Page 31 of Marry in Secret
Her face twisted with emotion. “So who could I mourn with, who could I share my grief with—a pack of giggling schoolgirls, girls who would happily pick my life to bits for their entertainment, like, like chickens?”
Did she mean him to answer? How could he? He couldn’t imagine.
“There was no one, Thomas! No one! One day you were there, filling my life with joy, and then—you weren’t. It was as if you’d never existed. Except...” Her voice broke, and she touched the place over her heart. “Here. And in my dreams.”
She subsided against his chest, clutching his coat for support, clinging to him like a drowning person as great wrenching sobs shattered in waves though her.
Thomas couldn’t speak; there was a lump in his throat as big as a fist.
He eased her onto the sofa and sat awkwardly holding her—he had no idea what to do. The man he used to be would have hauled her into his arms and kissed the tears away. The man he was now sat on the sofa, racked with tension, forcing himself to be distant and impersonal.
He’d let her go. Against all his best interests he’d pushed her away—for her own sake.
He’d thought he’d never forget the taste of her, or thescent, but in the life he’d led, it had been such a struggle to hold on to even the smallest of sense memories. The best he’d been able to do was to preserve in his heart and mind theideaof Rose. The memory of her laugh, her smile, the way she gave herself wholly, joyfully and without reservation.
Shame flooded him. He’d forgotten this, the actuality of her, the warmth, the scent, the passion of her.
Helpless and aching, he sat patting her back, making vague, deep,there-there-ish sounds. It was what you did when women wept, wasn’t it? When you couldn’t hold them as you wanted to.
At last the jerky sobs slowed, then stopped. For a long time the silence was broken only by the sound of ragged breathing—Thomas’s was almost as ragged as hers—and the distant rattle of carriages in the street outside.
Spent, she leaned against him, making no move to pull away. After a few minutes, she turned her tear-drenched face up to him. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be such a watering pot. I never cr—”
“Dry your eyes.” He made his voice hard. He thrust his handkerchief into her hand. “It’s all over now.” He released her and slid to the end of the sofa. “It’s over,” he repeated. “It was a bad time, but you have the opportunity now to put all that behind you and make a new life for yourself.”
She sat up, wiping her eyes. “What are you saying?”
“Accept the annulment your brother says he can get you. Marry someone else.” Someone better.
She smoothed the damp and crumpled handkerchief over her lap. “Are you truly going to abandon me, Thomas?”
He didn’t meet her eyes. “I’m giving you a choice, the choice I didn’t give you four years ago.”
“I made the same choice you did.” She waited a moment, then added, “I’m still prepared to honor those vows.”
He didn’t answer, couldn’t look at her—if he did, all his resolve would go up in smoke.
There was a short, hurt silence. “Then why did you come to the church today? Why stop the wedding? Whyturn my life upside down if you were just going to walk away?” Beneath the pain and the bewilderment was a faint thread of anger. Good. Anger would make her stronger. “You know why.”
“Apparently I don’t. You need to explain it.”
“To prevent you from committing bigamy.” He hadn’t even thought of it until Ollie had mentioned it. And bigamy had had nothing to do with Thomas’s desperate race from the Admiralty offices to St. George’s church in Hanover Square.
“I don’t believe that’s the reas—” She broke off. “Is that a bruise?” Her eyes narrowed and she reached out and touched his chin lightly. “It is, and a fresh one at that. How did that happen?”
He pulled away. “It’s nothing.”
Her expression darkened. “It was my brother, wasn’t it? He hit you.”
“No. It happened earlier, in the street. I—I tripped. On a cobblestone.”
“I don’t believe you. Is that it? Why you’re pushing me away. Because my brother is bullying you? Because if that’s it, you must ignore him. He’s just trying—”
He rose from the sofa and addressed her as he would men on a ship. “It’s nothing to do with your brother. The fact is, my situation’s changed. I have no fortune, Rose, no job—I’m out of the navy—and no home. I cannot support a wife.”
“Pfft!” She made a dismissive gesture. “I have money enough for both of us. I’m an heiress, remember?”
He didn’t say anything. He’d taunted her brother by pretending to be the kind of man who’d live off a woman, forgetting that he could no longer afford such scruples. And for a while there he’d even thought he could become that kind of man. Until he’d looked into her eyes and realized he couldn’t.
