by Anne Gracie
“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? Why turn 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.
“Thomas?”
Why did she keep arguing? Much more of this and he’d weaken, take her and all she had to offer, then shatter her dreams and ruin her life. Again. “You’re in no state to decide anything. You need time to settle, to think it through, discuss your situation with your family.”
She stiffened at his tone. “And if we decide my future is to be a duchess?”
He shrugged, as if it would mean nothing to him. “Then so be it.”
Her fingers curled into fists. “You’d be happy with that, would you?”
He opened his mouth to assure her he would, but he couldn’t make himself say it. “You’re free to choose.”
“Free?” She was angry again. “We are married, Thomas.”
“We were, but—”
“But what?” She narrowed her eyes. “Is it you who wants to be free?”
He didn’t answer.
“Is there someone else? Another woman?”
“No! Of course not!”
“Then I don’t see the problem. Unless you no longer want me.”
He closed his eyes. How could she possibly think that? Not want her? For so long he’d ached for her, dreamed of returning to her, making a home with her in some green and pleasant English valley, raising a family.
And then the fantasy had withered, leaving a bitter husk of a man driven by rage and dreams of vengeance . . . And today the last remnant of his dreams had turned to ash.
“I’m . . . damaged, Rose. Not the man I was. Not the man you married.”
“Damaged?” Her eyes widened with concern. “How? What—”
“Not a physical problem. But”—he shook his head wearily—“I’m not fit for marriage to someone like you anymore.”
“Someone like me? What do you mean?”
But he wasn’t going to try to explain. “Just take the annulment, Rose.”
“Are you really going to do it, Thomas? Just let them annul us and walk away?” Her voice shook with disbelief.
“It’s for the best.” And then, because he couldn’t make himself walk away from her without one last touch, he touched her cheek lightly with the back of one finger. “Be happy, Rose.”
“Rose?” Her sister, Lily, stood in the doorway. “Sorry to interrupt, but Cal, um, wants to see your marriage certificate. They, he sent me—they’re wondering what was keeping you.” By the end of her speech she was flushing.
Rose sighed. “Because of course I need a chaperone to be alone with my husband. I’ll be so glad when everyone stops fussing. All right, Lily love, I’ll be there in a minute.”
Lily nodded and withdrew, but she left the door ajar. Deliberate, Thomas assumed. She’d be waiting in the hall.
“You’d better go, then,” Rose told him. “They’ll all be out here soon. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Had she not listened to a thing he’d said? “I’m not coming back tomorrow. Talk the situation over with your family—they want what’s best for you.”
“And what if I need to talk to you again?”
He hesitated. He didn’t want to talk to her again.
She persisted. “What if I need you to sign papers or something?”
“Send someone with a note. I’m staying with my friend Ollie. Your brother has the address.”
She sniffed. “You don’t imagine Cal would give it to me, do you? Don’t you have a card?”
He fished in his pocket and pulled out the card Ollie had given him, memorized the address and handed the card to her. “I meant what I said. You owe me nothing. Think carefully about what you want.”
She followed with a mutinous expression. “And if I already know what I want?”
His face was grim. “Think again. Listen to your family, Rose. Make the wise decision. Take the annulment.”
Chapter Five
All the privilege I claim for my own sex . . . is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.
—JANE AUSTEN, PERSUASION
The front door shut behind Thomas. “I’m sorry, Rose. Cal would have come except we—well, Emm—decided it would be better if I—” Lily broke off. “Rose, you’ve been crying.”
“I know.” She was exhausted and yet . . .
“But . . . you never cry.”
“I know.” She hesitated, then added, “I haven’t been able to. Not properly. Not for the last four years.”
Lily’s eyes widened as she took in the implications of that. “You mean . . . ?”
Rose nodded. “I think I must have bottled it all up. But just now, when Thomas and I were talking, the tears just . . . came. I couldn’t help it. I wept all over him, Lily, noisily and messily—years’ worth of tears just pouring out of me.” The violence and intensity of it had shocked her. But now she felt strangely calm. Wrung out, but calm.
She pressed her palms to her cheeks, still trying to take in all that had happened. “I’d forgotten crying could do that.”
“Do what?”
“Be such a . . . such a relief. Afterward.” Not during. During had been terrifying.
Lily laid a worried hand on her arm. “Are you all right now?”
Rose nodded. “It was quite frightening at first—I couldn’t seem to stop, Lils. It was like something had taken me over. I wasn’t in control at all.” She hated losing control, but there was no denying that something had loosened inside her. She felt somehow cleansed. Except . . .
If only Thomas hadn’t stopped her from telling him everything . . .
