Page 27 of The Spy Who Loved Her
It wasn’t, but she had lived with the ghosts for too long. Shades of their marriage still haunted the house, deepening with every year she had let them go to rot there. “I found his journal a few weeks ago,” she confessed. “I hadn’t even known he kept one.” She had known so little of him, and it had hurt her to realize it. To grow to understand now, years later, just how very empty her marriage had been. That the precious gem she had thought she had held cradled in the palm of her hand had turned out to be only paste.
“Really? And what did it contain?”
Emma shrugged. “I haven’t been able to bring myself to read it,” she said. “I suppose…there are things about him—about our marriage—that I never truly wanted to know.”
Diana gave a grave nod. “I suppose I can understand that,” she said. “But have you considered that thenotknowing might prove worse than the knowing? You must clean a wound before it can heal. It might hurt like the very devil, but it is necessary.”
Emma supposed there was a sort of truth in it. She had been forced to confront a few truths lately that had hurt to discover, but had also brought with them a sort of freedom she had not expected. What was one more truth, painful though it might be, when added to the rest?
“Go, then,” Diana urged, nudging her gently in the ribs with the point of her elbow. “If you slip out between sets, you won’t be missed.”
Emma startled at the command. “Are you certain?” she asked. “You and Lydia worked so diligently to produce such a marvelous event—”
“Your mind is plainly elsewhere,” Diana said, and softened the words with a smile. “I forgive you already. But I dowant to hear of what—or who—has pulled you away eventually.”
Emma managed a rueful laugh. “Yes,” she said. “Yes. I will tell you.”
Eventually. But she would savor her secret just a little longer in the meantime.
∞∞∞
“Dannyboy tells me he stayed for breakfast again,” Rafe said against the smooth skin of Emma’s shoulder. “He was bursting with compliments to your chef.”
“I imagine he was,” Emma said from beneath the froth of bedsheets that had drifted over her face. “He ate straight through several rashers of bacon and half a dozen fried eggs besides. He wouldn’t touch the sautéed mushrooms, however.”
“The culinary palates of children are notoriously unrefined.”
“I suppose so.” A light laugh rolled up her throat. “Neil has had to watch him quite closely to ensure that he didn’t give my children more of an education than is warranted. I’m afraid Dannyboy’s conversational skills leave much to be desired.” One of her small feet twitched against the side of his shin, her toes curling and relaxing. “Just how many children have you brought to me?” she asked as she tucked her head against her arm, which was splayed across the pillow.
Rafe’s hand paused on its slow descent down the flat plane of her back. “What do you mean?”
“You brought Neil to me, did you not?”
“I did not. Chris—”
“Kit might have delivered him,” Emma said, “but it was not his idea to do so.”
No, it hadn’t been. It would never have occurred to him to do so. Chris had lived many of his younger years in the same conditions as those they hadbrought to Emma; the thought had never entered his brain that there might be options other than the streets or the workhouse for children amongst the lowest rungs of society. There had never been for him. “Neil told you this?”
“Neil,” she said. “And a few of the other children. A girl, Janet. A boy, Ian. That’s three currently within my household. How many others?”
Well, there was no sense in denying it now. “I don’t know. I’ve not counted.” He traced the pad of one finger along her spine, felt the faint moisture of sweat there on her heated skin.
“But Neil was the first. I told you that, didn’t I?”
“You did.” That very first night, she had told him.
“You knew it already.” It wasn’t quite an accusation, but there was the smallest hint of confusion drifting there within the soft murmur of her voice. “I have the strangest feeling,” she said, “that over these last weeks I have told you a great number of things which you already knew.”
“I like to listen to you talk,” he said evasively.
“How did you know?” she asked. “How did you know to send Neil to me? How did you know that I would take him in?” Her shoulder blades pinched at the ticklish sensation of his fingers between them.
“I didn’t know,” he said. “But Chris had made mention—a number of times—that you had had no children to show for your marriage. That you were alone in a house too large and too empty. And I thought—”
“You thought you would give me a child.”
“Not…precisely.” He dropped a kiss upon her shoulder and settled behind her, flattening one palm over her belly. “I thought Neil was in imminent danger of getting himself transported. He was trying his hand at pickpocketing, and he wasn’t any good at it. He was bound to be caught, and by someone far less inclined toward mercy. I thought that he might be a welcome distraction, at least for an evening.” In those early days, when she had done little more than walk the silent halls of her home wreathed in grief, it had seemed a reasonable assumption. “At best, I expected that you would feed him and house him for the evening. That he would leave in the morning, having had a decent meal and a good night’s sleep, and perhaps avoid a stint in jail for an act undertaken in desperation.”
