A Husband Returned: Men of Wicked Sorrow, Book One

by Wynne Roman

  A hole the size of Texas had opened up inside Mariah, leaving a big emptiness in her chest and ragged, faint breathing. Stabbing pain arrowed through her, straight from her front to the middle of her back.

  Things got away from us? She knew what that meant, and she hated hearing these details. She’d noticed that he tried not to say the woman’s name, but what difference did that make?

  He had still made love to Wren Gardner, and he was describing the circumstances to his wife.

  “I don’t want to hear any more,” she said tightly.

  He stiffened and sat up straight. “No. You have to let me finish,” he insisted firmly.

  “Nathan—”

  “The damage to the farm was significant.” He spoke over her. “That leaky barn roof was now torn to pieces. The storms hadn’t completely moved through, but I was impatient. I wanted to prove myself. A little rain wasn’t going to stop me, and the thunder and lightning seemed distant.”

  He closed his eyes for a moment before piercing her with a stark gaze. “I climbed the ladder to assess the damage firsthand. I knew it was substantial, but I wanted to gauge the exact nature of the repairs. I didn’t even notice when the lightning struck. It happened in an instant. I heard a snap, my skin tingled, and my arms and legs went stiff.”

  “Nathan,” she breathed, but it was all she managed before he continued.

  “The next thing I knew, I had fallen and collapsed onto the ground. I don’t know how long I lay there, but I woke up with one hell of a headache. I was so damned confused.” He shook his head, even now. “My right shoulder had a burn mark, my left side had another, and my shirt had a charred line between them.

  “Moving was almost impossible, so I laid down to rest. I fell asleep, and when I woke, I realized that I remembered some things. I knew my full name, that I was from Texas, and that my family owned the Rancho de Sangre Real. As the day went on and then the next, I remembered more. Especially right after I would wake. A rush of memories would tumble through me then.”

  She had rested her hand on his leg before she even realized that she’d begun to move. She tightened her fingers around his knee—in encouragement or sympathy? She couldn’t say which.

  “Those early memories included you, and suddenly some inexplicable dreams made sense.”

  “I was in your nightmares?” The emptiness in her grew.

  “No! Not all my dreams were nightmares. Some were . . . nice. I would be with a beautiful woman with raven black hair and purple eyes who looked at me with such tenderness and trust, I wanted to know her. Those dreams stayed with me for days, and I always hoped that I knew her. That she wasn’t a figment of my imagination.”

  “No.” Mariah shook her head sadly. “No figment, Nathan. I’m very real. Simply the wife you never wanted.”

  26

  Nathan scowled at his wife. He liked the touch of her hand on his leg, but he hated her words.

  “Don’t put words in my mouth, Mariah.”

  She withdrew her hand. “It’s true, though. We both know it.”

  Nathan sighed and closed his eyes. Damn, but he should have known explaining things about Wren had the potential of hurting Rye even worse. Naturally, that would lead to his other sins. Sins he didn’t want to discuss.

  Sins he would have left behind, had he been given any choice.

  “I was young and foolish when we married. A little heartbroken when Susannah died.”

  “A little?” Mariah didn’t attempt to hide her disbelief.

  Remarkably, Nathan smiled. It fell away quickly when his wife’s expression tightened with incredulity. He shook his head.

  “I was an ass. I knew it then, but I didn’t know what to do with all that rage. I drank, argued with my father, and scr—”

  He broke the words off sharply, earning a scowl. “Say it,” Mariah bit out.

  “Rye—”

  “Say it.”

  “All right. At night, I took advantage of you. I screwed you.” He closed his eyes, wishing he could erase the worst of his mistakes. “It didn’t help. Nothing did. Not until I was in the thick of things with Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia. By Sharpsburg, I’d fought enough Yankees to be finished with it.”

  Something in his words demanded a reaction from Mariah. She took a long, deep breath that brought her breasts up high and tight and remind him how much he loved to look at them. Touch them. Play with her nipples.

  His body tightened with awareness, and he swallowed a groan. Instinct warned him that she would hate knowing he’d reacted to her physically during this particular discussion. He forced himself to listen.

  “I’m so sorry you had to live through the hell of war. It breaks my heart every time I hear the stories or see the scars.” Her voice thickened with earnest emotion. “It especially hurts when I think of you experiencing those things. But if you did have a change of heart after you’d seen and been through so much, why didn’t I know? Why didn’t you write? Come home on furlough? Something.”

  “Mariah—”

  “And why didn’t the woman in your dreams keep you from wanting Wren Gardner?”

  And there it was. The question of the hour. The year. The decade. Unfortunately for them both, he had no clear answers.

  He shook his head, wishing he could avoid her gaze but knowing she deserved to see the essential man. If they were going to make it through this, he had to show her everything.

  “I imagine for many of the same reasons you became—close with Bonham,” he admitted. Saying the Segundo’s named tweaked his ego, but Nathan let it go. Mariah had listened to him all but sing Wren’s praises; he deserved to tolerate this, and more.

  “Loneliness,” she breathed as though she understood. “Fear. Uncertainty. Sadness.”

  “All of those things,” he agreed. “And the need to feel another’s touch. Especially after my time in prison.”

