He’d given that gift to her. Held it safe through the years, much like he’d held her safe and protected.
If it took him until the sky fell, he’d make sure she understood that would never stop. He’d protect her and her sweetness with his very soul, if that was what it took.
She turned away, tucking her arms so closely about her middle that her shoulders bowed. He didn’t like seeing her like that, and particularly didn’t like being the one to have caused it. The slightly scandalized, very amused look worn by Sera’s friend had been too much for him to withstand. He’d laughed.
Perhaps he’d have to buy Sera a pretty bauble to apologize. He’d heard of diamonds bought and rubies gifted to appease feminine sensibilities before, though he’d never thought he’d be in the market for such a purpose.
He rather liked the idea.
He made no noise as he walked up behind her, but the line of her neck curved further anyway. Though some women would show the effects of being packed in an overcrowded ballroom for hours, Sera still smelled mostly like her flowers and a little bit like him. Like she’d floated above it all, except for her time with him.
Curling around her from behind was easy. Aligning his arms with hers when she held them so rigidly was more difficult. He rested his chin on her shoulder. A lock of silken hair brushed his cheek. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“In the morning, I’m going to Victoria’s house.”
He smiled against the tender skin under her ear. “That’s fine. You don’t have to tell me your every coming and going. You’re a grown woman.”
The way she refused to look at him began to send trickles of worry all the way down to the soles of his feet. She pushed free of his arms. “No. I mean I’m staying there.”
“For a visit?” He didn’t want to understand, but a niggle worried at his brain. The most base part that often warned him of danger in dark alleys. “Why bother, if you’re both simply in London? Or is she going to the country for a while?”
Strain marked a white circle around her mouth. “I can’t be around you.”
“Pardon?”
“You…” She drew in a shaky breath, her eyes fluttering closed for a second. “I can’t be here anymore.”
“You’re my wife,” he said. He’d earned the right to keep her by that title. To claim her. He’d be damned if that meant easily letting her go.
“I know. I—I think we made a mistake.”
“You what?” Marrying her had been one of the smartest things he’d ever done. He lunged forward, but she jerked back a step. Sweet Christ, that hurt. He held out a hand, palm up. “Sera, I would never hurt you.”
“I know. I know, trust me on that.”
He spread both hands wide though he wanted nothing more than to take her within them. Feel his palms on her skin to know she was still his. “Then why are you doing this?”
“I have to,” she whispered, as if that would make a single lick of sense.
Only an hour ago, he’d felt as close to her as he’d ever been. They’d practically been inside each other’s heads. The tender way she’d stroked her fingers over his nape after they’d made love… Hell, the very tears tracked over her cheeks.
There was no way he’d misread that. They’d been nearly one.
He scraped his fingers through his hair. “I don’t understand.”
“Tonight…what we did. In the parlor.”
“I already apologized for laughing. I’m sorry Lady Victoria caught us.”
“But you’re not sorry it happened.” Though he wouldn’t have even thought it possible, her eyes went darker. Wider.
“How can I be? The way we move together… It’s amazing, Sera. Better than anything I’ve ever had in my life. Brighter and more pure than anything I’ve ever touched.”
“It’s not pure, Fletcher. It’s wrong.” Her voice had never been so cold before. Empty. “It’s not how married couples are supposed to behave.”
He wanted to fucking howl. Any outlet for the rage. “Who the hell gets to dictate what happens between you and I?”
“Society. Everyone.”
His hands curled into fists, but there was nothing he could beat. Unless it was perhaps himself, for being so goddamned foolish as to think he could keep the two halves of himself separate. To think that he could earn her, even with ten years of focus. “Bullshit.”
“You might not like it, Fletcher Thomas, but there are rules which separate humans from beasts. Rules that protect us.”
He heard the unspoken addition, that he was one of the beasts, not the humans. He’d be damned if he would be the only one walking out of there wounded. Not when she was filleting him so precisely. “Rules that hide you, that is.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” Her gaze flicked away. Dark lashes shielded her thoughts.
“You and your precious rules and protocols. You blame them on everyone else, but it’s really about keeping me out. Me and everyone else in the world. Because you’re afraid.”
“I’m not. I’m not abnormal for wishing to do things the right way.”
He curved a hand under her jaw. Holding back his full force made his fingers tremble. “No, you’re not abnormal. No one ever said so. No one but you.” His thumb brushed over her cheek, following the tracks of her earlier tears. They were dry now. “What does that tell you?”
“It tells me that no one but me sees my weaknesses.”
He pushed back over her head, winding his fingers into her hair, which was starting to come loose from the evening’s strenuous activities. “You’ve no weaknesses. None that I can see. You’re perfect.”
“That’s half the problem as well. No one is perfect. You don’t see me, not as I really am.” After twisting her hair from his grip, she stalked away to the dressing table.
Fletcher stayed where he was in the middle of the room. There were only so many times a man could offer a woman the world without being crushed when she tossed it back. Even so, he’d still chase her. Stalk her. Because he was the beast she thought him, at least when it came to her.
