Page 12 of Miss Barton's Mysterious Husband
Within a week they’d decided to marry. Within another week, they’d hatched a plan to elope together in secret after the house party finished.
“Why did we run off together? We could have called the banns.”
A bleak smile twisted his lips as he shifted in the wooden chair. “By heaven, you really have forgotten. I was mad for you, and we’d come very close to losing control a couple of times. Lord Hibberd wasn’t much of a chaperone. You and I managed to spend a lot of time alone.”
She hadn’t blushed in ages. Roland’s reappearance in her life seemed to have her blushing every five minutes. “The summerhouse.”
“And the boatshed, and the woods near the lake.”
“And that little room off the dining room.”
“You were lucky you came to the wedding a virgin.”
And, oh, that first night together after their dash to the Scottish border and their quick wedding, conducted by the village blacksmith at Gretna.
After all their naughty escapades on the Hibberd estate, Charmian hadn’t been afraid, but she’d certainly been nervous. Roland had been careful and patient with her, and soon she’d been flying among the stars.
To her shame, when she left him, she hadn’t just missed him, she’d missed having a man in her bed. Roland had awoken a volcanic passion inside her, shown her a dazzling new world of sensual pleasure. Then that glorious discovery was snatched away from her with agonizing abruptness.
Self-disgust flattened her lips. “I couldn’t keep my hands off you.”
“That’s nothing to be ashamed of. I couldn’t get enough of you either, if you recall.”
She could most definitely recall. She’d recalled for three desolate, solitary years.
“We were in love,” he said. More of that heartbreaking past tense.
She stood and sent him a direct look. “Then we had that terrible fight.”
His expression was stark. “And you went away.”
She made an apologetic gesture. “The things we said…”
“We could have come through.”
“If I’d stayed and hadn’t been such a coward,” she said in a dull voice. “I ran for home faster than a rabbit runs for its burrow.”
He didn’t smile. “I should have followed straightaway. I was a fool, too bullheaded to know what I was losing.”
“I thought you would come after me,” she mumbled, looking down at her hands performing a distressed dance at her waist.
She couldn’t endure looking at Roland. She’d spent all this time convinced that he hadn’t suffered. Sometimes she’d been convinced that he didn’t spare her a thought. How else to explain the long silence? In her imagination, he transformed into an unfeeling monster who had forgotten their marriage as easily as he’d forget a rainy day a year ago.
But much as she’d liked believing that she was in the right during their long separation, it was impossible when she looked into his face and read the marks of weariness and remorse and misery. The same things that she saw in her own eyes when she could bear to look in a mirror.
“I did,” he said grimly.
Yes, he had, after her mother sent her away to work at the Spotted Fox. “I was in such a taking, my mother said I needed something to keep me busy. She was sick of me staring out the window all day or curling up on my bed and crying.”
“Charmian…”
Hearing about her grief upset him. He turned waxen, and those deep lines between his nose and mouth sharpened, making him look suddenly older.
She made a helpless gesture, wondering where her pride had gone, but not missing it. “I couldn’t eat and I couldn’t sleep. I was in tatters after we parted. My mother was genuinely afraid that I might do something desperate.”
“I’m sorry.” She couldn’t doubt that he meant it.
“So am I. Especially when—”
