Page 79 of The Spy Who Loved Her
Still she found it hard to imagine. But then, he had put on such a good show of distance, of perhaps an absent affection at best.
“It is possible,” Rafe said, “to fall in love sight unseen. I know because I have done it. Every week Chris had something new to relate, some new interest you had acquired or minor foible in which you had been involved. I hung upon his every word, always wanting one more story, one more tiny glimpse into your life.
“In that first year, you were not yet out in society, and still I felt—I felt as though I would know you on sight. And then finally youwereout, and I did.” A soft sigh. “I attended a ball. Not to dance, but to gather information for Sir Roger. But I saw you, and I knew you at once. You were wearing a blue silk gown, with silver ribbon at the waist and pearl-tipped pins in your hair, standing near the refreshment table with a woman I assumed must have been your mother. You danced three sets. I thought about requesting an introduction and asking you to dance.”
“I wish you had.” But it hadn’t been his purpose. “I remember that ball. I was devastated to have spent so many hours up against the wall, waiting to be asked.” She had not had any grand expectations; she had been disabusedof any long before then. Her dowry had been modest at best. Still, to have so few gentlemen bother with even so little as a single dance had been a blow to her fragile self-esteem.
But Rafe’s attraction had not been to a moderately pretty face, or what monies she might have brought to a marriage. He had loved her before he had ever seen her—for what he had learned of her through the stories Kit had told him.
“I might have worked up the nerve,” he said. “But I was young; younger than most men would consider to be a marriageable age, and I had nothing to offer. And Ambrose got there first. He was older, wealthy, settled. He was of an age to take a wife, and he had decided upon a noble lady. At the time, he was the better match. Kit and I thought he would be good to you, that he would make you happy. Instead, he meant to use you.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was in his journal. You were meant to be his security,” he said. “A safeguard against discovery of his treason. He chose you for your lineage, for your relationship with Kit. He knew how I felt about you. And he did try,” he said, “to wield you against the both of us. Your security for our silence, if we had ever discovered what he was involved with.”
Because she would have been ruined alongside him. It hurt less than she thought it would have done. But then, she had had weeks now to come to terms with the reality of all that Ambrose had been. Years to grow to learn that she had given her love to a man who had never truly earned it.
“Would you ever have told me?” she asked. “If it hadn’t come out anyway, would you ever have approached me?”
“No,” he said, so quietly, and she could hear the weight of a guilty conscience within the words. A raw admission, aching with the truth he had hidden all these years. “Not when I had already cost you so much.” A harsh exhale stirred the hair near her ear. “It was my burden to bear, and I—I never wanted to lie to you. And I would have had to, Emma,” he said. “I owed you everything, but nothing quite so much as peace. How could I have done anything other than to stay away? It would have been unthinkable to so selfishly risk your peace.”
Instead he had sacrificed years of his life and his own chance at happiness to protect hers. Shouldering the monumental weight of that burden to spare her from it. A guardian angel she had never known she had had, silent and steadfast and unobtrusive, content to love only from afar, without hope of it ever being returned.
Invisible once, but no longer.
“Emma,” he said heavily. “For what I imagined were the right reasons, I have done a great many wrong things. I should have stayed to explain myself—”
“Yes,” she said. “You should have done.”
“—But I couldn’t bring myself to face you,” he said in a rush. “I would have rather taken a bullet than to see your love die in your eyes. I knew already that I could never have deserved it, but toseeit die—” A rough sound, dredged up from the depths of his soul. “But you deserved to know,” he said. “What manner of man you had taken into your bed. Your heart.”
“Kit said you couldn’t stomach it any longer,” she said reflectively. “I thought he meant your ruse; that you had tired of the pretense of it.”
“It was never pretense. Not for me.” There was the gentle brush of his lips at the tender skin behind her ear. “I never thought you would wish to see me again after that first night,” he said. “But you did. And then, when I began to suspect that you might desire more of me—” He sighed. “I had trespassed too far already. I couldn’t let you go on believing I was someone other than I am.”
But he hadn’t, really. He might have concealed his surname, his vocation, the connections they shared—but those things werewhathe was, not who he was at heart, when all else was stripped away. And there had been so much heart in him, for so much longer than she had ever known. Even when she had been at her lowest, still he had tried only to give her what she had asked for. His absence, when his presence had been too painful to endure. However much it might have pained him.
Now he squeezed her fingers in his as if he might infuse her with his love through that simple touch. Waiting patiently, as always, for her to render judgment, whatever it happened to be.
She said, “In future, I will always prefer the truth.”
“In future, you will always have it.” And it was uttered with such fervent sincerity that she believed it unequivocally.
“I think we have both lived too much within the past,” she said. She had been no less guilty of it than he; a sort of stagnation they had both suffered. “I would like to look to the future instead.”
“Have we got one?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, and turned in the circle of his arms to face him. “But it must begin with a proper introduction.” One that had been a long time coming, and which had they had never truly gotten.
Even in the darkness, she could see the flex of a muscle in his jaw, hear the swallow he gave. The tips of his fingers touched her cheek, her chin, the hollow of her throat in silent reverence. “My name is Rafe Beaumont,” he said. “And I have loved you for years.”
∞∞∞
Rafe supposed he ought to have been grateful for the few days of respite he had had before the whole of London had descended upon him after his vindication. He suspected that Mrs. Morris had had a great deal to do with managing the influx of callers, but even that estimable woman was no match whatsoever for Diana, who had barged in along with her husband shortly before Mrs. Morris had taken her leave for the day.
And she had not much cared for the news he had imparted to her. “You promised you would come to breakfast on Saturdays,” she exclaimed, “and you’ve already missed last week!”
Rafe might have rolled his eyes if only there hadn’t been a plaintive note lingering within her voice that threatened the advent of tears. “I hardly had a choice in the matter,” he said. “I was, if you’ll recall, imprisoned. Rarely is one permitted to reschedule an appointment with the gallows in order to keep a prior engagement.”
