Page 89 of A Secret Consequence for the Viscount
Her eyes were full of tears as she stepped forward. ‘I love you, Nicholas, and so does Lucy.’ There was no hesitation in her promise.
He shook his head, hard. ‘No. You can’t say that.’
She kept coming closer, one hand placed across his arm now, her fingers holding on with all that she was worth. ‘I have loved you since the first moment I ever really saw you at the Vauxhall Gardens and I’ve loved you more and more each day since.’
He swallowed and placed his thumb across her lips to stop the words from coming.
‘I can only hurt you, don’t you see?’
‘You can hurt me by staying away, by believing that you are this person that you are not. We belong together, you and I and Lucy, and if there are challenges in the future we can meet them.’
‘Sometimes I dream of blood.’ His words held a flatness and a finality that made the back of his throat thicken. But he needed to say what he was, what he had been, what he had done. ‘The blood of the man whose neck I broke by the James River. Just a quick twist and he was gone into the water though his eyes watched me as he went. The blood of others I have hurt, too, in fights and in arguments, with knives and glass and wood. This is who I am, Eleanor. You must have seen the marks on me in the sickbed. In each and every one of those scars lies the ghost of fury or fear or just plain ordinary temper.’
‘Or the badge of honour? The bullet you took at Hampstead was in lieu of me and Lucy. You were trying to save us, Nicholas, by offering up your own life. I could see that in your face as you tried to draw Bowles away from the carriage.’
‘I should have shot him through the head when I had the chance. And I did have that chance. I had seen him through the trees when I first arrived at the Heath. It would have been so very easy to skirt around and come up behind him to take a shot at close range. Instead I left you and Lucy in danger and it could have turned out so very differently.’
‘No, don’t you see?’ Eleanor’s voice was stern. ‘Instead you tried to talk Bowles out of a course of action that was impossible. Even in danger you tried to help him, tried to defuse the situation so that he might come out of it alive. You are not a killer, Nicholas, and you never have been, but you have had to fight for your life, too, and there is no shame at all in that.’
Nicholas took in a breath at her words because he heard a truth in them that was undeniable and sweet.
‘You are free now to live how you want. There is no one else ready to spring out and hurt you. Please, Nicholas, please believe it is possible.’
* * *
She could see the terror in his eyes, but she could also see the beginnings of something else. Hope, if she might name it, and faith.
With his limp and his scars and his left arm still in a bandage, with all the old hurts beneath his clothes and a belief inside himself that he was damaged and dangerous and unknowable, Nicholas still looked beautiful to her. More than that, though, he was beginning to look as if he was realising it, too. Realising that she knew the worst about him and was still here, that no matter what he threw at her she would not be shifted in her belief in him and that the words she had given him, words of love, could even possibly be true.
‘You would want me like this, Eleanor? After Hampstead Heath and being in all that danger? After knowing who I am? Who I truly was?’
‘I want you for ever. I want to grow old with you and have more children with you and know what it is like to have years and years in each other’s company. That is what I want.’
She moved closer, only the smallest distance separating their bodies from what was and what could be.
‘If you love me, Nicholas, you will want that, too.’
Nicholas swore and his dam suddenly broke, she could see it in his eyes and on his face and in the way his body enveloped her own, his arms about her, drawing her in, his breath in her hair as he held her against the heavy beat of his heart. ‘I love you, Eleanor, but I cannot believe I deserve you.’
‘How much do you love me?’ She was smiling now, the joy in him chasing away the shadows.
‘With every fibre of my body, with every thought in my mind. With my heart and my breath and my soul I love you, sweetheart. And more.’
‘Take me to bed again at your town house. I promise I will be gentle with all your wounds.’
When he laughed she heard the sound of freedom and she knew that a healing had begun.
‘Perhaps we should be married first?’
She smiled at his question and nodded.
‘Is your brother home tonight?’
‘Yes. He is in his library.’
‘Stay here, then. I won’t be long at all. Don’t move.’
* * *
