Page 73 of The Burning Passion of a Fiery Lady
She had just made him the happiest man in the world. She had agreed, at long last, to marry him. He had waited a long, long time for this moment. He had waited years.
Sometimes, he had imagined what it would be like. He had fantasised about what she would look like when she uttered those words. How radiant she would be, like an angel that had slipped from heaven.
And now, she had gone and spoilt it by asking him what had happened to her husband.
He glared at her, expecting her to drop her eyes in confusion, or utter a hasty apology, but she did neither. Instead, she kept staring at him, straight in the eye, an almost challenging look in her own.
His mind reeled. He could not speak of that night. Hemustnot speak of that night. He had vowed to himself that he would take it to his grave. He had vowed that he would try to never think of it, bury it deep down, to never see the light of day again …
“Please,” she entreated, her eyes misty. “I just want to know, so that I can have the final closure on my marriage. Once you tell me, we will never speak of it again. We shall put it behind us, forever.”
He kept staring at her. How could he tell her? He would incriminate himself.
But, as he kept staring into her pleading eyes, he started to soften. She had just agreed to become his wife. A man and wife shouldn’t keep any secrets from each other, should they? She had just offered her own secret to him, that she had lain with the horse master, and begged for his forgiveness.
Perhaps, just for this one time, he could do the same.
He glanced around quickly. They were utterly alone; the only other person who had been in the room since he had arrived had been the maid, carrying in the tea tray, and she had left quickly. No one else would hear the words that he uttered to her. No one would be able to carry it further, to take it to the authorities.
He took a deep breath. He had to trust her. She was about to become his wife. And if it gave her the closure that she needed to finally put her awful marriage behind her, then it would be a good thing, indeed.
She was still gazing at him, that same steady look in her eyes.
“Let us sit down,” he said slowly. “I will tell you the story of what happened to your late husband.”
Chapter 28
Susannah kept staring at him steadily, trying not to betray any emotion. Her heart was thumping wildly.
She had thought that she had overplayed her hand. When she had first mentioned the night that Gilbert had died, his face had grown cold, and closed up. She had seen a pulse start to beat frantically in his temple. He obviously wasn’t expecting her request, and he wasn’t happy about it in the least.
She had held her breath, trying to remain calm. Trying not to let him intimidate her. It had been touch and go for a while as he had digested what she had asked. Fear had risen up, once again, threatening to strangle her.
But then his face had abruptly cleared. He was willing to tell her the story of the night that her husband had died. She suppressed the triumph and elation, remaining poker faced, as they sat back down opposite each other, on the armchairs in front of the fire.
He leant forward, towards her, his face earnest.
And then, in a conversational tone, as if he were relating a bedtime story to a child, he began to speak.
***
He told her, to begin with, how he had done everything for love of her. That she had been his one and only reason for living in the years since they had last set eyes on each other.
“I tried to forget you after you rejected me,” he said, looking affronted. “After you chose Gilbert Drake over me all those years ago. I told myself that you had made your choice, and that I must respect it … but alas, it proved impossible.”
His face looked pensive, as he reflected on that time.
“My parents were eager for me to make a good match,” he continued. “They lined up potential wives for me. But I could not even look at any of them. I most definitely could not court them. Every time that I closed my eyes, it was your face that I saw, hovering in my mind … tormenting me, every moment, of every day, a reminder of what I had once coveted and lost.”
He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. When he opened them again, his face was dark with emotion.
“I battled through years in this state,” he said slowly. “Years, Susannah, where I could barely function. It was getting worse, not better. Time was not making you fade in my memory; rather, it was intensifying all that I had lost.
It became so bad that I contemplated ending it all. Life did not seem worth anything to me if I did not have you. I sank into the deepest melancholy. But then, one night, everything changed.”
He took a deep breath. A strange light had entered his eyes, and once again she was reminded of an evangelical preacher.
“I was at my lowest point,” he continued. “I fell into a restless sleep, one night, tormented by visions of you. I woke up in the middle of the night, quite abruptly, covered in sweat, and panting, as if I had been sprinting for a long, long time.
