Page 92 of A Lady of Means
He didn’t say anything.
She wrapped a hand around his jaw and brought his eyes to hers.“Answer me,” her voice was part plea, part protest.
“I’ve gone through months of rehabilitation to stand, to walk.Don’t know if I ever will fight, or ride, or hold a sword properly.I would have crawled to you, if I thought you’d still have me.”
She pulled back as though he’d slapped her.But she would never compare her pain to his; she knew her engagement to another man, a Duke no less, had only been a liberal sprinkling of salt in a festering wound.
“That isn’t fair,” she injected steel into her voice, enunciating her words.“I wish you’d told me.I wish I knew that you’d?—”
“Would it have stopped you from becoming engaged to the world’s most perfect man?”His voice was laced with anger.
“Is that what you came here to ask me?”
He muttered profanity under his breath.Shook his head.
“I’m sorry.I don’t know if I ever did deserve you, but how could I ever claim to now?I’d just go on without you and let you have the perfect life you always wanted,” he swallowed, tracing a rogue tear that fell out of her eye.“Only I just can’t stop loving you.From afar doesn’t seem like enough.But I had to tell you, figured you’d find out anyway, in case there was a chance you weren’t disgusted by me.”
No tears came.No words came.What could she say?
She poured all the words that were locked away, buried under years of neglect and dust and trauma, into his mouth.Her lips formed the words tangled breathlessly with his like she could scourge the pain away with a kiss.
“I need you.”She groaned the words into his mouth.
He shook his head.She pulled his hair, pulling him closer, till their noses touched.If he couldn’t see a world behind or beyond this alcove, this time-stopping box they were in, he couldn’t say no.
“You need me,” She said.
He could go to war, he could nearly die and let her believe that he did even after he’d been back, she’d not even asked how long he’d been back, but shedidknow him.
“Show me where the pain is, or where you can’t feel my touch anymore.”
She traced a gloved finger softly over the bisecting scar from his hairline down to the hollow at the base of his throat.
He closed his eyes.“Nowhere.I feel you everywhere, Moria.The hollowed-out parts of me that feel nothing can still feel you.”
She placed his hand at her waist.She raised her eyebrows at him, his throat bobbed again.
“Not here.”He shook his head, but his hand at her waist drew her tighter into him.
“When we went to the opera,” she breathed next to his ear, “Did you think about having me behind the curtain?”
He took her hand, placing it against his erection, the hard proof of how badly he wanted her.“There are hardly any ways left I haven’t thought about having you,” he said into her ear.
“Did you think you’d have me tonight?”she said against his lips, undoing him.
She wasn’t sure what her plan was, with him, with George.She wasn’t sure she had one.
He closed his eyes, breathing her in.
“You did, didn’t you?”she said in his ear, nipping at his earlobe and then licking down his neck.She kissed his scar like he’d kissed hers that single night they’d had together.He groaned against her, swore her name like she was the god he was taking in vain.
“What are you doing?”he asked.“You break off your engagement, then?That why you’re dressed…” he eyed her like he was looking at her costume for the first time.“Like some kind of ghost bride?”
Moria couldn’t help it.It wasn’t the champagne.Watery laughter bubbled out of her like so much joy that had been locked behind a cupboard.He started laughing with her too.They were here, together, behind a curtain at her sister’s book launch masquerade where she’d come with her sister and friends, and they were laughing, and his hand was still on her waist.
She wiped at the tears in her eyes.Were they from pain or grief or joy or some intertwined concoction?
“It’s part wedding gown and part mourning dress.”
