Wilson, Gayle

by Anne's Perfect Husband

"Of course you must stay," Anne said, crossing the room to take Dare's hands. She leaned forward, and smiling, pressed her lips against his cheek. "I insist upon it. I shall be most disappointed if Elizabeth and I don't have time to visit."

  "Wifely secrets to share, no doubt," Dare said. "Now I'm sure we should leave."

  With the resulting laughter, the earlier tension seemed to ease. The conversation turned to the social events of the summer and then to news of the war and of Sebastian, the youngest Sinclair, who was still with Wellington. Gradually, Ian began to relax, hopeful that their deception had been and would continue to be successful, at least through the course of this visit.

  It was less than an hour later that the countess pled fatigue and was escorted by both her husband and her hostess to her room. Anne didn't come down again. He would see her at dinner, where they would once more be protected from having to really talk to one another by the demands of entertaining their guests. And perhaps, he thought again, it was even better that they were.

  ***

  No way out, Anne thought, as she must have a thousand times in the last two months. No way out.

  She paced away from the window, her palms soothing down her upper arms, which were crossed over her breasts as if she were chilled. And she couldn't be, not in the middle of summer. She shivered, however, before she turned restlessly and recrossed the wide expanse of her bedchamber to stand once more by the window she had just deserted. No way out.

  He had not loved her before. And now... Now there was so much more that lay between them. Her father's guilt. Travener's betrayal. The manner of his death.

  She had hoped it would make a difference in their relationship when she had gone to Ian with the news that she was not, after all, to bear Travener's child. It had to her, of course, the relief so great that she had been faint with it. Yet for almost a week she had not found the words to tell her husband. When finally she had, he said only, "Now you need never think of it again."

  And she really had tried not to. Until today, when she had seen his eyes on Elizabeth. They had touched on the small bulge of the countess's pregnancy, before they had lifted to find hers, their hazel depths carefully cleared of what she had seen so briefly within them.

  Envy? Did Ian feel the same deep jealousy she felt each time she was forced to watch Dare's hand touch Elizabeth, whether unthinkingly straightening her shawl or placing steadying fingers under her elbow? Did he, too, feel the same emptiness when the earl's eyes caressed his wife's face? Or when he teased Elizabeth, laughing about her unabashed joy in their marriage?

  Their marriage. Which was no marriage at all. Ian never touched her, not if he could possibly avoid it. He hadn't since those long nights in Scotland when she had clung to him as desperately as if he were her only hope of redemption. And perhaps he was.

  Her eyes were attracted by some movement on the grounds below. Almost without her conscious volition, her hand pushed aside the draperies to reveal the moon-dappled expanse of lawn beneath her window.

  Two figures moved slowly across its smooth green sward. It took a moment for her to realize who it was and what they were doing. The Earl of Dare and his countess were dancing.

  Elizabeth's slender white hand was on the dark shoulder of her husband's jacket, her face turned up to his. Even with the distance and the moonlight, it was clear what was in her eyes. An intensity of love, so powerful it had overcome all the barriers that society and the past had thrown in its way. The same kind of love...

  The same kind of love. The words echoed not only in her heart, but also in her brain. Perhaps Ian hadn't loved her when he had married her. Perhaps he never would, but what was in her heart for the man who had made that sacrifice was enough for both of them. Far more than enough.

  The slow, silent waltz on the moonlit grounds below continued, and smiling, Anne watched the graceful glide and sway of the lovers. And it was only after she had watched them a long time that she realized Dare was barefoot.

  Her lips lifted, her irrepressible appreciation of the ridiculous breaking through her unhappiness. Every romantic fantasy, even one as beautiful as that which was being acted out below, had about it some element of illusion, which hid its less-than-perfect reality. Like the Earl of Dare dancing barefoot in his evening clothes with his awkwardly pregnant countess.

  It was not the illusion that was important. Not the silvered moonlight. Not the beauty or the fantasy. All that mattered was the strength of the bond that had brought two such disparate people together, despite all the things that conspired to keep them apart.

  How well that applied to the illusion of her own marriage. All her life she had wanted the fantasy. A man who trembled when he touched her. A man whose eyes looked at her with a love so strong it would color whatever he saw—age or imperfection—with beauty. A man who would always be there, holding her hand through the darkest hour of any night.

  Reality and illusion. And if she could have only one...

  Hot tears veiled the scene below. Her fingers released the drapery, letting it fall over the glass, as if she could no longer bear to watch. Because if she could have only one—illusion or reality—she knew now which she would choose. And if the other never came, at least she would never have to endure the blackness of any other midnight alone.

  ***

  Whatever Elizabeth had hoped for when she had agreed to take Anne under her wing, Ian thought, she must have been very satisfied tonight with the results. The girl he had fetched from Fenton Hall had during these short months become a beautiful, self-assured woman, fully prepared to take her place in the society to which she had belonged since birth.

  Watching Anne at dinner, however, he knew he would far rather have had the laughing hoyden Travener had destroyed than the self-contained stranger who graced his table. And he feared that the girl he had fallen in love with had disappeared forever.

