remainder of his drink with a guttural snarl. “We’ll tell her together, then,” he said. “Tomorrow.”
“Tonight,” Rafe said fervently. “Tonight. It hasto be tonight. I can’t—”I can’t let her love a man who by all rights she ought to loathe.“I can’t,” he concluded feebly. Only that.
Better his broken heart than hers. He comforted himself that whatever the depths of her loathing for him, they would never approach his own.
∞∞∞
The carriage had moved perhaps a length forward in the last quarter of an hour. Raised voices on the street outside suggested that there had been some to-do that was impeding the flow of traffic ahead. Congestion of this sort was a reality anywhere in the city, but especially at this hour, and Emma had forgotten to bring a book or anything that might otherwise have alleviated the boredom of waiting.
She had left her modiste’s shop in Soho and had not yet managed to make it out of Soho before the carriage had slowed to a dismal crawl. At this rate, she would likely not arrive back at her home before Rafe did. Probably walking would be a sight quicker.
At least she would have a few new gowns for her troubles, though the first of them would not be completed for some days yet. It had been so long since she had dressed in anything but greys and light shades of purple that the jewel-toned fabrics on offer had seemed almost jarringly bright to her eyes, but still she had let the modiste drape her in them and had agreed that they looked fine.
Rafe would approve. She knew he would. And she could not deny the odd little skip of her heart at the thought, the flutter of it in her chest. A sensation she’d not felt in years, since she had let herself believe that Ambrose had been courting her out of fondness, out of love. Like a part of her she’d thought she’d buried along with her husband had revealed itself only to be hibernating.
She was years too old for this sort of giddiness. She hadn’t even beenso giddy when she had been a girl. And yet, somehow Rafe evoked it within her. A sort of happiness that had never been within her reach before now felt tantalizingly close.
What on earth could be taking so long? Emma peered out the window of the carriage, attempting to see through the cluster of carriages before her to the problem. Her eyes scanned the street, but whatever it was had to be some distance ahead, well out of sight.
Instead, her gaze landed upon a door just a bit up the street. A green-lacquered door, with a bronze knocker in the shape of a fisted hand. And there just above it, the street address—three. It could not be a coincidence…could it? Before she was aware of having made the decision, she had opened the door of the carriage, sliding out into the street.
From his seat topside, her coachman called down to her, “Beg pardon, my lady. There’s some nasty bit of business ahead. If you’ll just—”
“I’ll walk a bit,” Emma called back. “If you make it through before I’ve returned, I’ll hire out a hack to convey me home.”
“My lady!” the coachman called in protest, but his voice was swiftly lost to the rumble of voices around her, the shouting from somewhere on ahead, and the chatter of passersby upon the street. The hour was still fashionable; the pavement full of people bustling about their business. She was only one of the faceless throng now, meandering through the crowd toward that door, the one thathadto be Rafe’s.
There were just a few steps leading up to the door, and she climbed them one at a time, lifted her hand to grasp the knocker—and paused.
What if he did not admit her? He had never told her where it was that he lived, after all, had never provided her his address. He was content to communicate through notes delivered by Dannyboy, and she had thought it convenient…at the time. For both of them. No risk of potential gossip should someone discover they had been sending letters back and forth to one another, after all, and the service provided Dannyboy a tidy income and a reason to visit her home for breakfast, or to sit in on a lesson or two. Perfectly convenient.