  Mariah’s expression shifted, the pain mingled with something that seemed more seeking.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked her.

  “Were there others?”

  “Others who?”

  “Women? Other women besides—her.”

  He closed his eyes and shook his head. Goddamn, but she wasn’t going to make anything about this easy.

  “There were camp followers. Prostitutes. Whores. Women who serviced the men.”

  “And did you—”

  “I didn’t screw them.” He wanted it to sound ugly, because it was. “I let some of them . . . ah, shit. There were times when I let them put their mouths on me, but I never did anything more.”

  She closed her eyes, and he knew that he had hurt her again. He reached for her hand, surprised when she allowed him to take it.

  “Rye.”

  She looked at him, but her gaze was too blank. “Listen, honey, that’s all of it. I wish you hadn’t asked, but I won’t lie to you. I’ve made so many goddamn mistakes in my life, and most of them seemed to hurt you more than anyone else. I’m sorry.”

  “But why?” The question fell from her as little more than a whisper. “Why do all those intimate things? Things that would hurt any wife. Things that you had to know would tear at my heart and soul and leave me feeling like so much less a woman.”

  He closed his eyes and tried to bring up the images of the other women in his life. Susannah and Wren. Both remained distant and unappealing.

  “You are not less of a woman because of what I did. Nothing I did was because you weren’t enough of a woman. It was—stupidly—me hurting myself, I think.”

  The silence settled between them with a heavy stillness, much like the air in hell must feel, Nathan thought sickly. It dragged on and on, until he felt like he wanted to shout to end it.

  “So I didn’t even matter that much,” she whispered, making no attempt to hide the tears that trembled on her lashes. “I was never a consideration at all when, for me, you were my husband. My life.”

  Regret tore at his heart, clogged this throat, s
ickened him to the point that he wondered if he would vomit. He had done this to her. Over and over, and he’d thought nothing of it. He’d gone on his merry way and consequences be damned.

  He was paying for it now, and he deserved anything he got. Self-disgust or not, he had promised himself complete honesty if he were given the chance to confess. Rye deserved it, and so much more.

  He forced himself to go on.

  “At first, I think I wanted to punish Susannah for dying. That put you in the direct line of fire, and that was never fair. I didn’t care. Maybe I blamed you a little bit, too.”

  “Blamed me?” She sounded horrified.

  “You were alive, and she was dead.”

  “I see.”

  “No, you don’t. Not really. It wasn’t that simple. I knew you loved me. You showed me every time you looked at me. In my angry youth, I think I decided that made me kind of invincible. Anything I did would be permissible because you loved me.”

  “I don’t see—” she began, but he didn’t let her finish.

  “You would always forgive me.”

  “I see,” she said again. Her beautiful eyes had become so dark, they took on a haunting blue quality that shamed him. “And now?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t deserve your forgiveness. I know that. I pray for it, in any case. Not only for the things I’ve done, but for the way I treated you. Before and later, after I found out about . . .” He paused, deciding on a word. “Him. It was the first time I’d ever felt your love for me threatened.”

  “That was never the case,” she whispered brokenly.

  Nathan shrugged. “Maybe not, but things suddenly weren’t as safe and secure as I had come to anticipate. Expect. Depend on. That . . .” What word could he use to describe his feelings? He finally used one that didn’t even come close. “Upset me.”

  Her hand remained in his, and he tangled their fingers. He reached his free hand out to take hers and linked those fingers with his, as well.

  “I really don’t know what to say.” She kept her gaze averted.

  “It’s a lot, I know. Sometimes I think my life has been in turmoil from the day Susannah died.”

  Mariah took a quick, harsh breath, as though absorbing another blow, but he continued anyway. “It needn’t have been that way. I did that. To you and to myself. I forced away all healing and clung to the pain. Then the day came when I didn’t remember it anymore. Everything changed. When I regained my memory, my past, and my future. Well, it all looked different.”

  She left her hands gripping his, merely cocking her head to one side as she stared at him. “Different how?”

  “It’s difficult to explain.” He lifted a shoulder and shook his head at nearly the same time. “I had a clarity about things that I’d never had before. I didn’t know what to do with it, how all the pieces fit together, and so I did the only thing I knew how to.”

  “What was that?”

  “Come home.”

  “Home.” Remarkably, he thought, she tightened her fingers around his.

  “Home,” he agreed. “And, Rye?”

  “Yes?”

  “Once I regained my memory, I never touched Wren again.”

  Nathan left her alone after that. “I had a lot to say,” he’d told her, “and you deserve a chance to think about it.” He’d surprised her by curving a warm palm over her cheek and dropping a kiss to the top of her head. “We can talk more tonight if you want to.”

  He’d left the house immediately after, while Mariah remained seated in the parlor. Honestly, she couldn’t seem to make her limbs move when her mind and heart were scrambling to make sense of the secrets he’d revealed. It explained so much, confused so much else, but she couldn’t seem to grasp much of it for longer than a heartbeat.

  He’d loved Susannah; Mariah had always known it. She thought perhaps he still did and always would, but he didn’t seem to be carrying a torch for her any longer.