  He removed the onyx stickpin from his cravat and dropped it on the top of his dressing table. Despite Anne's performance, and even despite his own, Ian knew his brother had sensed something was wrong.

  Val could never imagine the truth, however. And if he asked, Ian would continue to do what he had done from the beginning. He would conceal the horror that had brought them together.

  As he began to loosen his neck cloth, his eyes caught the movement of his hands reflected in the mirror. They stilled, as he considered the face of the man the glass revealed.

  What did she see when she looked at him? A reminder of an event that was too painful to remember? Or—and the thought was bitter as gall—did she see him as a threat? Simply another Travener, biding his time until he, too, would make demands.

  He turned away from the mirror, forcing his fingers to complete the task they had begun. The cravat joined the discarded stickpin, and then he unfastened the top button of his shirt. He turned his head from side to side, trying to work out the stiffness produced by the strain of the evening.

  He walked across the room, throwing open one of the tall windows that looked out on the gardens below, breathing deeply of the rose-laden air. He stood there a long time, watching the slow drift of cloud-dappled moonlight across the garden.

  Gradually, the noises in the great house stilled, as the servants finished their duties and made their way to their own quarters. And yet he was not surprised when the soft knock sounded on the door to his room.

  He had known he couldn't escape Dare's questions. Val saw too much and understood him far too well. Without bothering to close the window, Ian turned and called out permission for him to enter. He had already braced himself for the coming interview when the door opened, revealing not his brother, but the slender, nightgown-clad figure of his wife.

  ***

  The last person he had expected to see, Anne realized as Ian's eyes widened. And then they fell, just as they always did. After a heartbeat, he raised them again to smile at her.

  "I should have known Dare would come as soon as I wrote him with our news," he said. "My apologi
es."

  "For having a brother who loves you? I confess to being jealous of that, but you certainly owe me no apology for it."

  She stepped inside, closing the door behind her. She stood in front of it a moment, the knob still in her hand, before she forced her fingers to release it. She walked across the room until she was less than three feet away from him.

  Through the open window, the scent of the roses wafted upward from the garden below. She wondered if Ian had seen the dancers, although the slow waltz she had watched had taken place several hours before. Hours she had spent marshaling her arguments and gathering her courage until she had found enough to bring her here. And now that she was...

  She took a calming breath and realized other scents were as pervasive in the room as the heavy fragrance of the roses. The same masculine aromas she had always associated with Ian were also here: expensive soap, the starch in the fine lawn shirt, even the subtle, totally masculine smell of his skin.

  And tonight there was a whiff of brandy underlying the others. She envied him its fortification. She wished she had been wise enough to think of that.

  "Is something wrong?" he asked.

  She looked up to find his eyes on her face, the kindness she had learned to depend on through those long days and nights in Scotland within them again.

  "I had thought..." And then she hesitated, unsure, despite the hours she had planned this assault, how to begin it. "I had thought we might dance," she said softly, the image of that slow waltz in the moonlight stirring within her heart.

  "Dance?" Ian repeated, as if he had never heard the word before.

  "We did once. I don't know if you remember—"

  "I remember," he interrupted.

  His face was still, the lips she longed to feel against her own almost stern. And in his eyes...

  "I remember everything," he added, and the hope that had begun to grow at what she believed she had read in that hazel intensity faltered.

  And then Ian held out his hand, exactly as he had in the ballroom that day. The intricate steps of the courtly charade they had acted out then was not, however, what she had come here for tonight.

  "A waltz," she said softly, placing her trembling fingers over his. And just as it always had, the steady warmth of his hand under hers comforted and welcomed like a fire on a winter's night.

  Tonight he made no disavowal of his skill. Instead, he lifted her right hand into position and then laid the fingers of his left against the small of her back. She could feel their hard masculinity through the sheer fabric of her rail.

  The distance between their bodies, however, remained exactly the same as that prescribed by society's dictates. And with that realization, she knew with a surge of bitter disappointment there would be nothing about this dance that would echo the intimate connection evident between the couple she had watched on the grounds below.

  "Shall I hum?" Ian asked, his lips carefully arranged now in a smile.

  He had hummed that day. That day. When what she felt for him was new and unexplored and her anticipation of its fulfillment was a tantalizing expectancy that existed only in her own heart, secret and guarded. And in the intervening months, instead of the fulfillment she had hoped for, there had been nothing between them but betrayal.

  The caustic knowledge of her father's. And then Travener's. And if she did nothing to break the hold those had taken...

  Ian was still waiting, she realized, her left hand resting lightly on his shoulder and her right trembling in his. He was waiting for permission to hum. Waiting for her to take the first step. Waiting to do, once again, whatever she asked of him.

  Reality and illusion... And she knew with a sudden and blinding clarity that this was not the way. The waltz she had watched had been Dare and Elizabeth's illusion. Their reality. It was not hers. Nor was it Ian's.

  Theirs was more down-to-earth. More practical. It was the strength of a good man's hand, always there in the terrifying darkness. It was forgiveness. Endurance without complaint.

