Page 91 of Lord Garson's Bride
“I don’t change,” he said flatly, even as with reluctance, he visited the shrine in his heart where a beautiful black-haired woman would always reign. Did he love Morwenna? Of course he did. “‘Loyalty unto death,’ remember?”
Jane’s expression didn’t alter. She still looked like she faced the gallows. But somehow he knew that a light inside her had flickered into darkness. She twined her hands together at her waist, so tightly that her knuckles turned bloodless. “That’s what I thought.”
Gradually he found his feet in this bizarre conversation, and his brain began to link the facts together. He should be relieved she wasn’t confessing to taking a lover—by God, he was. But he found no consolation otherwise. “What’s all this about, Jane?”
She lowered her shoulders and met his eyes. The misery he read there made him flinch. “I thought perhaps if you didn’t love Morwenna anymore, there might be a chance you could come to love me.”
He recoiled as if she’d cursed him. His foreboding, building over weeks, gathered into a great crashing wave of denial. He bloody well didn’t want to hear what came next, although he had a queasy feeling he already knew what that would be. “That’s damned—”
“Because I’ve gone and done a really stupid thing, Hugh.” She went on as if he hadn’t interrupted. Then she spoke the words that forever dissolved the fragile, spun sugar confection of their life together. “I’ve broken every promise I ever made. I’ve fallen in love with you.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Jane observed Hugh’s appalled reaction to her stumbling confession without surprise. Which didn’t stop a great tattered rift splitting open across her heart. It was the nature of love to hope, even when nothing justified that hope. But she couldn’t mistake his horror at hearing of her feelings for him.
Because he’d loathe hurting her, he swiftly masked his immediate rejection. Compassion softened his handsome features, and he stepped forward and reached out for her. “Jane, I’m so sorry.”
She stumbled away, bumping into the wall behind her. “No, don’t touch me.”
He flinched, but at least he lowered his hands to his sides. “I said when I married you that…love wasn’t on the table.”
Her stomach clenched to hear the way he could barely pronounce the word “love” in her presence.
“Yes, you did.” It was an effort to keep her voice steady. Her eyes were dry enough to sting. She felt as desiccated and lifeless as desert sand.
He made a bewildered gesture. “Are you sure?”
“Don’t insult me,” she said sharply.
“It’s just—”
“It would be so much easier if I didn’t love you, I know.” She swallowed to relax a throat tight enough to hurt. “I’ve spent weeks telling myself the same thing. But it’s no use.”
He paused before he spoke, and she saw he started to connect the clues to how she’d changed. “This is why you’ve been…distant.”
During these last weeks, they’d come together over and over, but he was right. Now she had something precious and fragile to protect, caution smothered all generosity and openness. And without generosity and openness, the joy they’d found in each other had swiftly shriveled away. “Yes.”
“What can I do? I hate to think of you being unhappy.”
She dredged up the courage to speak the truth. “You could love me back.”
In all this vile, agonizing morning, the vilest, most agonizing moment was this, when his face inexorably closed against her. “That’s not possible.”
She spread her hands and spoke urgently, knowing she wasted the effort. “We could be so happy together, Hugh, if you let go of your hopeless longing. We get on well. We want each other. We have a similar view on the world. Together we can build a fulfilled life, a family, a future where we grow old together in deepening affection and respect.”
“Nothing stops us from having those things, Jane.” Hugh looked dreadful, stricken and broken, but she gave him credit for trying. “You know how fond I am of you.”
She bit back a whimper. “Fond” was a brutal punch to her solar plexus. “We can’t have those things if I love you, and you love someone else.”
His hands bunched at his sides. “You’re asking too much.”
“No, I’m not.” Her voice hardened. “My fault is that I didn’t ask for enough in the beginning.”
Anger darkened his features. “Are you saying I cheated you?”
He had. He still did. But she saw he’d never understand.
“I was wrong to believe that I could live without love.”