Lily hugged her. “I know. But you’ll be all the better for it, trust me.”
Rose wasn’t so sure.
“How did he take it? They say most men hate women crying—well, you know how Cal is—but Edward doesn’t seem to mind a bit.”
“You don’t
fake tears with Edward, do you?” Rose asked curiously. Lily had the ability to weep at will. It had proven useful in their early disputes with their brother. Cal simply fell apart at the first sign of feminine tears.
“No, of course not. I’d never do that to him. Though it’s tempting, because the few times I have cried in front of him . . . Oh, he’s just lovely, Rose. So tender. And afterward . . .” Her lips curved in a tender, secret smile.
Rose understood. She couldn’t put words to the way it felt, having Thomas just holding her so quietly, patting her back so awkwardly and sweetly with his big battered hands. He was, she suspected, as appalled as Cal but trying to hide it. She’d felt the tension in him.
If they’d been truly married again, if they’d had a bedroom to retreat to . . .
Instead he’d become all bossy and officious, moving physically away from her, telling her to put the past behind her, to forget what happened, and forget him. Why? What had changed?
“I think Cal hit Thomas,” she told Lily. “On the way here. Thomas’s poor jaw has a nasty bruise. He wouldn’t admit it, of course, but I could see perfectly well that it was fresh. It was changing color right before my eyes.”
“I’ll ask Edward about it. But why would Cal hit him, and then bring him here? It doesn’t make sense.”
“I don’t know, but sometime between the church and here”—Rose narrowed her eyes thoughtfully—“or sometime since he arrived, Thomas was made to change his mind.”
“Made to?” Lily looked dubious. “He didn’t seem like the kind of man who would be made to do anything.”
Rose grimaced. “He’s not. Or at least he never was in the past.”
“He didn’t seem at all bothered by Cal or Aunt Agatha, and they were openly hostile to him. I thought him rather intimidating, to be honest. That grim expression and those cold, cold eyes—” Lily broke off, flushing. “Sorry, I’m sure he’s perfectly nice once you get to know him.”
Rose smiled. “He is, and you will.” She was determined on it.
Lily regarded her doubtfully. “But he told you to take the annulment. I’m sorry, Rose, I couldn’t help but overhear, I wasn’t eavesdropping—”
“It’s all right. And I know what he told me. What I don’t know is why. He spouted some nonsense about having no fortune and no job and no home—but I’m an heiress, and he knows it. We’ll have plenty of money. So it can’t be that.”
Lily said hesitantly, “Edward says a real man doesn’t take money from a woman. He’s arranged for my inheritance to be put in trust for me and our children.”
Rose stared. Could that possibly be it? Some stupid male pride thing? She couldn’t credit it. Would Thomas put his pride before their happiness? Surely not.
But it was certainly worth considering. “You’ve become very wise, little sister.”
Lily flushed with pleasure. Rose nodded toward the closed door of the drawing room. “Now, tell me, what are they saying in there?”
Lily wrinkled her nose. “It’s not good. Emm is still saying you must decide—”
“Good, then—”
“But Cal and Edward and Aunt Agatha are still talking about an annulment—Aunt Agatha is utterly determined on it. She keeps saying to Cal”—her voice took on the cadence of Aunt Agatha’s—“‘What is the point of being an earl if you can’t pull strings to free your sister from the machinations of a blackguard!’”
“Well, they shan’t. I won’t let them. And Thomas is not a blackguard. And he certainly doesn’t machinate, or whatever the word is.”
“They don’t trust him, Rose. Most of them think he’s a fortune hunter who deceived a vulnerable schoolgirl.”
“But they heard him refuse me.”
Lily grimaced. “They’re saying it’s a clever ploy on his part—though Aunt Dottie doesn’t agree. They also think there’s something fishy about where he’s been these last four years, and that he refuses to explain. And they don’t like the timing, how he managed to turn up at the perfect moment—and attired in such a way—to create the maximum scandal.”
Rose frowned. Put like that, it did look rather damning.
“Oh, and Cal says until he sees your marriage lines, he won’t be convinced there was a wedding. And if there was one, it might not be real.”
“In that case, I’ll fetch them right this minute. Come with me?” Linking arms, they hurried upstairs. Rose rummaged in the small wooden box where she kept her jewelry and other precious things. The document was at the very bottom.
She tipped everything onto her bed. The certificate came out last.
“Here it is.” She unfolded it and looked at her signature and Thomas’s. “There, that should convince our dear, suspicious brother.” She refolded the document and started repacking the little wooden box. Lily sat on the bed, watching. “You said most of the men and Aunt Agatha are against Thomas, and Emm is on the fence. What about the others?”