  When had that changed?

  And Wren? Mariah couldn’t deny that the woman had been special to him, but what did that mean, exactly? Based on everything Nathan had revealed, she knew he couldn’t have spent more than three or four months at Gardner Farm. With the end of the war, his release from prison camp, and his memory and health issues, could that really have given him enough time to fall head-over-heels in love with her?

  The idea of Nathan’s time with Wren sent an ache straight through Mariah, but she forced those useless emotions from her heart. They accomplished nothing when she had bigger, more important things to consider. His confession had changed her views on him, their marriage, and even herself.

  Was Wren the issue, or was she merely a symptom of Nathan’s loss? There had been other women, after all; he’d admitted as much. Nameless, faceless, loose women, perhaps, but they provided one more indication of some dissatisfaction that Nathan must have felt inside of himself.

  A dissatisfaction she couldn’t heal.

  If only he had let her close enough that she could understand the puzzle itself.

  Should they talk more? Mariah’s head and heart warred over the proper answer. Would it reveal more, heal more, or just beat an already dead horse, as the saying went? Perhaps they should simply leave it all to rest for a few days. Find some sort of new comfort with each other and see what might become of that? Work on forgiving each other, rather than scraping at old wounds that would never heal unless they left them alone?

  Undecided and overwhelmed by the questions, Mariah pushed herself to move. Nathan’s confession and the questions haunted her all day. Through her household chores, her meal preparations, her anticipation of seeing her husband again. Hope would bloom within her one moment, and the next, she would find herself fighting with overwhelming anxiety. The day ended before she reached any conclusions at all, and then Nathan was there.

  “Hello, sweetheart,” he said as he came in through the back door.

  “Nathan,” she breathed. She pointed toward the sink. “I left you some warm water.”

  He gave her a small smile. “Thank you.”

  Neither of them spoke much as they ate the pot roast, roasted potatoes and carrots, applesauce, and fresh bread. It was another of Nathan’s favorite meals, and he showed his obvious appreciation of the food by taking second helpings of everything.

  “That was delicious, Rye,” he said as he finished the last bite. “Thank you.”

  She smiled shyly, like she wasn’t a grown woman sitting across from her own husband, and expressed her appreciation softly. “I’m glad you liked it.”

  He returned the expression, though his smile was decidedly more wolfish than nervous. “Will you heat some water for me? I’d like to bathe.”

  Mariah nodded before the words penetrated, and then a moment later she couldn’t quite think. Bathe?

  Memories stormed through her mind, showing her again so clearly: Nathan standing in the bedroom, his chest bare, her washing him, him pleasuring her afterward.

  Dear Lord, did he want to do that again?

  “Of course,” she said faintly, and he smiled at her approvingly. Something else heated his gaze, but nerves kept her from being able to tell exactly what he meant. At that moment, she forced herself to let go of the question and all others.

  How could she think when her nipples had tightened to aching and that place between her legs fluttered with awareness?

  Lord, she missed this man’s body, his kisses and caresses, the intimacy he showed her when they were in bed. He had just returned, and she had always known that she wanted him to be with her forever.

  Mariah didn’t hesitate. She heated the water as she cleaned the kitchen and dining room of all the supper paraphernalia. It took far longer than she wished, and yet it took no time at all. She couldn’t quite decide which as she carried the heated water into the bedroom.

  Nathan stood on the far side of the room, as though he had just lit the lamps. Though he seemed to watch her every movement, the light created too many shad
ows for her to read his expression. She should have been anxious, even uneasy but excitement overrode any other emotion that tried to take hold.

  Mariah filled the bowl that sat on the washstand, the pitcher that had been moved to the dresser, and then turned toward the door, intending to return the kettle to the kitchen. Nathan was across the room far quicker than she ever could have imagined he could move and took the container from her hand. He deposited it on the floor and turned back to her.

  “Let me bathe you.”

  She swallowed, and her eyes grew wide as saucers. She knew they did, because she could feel it, along with the sudden breathlessness that intensified every other emotion racing through her.

  “What?”

  “It’s my turn.” He stood close enough that she could feel the heat in his gaze, smell that clean, male scent that belonged to only him. “I want to bathe you.”

  27

  Mariah stared at her husband with no idea how to respond. I want to bathe you? Like she had bathed him?

  “Nathan . . .” Other words wouldn’t come.

  “Let me, honey.” He reached for the top button of her dress. “Let me make love to you. Let me show you what we can have together. What we should have always had.”

  “You,” she swallowed “didn’t want anything with me at first, and then again when you found out about—” She cut the words off. “You were angry with me.”

  He shook his head and unfastened the next several buttons. “I was a young, stupid hothead all those years ago.” He undid another button. “When I got back, I was jealous.” Another button. “And angry with myself.” Another. “I took it out on you,” he finally had most of the buttons undone, “ because I couldn’t admit to myself how much I wanted you.”

  “And now?” she breathed as her bodice gaped open.

  “Now, I had a come-to-Jesus talk with myself.” He pushed the clothing from her shoulders, down to her waist, over her hips. “I couldn’t keep pretending the truth wasn’t slapping me in the face every goddamn day.”