“Does it matter?” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “I love you. I love your cool unflappability and your fire, both at once.”
“You can’t have both at once.”
“Is that your problem with what happened? That I pushed you into showing your true self?”
“Yes. No.” She pressed trembling fingers against her eyes. “Things like that can’t happen in public.”
“We weren’t in public. We were in a parlor.” Semantics, he knew, but he’d take absolutely any advantage he could find.
“With the door unlocked,” she said dully.
He couldn’t help the sudden smile that tucked up one side of his mouth. The memory was just that delicious. “Terribly sorry. I didn’t anticipate what direction we’d take.”
“Even now you don’t care. If it hadn’t been Victoria who’d interrupted… We’d have been ruined.”
He couldn’t give two figs about society beyond what it could give him. But that her voice had turned so raw. His steps were carefully measured as he walked up behind her. His hands hovered for a minute over her shoulders, unsure of his welcome.
When he took her shoulders, his thumbs stroking along the bare skin at the collar of her dressing gown, she didn’t move. Her skin was cold under his touch. Chilled. She turned her head to the side and brushed a soft kiss over his fingers. Even in the middle of such torment, she graced him with her kindness.
“I don’t care,” he admitted. “I’d like to go straight, yes. I’d like to be a part of better society than associating with slum lords, yes. But if I don’t… If I don’t, it won’t break me.”
Her whisper spun out like a thread of gold. “It might break me.”
Implicit in that was everything she wasn’t saying. That what he could offer her—his protection and devotion, the very depths of himself—wasn’t enough. He’d given her everything, over years and years, and none of it was enough. His
breath rasped through his dry throat. “You need them all that badly?”
“I do.”
“You want to be one of those Mayfair toffs, I’ll buy a whole bloody block of the neighborhood. We’ll move into a different house every day of the week.”
Her bottom lip trembled. A single tear ran free from the corner of her eye. “It’s not enough,” she whispered.
She pushed away from his grasp, but he couldn’t stop himself from looping his fingers around her wrist. God, he was a thrice-damned fool for even thinking of this, but he wanted to know… Needed to know.
“Answer me one thing. Do you love me?”
Her slender throat worked. “I’ve never loved anyone more.”
For too short a moment, triumph eased his burdens. He wanted to grab her, kiss her. If he could keep her in bed long enough, they could pretend this night hadn’t happened.
Then she touched her fingertips to his jaw. Their tentative weight combined with the darkness of her eyes told him nothing would be that simple.
Before she even opened her mouth, he knew that she was about to snatch away the one precious thing he’d been allowed near. His world crumbled to gray.
“But that’s not enough either.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Sera curled herself into a small ball of knees and elbows under the coverlet in Victoria’s best guest bedroom. She clenched a silk pillow tassel in hand. The opulent grace of the silver and blue decorations were beautiful. Through her tear-swollen eyes, Sera hardly saw them.
She missed her own bed.
If she were honest with herself, she missed her own bed because it meant waking up with Fletcher within arm’s reach.
She was certain she’d done the right thing. She could hardly get her head together when he was near. He absorbed every bit of her. Every speck of energy she had. It wasn’t right.
Fletcher would always be there for her. Patiently waiting, since he thought he’d paid for that right. But the chasm that separated them both was too large to leap.
Her mother had done that, and look how well it had ended up. Even at the end, the bedtime story she told Sera every night had been about Father sweeping in and taking them away from their hell. By then Sera had been old enough to know that her father wouldn’t want her mother after she’d made her living on her back. Mama’s head had been so in the clouds, she refused to acknowledge the truth.
Sera didn’t lift her face when the door opened, hoping it was only the maid come to stoke the fire. She might bring with her another tray of food, probably at Victoria’s insistence, but she wouldn’t stay to demand that Sera eat it. A good thing since her overstrung nerves meant she couldn’t keep anything down.
The bed dipped, and she knew it wasn’t the maid.
Her eyes would barely peel apart. She rubbed them with her fists like a child.
Lottie and Victoria both sat on the edge of the bed.
Victoria passed a hand over Sera’s head, ordering the tangled locks. “Hello, darling.”
She forced a smile, but it didn’t feel particularly true. More falseness from her. More lack of control. She couldn’t even hide her distress when she ought to be able to present a happy face to the world at all times. “I’m being an awful guest, aren’t I?”
It had been three days since the morning she’d left Fletcher’s house. Her home—no matter how brief it had been. It wasn’t the structure itself that made it her home, it was that Fletcher lived there. He filled it to the very beams with life.
Victoria shook her head. “Don’t worry about such ridiculous things.”
Sera rubbed at her temples with two fingers. “Your mother cares. She’s probably wondering why I haven’t come down for dinner.”
“I’ve told her you’ve had a spat with your husband and that you’re overset.” She giggled quietly. “She told me that she can give you her doctor’s name, and he can treat you for your hysteria.”
Lottie joined in the laughter, though Sera couldn’t. “Maybe you should take her up on the offer. I’ve heard Doctor Teaburry has quite the hands-on approach.”