“Aunt Dottie thinks he’s very handsome, and that it’s all wonderfully romantic. She says she has one of her ‘feelings’ about him.”
Rose chuckled. “The darling, of course she does. And George?”
Lily dimpled. “She says that Finn likes him and that Finn is a very good judge of character.”
Rose laughed again. “Good old Finn.” She sobered then. “And you, Lily, what do you think?”
Lily hesitated. Her gaze dropped and in a low voice she said, “I don’t know what to think. I still don’t understand why you never told me, Rose. Didn’t you trust me?”
“Oh, Lily. It wasn’t that at all.” At the hurt in her sister’s voice, Rose found herself blinking back tears again. Such a day she’d had. She was feeling completely storm-tossed, in alt one minute, despair the next. All the pain she’d repressed over the years, spilling out. Scalding her again—and spilling over everyone.
She climbed onto the bed beside Lily and took her hand. “I’m sorry I never told you, Lils. I just . . . couldn’t. By the time you were well enough to be told, so much had happened it was all too painful to speak of.”
“I wouldn’t have told. I’d never betray you.”
“I know, darling, but you were still so very frail. I didn’t want to burden you with my troubles. I don’t think you realize how close to death you came—you nearly died, you know.”
Rose had already lost Thomas, and then . . . He wasn’t all she’d lost.
So the thought of losing Lily, as well . . .
“It was better—or so I thought at the time—to just pretend it had never happened. I’m the one who’s supposed to look after you, remember?” She grimaced ruefully. “Who would be sixteen again? I thought I knew everything then.”
“It’s all right.” Lily gave her a comforting hug, then tilted her head and regarded Rose thoughtfully. “You know, I think I knew there was something wrong back then. When I came back to school after recovering my health, you were . . . different.”
“I was? How?” She’d tried so hard to not let anything show. It had been hard, so hard having to keep it all inside her. But the consequences of letting it out were—had seemed at the time to be—unthinkable.
“Oh, on the surface you seemed the same, but for a while there it was as if you were . . . I don’t know, acting a part—the part of lively Rose Rutherford. There was something a little frenzied about it. You were doing all the usual things, and yet there was something missing. It was as if a light had gone out inside you.”
Rose bit her lip. Such wisdom from her little sister. It was exactly how it had felt. But there was more to it than Lily knew.
“You never said anything.”
Lily shrugged. “I thought it was because I’d been so sick—I know I was horridly weak for ages afterward, and I hated how I’d made everyone so anxious. So I didn’t want to bring it up again. And later I wondered whether something horrid had happened at s
chool while I was away. You always did try to shelter me from anything nasty that happened, didn’t you?”
“And I always will.”
“I don’t need to be sheltered anymore. I can look after myself. And besides, I have my darling Edward now. He would slay dragons for me.”
Rose loved her sister’s glowing confidence. Lily was so happy in her marriage.
Would Thomas slay dragons for Rose? The old Thomas would have. But this Thomas? She thought of his bruised jaw. She wasn’t sure of anything anymore.
She picked up her marriage certificate and linked arms with her sister. “Now, let us screw our courage to the sticking point and beard our own dragon in her den. Aunt Agatha might spit fire but she won’t change my mind. Please tell me you’ll be on my side, even if you still have doubts.”
“Of course I’m on your side,” Lily assured her. “Always.”
* * *
* * *
“You what?” Ollie’s eyebrows almost disappeared into his hairline. “Are you mad? You’re married to one of the most beautiful, lively, well-born gels in the ton—an heiress to boot—and you encourage her to get an annulment?”
“It’s the right thing to do.” Rose was lucky in that she had a family in a position to pull strings to free her. Most people didn’t have that option. Annulments were almost impossible to get.
“Because she has a fortune and you’re broke?” Ollie eased the cork from the bottle of claret he’d selected for the first part of the evening. He held the bottle up to the light and scowled at it. “I ought to let this wine breathe, but you’ve given me such a nasty shock I’m in need of immediate sustenance.”
He poured out the wine and took a deep draft. “Pride, that’s what your problem is.”
“No, it’s—”
“Pride. You think you’ve got nothing to offer her.”
“I haven’t.” Thomas took a sip of wine and put his glass down. After four years without alcohol, he seemed to have lost the taste for it.
Ollie made a rude noise. “Fiddlesticks! Girl’s an heiress, isn’t she? You’re her husband, so everything she owns is yours by legal right. It’s blasphemy, that’s what it is. Pride and blasphemy!”