  From somewhere within the cherished memories of each moment she had spent with Ian Sinclair came the reminder of her own beloved reality. Chilblains, porridge, running noses, and dragging hems. And if she did nothing...

  She freed her fingers from his and stepped back, putting even more distance between them. He made no effort to hold her, releasing her hand at its first movement. And still he waited, with nothing but compassion in his eyes.

  "I saw how you looked at Elizabeth," she said.

  His eyes narrowed slightly as his head tilted. "Elizabeth?"

  "She is carrying your brother's child." She wasn't sure why she had begun this way, but now that she had... "And I know that eventually you, too, will surely want sons of your own."

  She watched his face, trying to gauge his reaction. He was so controlled, especially since they had returned from Scotland, that she had known she would see only those involuntary physical responses no one could hide. The slight dilation of his pupils. The reactive working of the muscle in his throat as he swallowed against an emotion he wouldn't express. And they were all there.

  She let the silence build again, hoping he would fill it, but when he did, it was nothing she had expected.

  "I told you that you need never think of that again."

  Never think of sons? She, who had confessed how much she wanted them. And then she realized that wasn't what he meant. He meant never think of what Travener had done. And yet...

  "I don't know what to do," she said. "I don't know what you want me to do."

  "About what?" He reached out and took her hand, holding it in both of his, just as he had throughout that first endless day and night they had spent together. "Anne?"

  "About this. About our marriage. You have to tell me what I must do."

  "What you must do?" he repeated, watching her face. "You must do nothing. You don't have to be afraid."

  "I'm not afraid. Travener's dead. He can't hurt us again. I know that."

  The sudden stillness was brittle. And painful.

  "I meant of me."

  Of me. For a fraction of a second those words made no sense. It was only when she put them together with what he had said before...

  "Afraid of you? You think... You think I'm afraid of you?" His eyes answered her, and at what was in them, her heart began to beat too fast. "How can you think I'm afraid of you?"

  That was exactly what he believed, she realized, her eyes searching his again. And as she did, hope began to grow.

  "You thought I was afraid, and I thought..." She shook her head, fighting tears.

  "What did you think?" he asked, his voice still kind.

  "That you couldn't forget."

  The question moved behind his eyes. "Forget Travener?"

  "What he did. You were so..." She shook her head, a hundred images running through her brain, all of them requiring a reinterpretation in light of this revelation. "You never touched me. Never looked at me. Really looked at me. I thought that was because when you did, that room—and what happened there—was all you saw."

  "No," he said, the word abrupt. And unequivocal.

  "No?" she repeated softly.

  "What I see in that room is only my failure. You were entrusted to me, and I failed to keep you safe."

  There was no doubting the guilt in his eyes or in his voice.

  "And how long must you be punished for that?" she asked, understanding him enough to know that nothing she could say would convince him that what had happened that night hadn't been his failure, but Travener's. "How long must I?"

  "This isn't—" he began, and then he stopped the words, his eyes still holding hers.

  "What Travener did has nothing to do with you. And nothing to do with this," she said, her hand tightening over his. "I know you don't love me. And the reasons you married me are very far from those on which a real marriage should be based, but we are married. And there is nothing now we can do to change that."

  She hesitated, giving him a
chance to refute what she had said. He said nothing, his face very still, his eyes on hers.

  "What I feel for you," she went on, forcing the words past the emotion that crowded her throat, "what I have always felt for you, is enough to sustain any marriage. If you will only give me a chance. I know that you think—"

  "You have no idea what I think," he said.

  And there was something different in his eyes. Not kindness. Not even compassion. Or comfort.

  "I know...what you told me."

  He nodded, and then he brought her hand to his lips, his mouth brushing over her fingers. "And what I told you..."

  She waited, almost afraid. "Is there someone else?" she asked finally. "Was that a lie?"

  "Not that."

  "Then..."

  "Another failure. Forgive me. I have proven a most unsatisfactory guardian, it seems." His voice had lightened, and the stern lines in which his face had been set seemed at odds with what he said. "I promise you I shall endeavor to be a better husband."

  Her throat tightened with the promise of that, and with what was in his eyes.

  "And you must never believe I didn't love you," he said. "Nothing could be further from the truth. It seems as if in trying to protect you..." And instead of finishing that equally promising revelation, his voice trailed off.

  "I don't understand." She didn't. She had come to offer him a compromise. And instead...

  He smiled at her, and then he pulled her to him. Whatever doubts she had died as his mouth closed over hers. There was nothing tentative about his kiss. And nothing within it of pity or compassion. Or even of compromise. This was desire, decently denied, and only now, with her permission, given expression.

  Despite her experience with Travener's perverted version of this, Anne responded, pushing aside whatever trepidation she might have felt at placing herself into a man's control. This was Ian, and there was nothing to fear in his arms. It seemed she had always known that.

  Whatever dark memories she had brought to this embrace would be denied, buried and eventually forgotten, in the tenderness with which he treated her. A tenderness she knew she could trust not to be overwhelmed, not even by his passion.