If she actually thought it might help, Sera might. The idea of anyone else touching her made her skin crawl. It was considered de rigueur for doctors to assist their female patients to climax in order to relieve the pressures that built up in the female mind. When part of Sera’s problem was an overabundance of lust for her husband, so much so that it couldn’t be contained, she didn’t think Dr. Teaburry’s treatment would help.
Lottie took Sera’s hand in both of hers. Her fingers felt so much warmer. “You take all the time you need. When you’re ready, maybe we can help you talk about that awful man.”
Sera shook her head, pressing her cheek into the pillow. “He’s not awful.”
Lottie and Victoria passed a look over her head. Sera rolled her eyes. She was sad and miserable, not blind. “He’s not,” she insisted.
“Then why?” Victoria tried vainly to hold back a smile. “You two certainly seemed happy together the night previous.”
A hot blush stole across her cheeks and burned her ears at being reminded of her folly. “That’s part of the problem…” She struggled to couch it in words that would unburden herself without giving away the private things that should stay between husband and wife. “Fletcher…makes me forget who I am. He overwhelms me.”
Lottie’s lush mouth turned down in a confused frown. “That sounds like a wonderful problem to have in a husband, to me at least.”
Sera laughed helplessly, then rolled to her back. In the new fashion, no hint of canopy concealed the view of the elaborate ceilings. Beautiful white molding decorated the levels. “It’s not. When you think you’re at the verge of losing yourself…it’s downright frightening.”
Lottie twisted and slid back to lean against the headboard. Her hand stroked over Sera’s hair in a soothing rhythm. “I suppose I could understand the fear of losing one’s self. It’s a different sort of madness than my mother’s, yes?”
Sera snuggled her head onto her friend’s lap and nodded. Tears leaked out of her eyes. Lottie’s fine silk dress might be ruined by the salt, but her friend would never complain. Lottie’s mother was notorious for her madness. She alternated between throwing wild parties, one of which had ended with her dancing naked on a tabletop, and bouts of misery that left her locked in her room, sobbing her life away—much like Sera now was.
Lady Vale had the money, blue blood and social connections to keep from being labeled a pariah. As it was, people talked about her behind her back.
Sera was too weak to stand even that.
She swiped at her eyes. “I know you two accept me for being a bastard.”
“Hush, darling,” Victoria cooed. “There’s no reason to call yourself such.”
“It’s the truth.” Part of her problem had always been her inability to say it. “But not everyone else would be so kind. I hold on to my position by a tenuous thread, and even for my rigid control I don’t achieve that much. I’m no ton darling.”
“You’re our darling,” Lottie said with a pale imitation of her normal cheer in automatic defense of her friend.
“But what I have, it’s safe. I don’t mind anonymity. Fletcher makes me risk…everything. Just by existing.”
She had made the right choice. Surely she had. Where they went from here, she had no idea. Divorce wasn’t unheard of, not since the changes in Parliament, but being a divorcee carried with it the same repercussions she risked at Fletcher’s side. Being labeled irredeemably fast. If she and Fletcher lived respectable, separate lives, there was nothing unusual in that.
Even now she had no doubt that if she asked him to settle funds on her, he’d do it instantly. Fletcher lived to give such support to those around him. His very household was made up of rescued riffraff, after all. She’d become just one more charity case he took on. She could accept his charity no longer.
If she’d made such a proper choice, why was her heart shriveling?
She blocked the door as she opened it, so Sera couldn’t see who stood there, but she heard the soft voice. “Terribly sorry to bother you, but the Earl and Countess of Linsley are here.”
“Why ever for?” Victoria asked.
Sera lifted her head from Lottie’s lap. An emotion that wasn’t profound sadness took her for the first time in days. Pure curiosity.
“They’ve asked for Mrs. Thomas.”
Victoria looked over her shoulder. Her eyebrows had nearly climbed into her hairline. “Sera? Would you like me to send them away?”
Sera gave a quiet laugh. Only a duchess’s daughter would think she could send away an earl because a plain missus didn’t wish to speak with him. She struggled to a seated position and wiped her palms across her burning eyes.
“No, no,” she said. “I’ll go down. Please tell them I’ll be a few minutes, however.”
She might as well. The only other thing she had to do was wallow in her misery. That was as unhealthy as the circles she spun with Fletcher.
It took her nearly a half hour to dress and use a cool cloth to ease her swollen face. Whatever caused them to call at the duchess’s house, significantly out of the usual morning visiting hours, would hopefully mean they’d turn a blind eye to making them wait.
As she descended the stairs, Sera worried at the problem from all sides. She had no idea what could cause such an inopportune visit. Obviously word had reached them about her temporary separation from Fletcher, but what that meant, she didn’t know. She had no pull on Fletcher’s business interests or influences on his decisions at all. If their goal was to sway his funds without having to deal with him, they’d be sadly disappointed.
In a small miracle, they’d blessedly not been shown to the parlor of her disgrace with Fletcher. She couldn’t be in that room without remembering his hot kisses or the way he’d filled her. The words he’d poured in her ear with his repeated declarations of his love.
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