Page 136 of The Bastard's Iberian Bride
There were two chairs by the window table.
“Shall I call for some tea?” she asked.
“No. Maybe later.”
He escorted her, though in truth he felt as wobbly as a bow-legged baby, and it was her helping him toddle into the chair.
He watched her arrange the blue skirts and prop an elbow to lean on. Horizontal rays of late summer light illuminated the purpling on one cheek and the shadowed mottling around her eye.
She’d been his to protect and still she’d been taken. He felt every bruise of hers like it was his own.
“I…Paulette, I will regret to my dying day attacking your father. No. Don’t interrupt.” Her mouth had opened and he raised a hand. He must get this out. “I should have looked more closely that day. I should have engaged my brain. I should have realized Dickson might be lying. But I’m a beast. A belligerent bull. It’s what Gibson—the man who raised me—used to tell me. It’s a good thing in fierce battles, but…”
But not in a marriage. Not with a lovely woman who deserved better.
“If you want that Scottish divorce, I’ll give you it.”
Divorce?
The word poked a fresh wound right into Paulette’s heart, and her first inclination was to lash back at him.
Except…the words had been so awash in pain, she leaned closer. His handsome face, as bruised and battered as her own, was turned in her direction, his soul shining out through his eyes. The strong jaw had indeed taken many punches—for her. He was the same as that day on the road to Cransdall when he’d boosted her into a tree to rescue her father’s gift. Not a beast at all, but a gentleman, a man of honor.
She’d seen into the heart of him. She’d take his rich gifts over any jewels.
She reached for his hand. “I might be with child. Your child. And you might leave a woman but you’d never leave your child.”
“I’d never leave you, but I’ll understand if you send me away. You deserve better.”
“There is no better. And I love you.”
His throat bobbed with a fierce swallow. “I have something for you.”
She clung to his hand and stayed him. “Hold there, Mr. Gibson. This is where you say ‘I love you, too’.”
A grin spread over him, like every part of him was smiling. Ah, but she knew he loved her.
“Shaldon—my father—was right. The match is brilliant. I love you, too. And if you’re keeping score, I said it first.”
A chuckle bubbled up. “So you did. Now what do you have for me?”
“Shaldon sent this along. The deed for our home is in here as well.” He tipped a package to spill out a ring and slid it onto her middle finger where it wobbled loosely. “He went to the Peninsula himself to deliver the replacement ransom and found this among your father’s things in Lisbon.”
A large golden heart held a ruby that pulsed in the rays of the setting sun. Her own heart started to pound in tandem.
She pulled the other two rings and the blood-soaked letter out of her pocket, slipped off the heart ring and fumbled the puzzle together, two hands clasping a heart. “Filomena said she got her part of the ring from my father. She thought there were only two parts and he had the other. But he didn’t. He’d given that part to my mother, and he’d kept the heart. I guess. Shall we ever know the whole story?”
“We’ll ask Shaldon before he dies again.”
“My poor mother.” She shook her head. “Or mothers. You know, Bink, I’m the same as you. I’m a bastard too.”
Moisture pricked her eyes and she blinked. “My father was a scoundrel. I couldn’t bear to have you hand off our child and your own self to another woman. I would track you down and thrash you without mercy.”
He squeezed her hand. “You won’t have to.”
She handed him the rings. “Shall we see if there really is a code here?’
“Let’s look at those markings.”
