It was impossible.
“You are the most incredible woman that I have ever been blessed enough to know, Tessa.”
Tessa hated the way his voice sounded. It was a rejection. It was soft, comforting words to lessen the sting of the heartbreak he was about to inflict on her. She had nobody to blame but herself. She forced herself to smile to keep from crying.
It was the only smile that Leo never wished to see her make ever again.
“High praise, coming from you who has known so very many women,” Tessa lamely attempted to joke but the tension would not break.
“You deserve somebody better – for that exact reason. You deserve somebody free to love you the way that you deserve… and you deserve everything.” Leo spoke softly. Every word felt as if he were pulling his heart directly out of his chest.
Tessa dropped the act – it might be the last chance that she had to do so. “I do not want anyone else.”
Leo swallowed hard against the knot of emotion in his throat. “You will.” The idea of her with anybody else made him feel sick to his stomach. She was his – only his – now and forever. “In time… you will meet someone else who will provide, who will give you everything that you have ever wanted… a house full of children, happiness–”
“I want you,” Tessa insisted boldly. “Only you.”
“I am not the one for you, Tessa,” he lied. It had never been so difficult to lie before. “I am no good for you. You have to believe me.”
A single tear fell down her face before she could stop it. She did not wish for him to see her cry. She did not wish for his, or anybody else’s pity. “No. Why are you doing this? Stop saying these things.”
If only he could go back and react differently to the moment but the second that the words had left her lips – even as a joke – he had nearly lost control of his body. He had nearly swung her about in his arms and shouted for everyone in the house to know of their joy.
At the same time, he wished that she had not said anything at all. Or that they could continue pretending that it was nothing but an unspoken secret between them. But he could not. How could he touch her again without making love to her? How could he continue to live in this half-spoken, limbo state?
When he said nothing, Tessa pushed her emotions down deep. It was an art that she had nearly perfected over the last three years.
“Very well. Perhaps it is best that we refrain from indulging any further. It was only a matter of time before we were discovered anyway. And if I hope to have a husband someday, I ought not to compromise myself any further. Would you not agree?”
Leo nodded, and it was the hardest thing that he had ever done.
“We have a task to complete anyway, and this has just been a distraction. We need to focus on finding Mortimer – and Mortimer alone. Do you concur?”
Leo wanted to protest, but he could not.
“We can keep our distance until things… simmer down, perhaps. I think that would be the very best course of action moving forward. I would even suggest that we only speak to one another in regard to the case.”
“As you wish,” Leo answered.
Tessa tilted her head to the side in confusion. “No, it is not what I wish at all – it is simply what must be.”
“Sorry, I misspoke,” Leo said thickly. He did not consider himself to be an overly emotional person, but standing there and listening to her detach herself further from him with every word she spoke gutted him.
“Good day, Your Grace,” Tessa said finally. She took a step back from him and walked out of the room with her head held high.
* * *
Time passed in a daze. Leo had always heard that such a thing could happen. The floral words of poets and the way that they spoke about time while finding one’s self in the captivity of love and longing had never been something that he had understood before. Perhaps, he told himself, he simply did not wish to understand. Now that he could relate to those words he had always mocked before, he wished to be rid of the pain of it. Leo found himself lamenting the new emotions that held him so very tightly.
It was an acute, special sort of pain to pretend to be happily courting the woman he loved by day and then pretending to be practically strangers by night. Tessa was true to her word, and the only conversation that passed between them in private directly pertained to her theories of what might have happened to Mortimer. It was incredibly inconvenient as all he wished to do was sneak into her bedroom. He had to constantly remind himself that his company would not be welcome. He would not be welcomed this time – certainly nothing like the last time.
He missed her.
She was so close and yet wholly out of his reach. When Leo retired to his room for the third night of Tessa’s silence, his temper got the better of him. He did not like himself in such a state, certainly not when he did not have an outlet for his anger. Tessa’s face would not leave his mind.
“I should go to her. I should take it back,” he muttered to himself. It would spare him from the debate as to whether or not he should throw himself in the cold pond to lower the heat in his blood. Sleep was certainly not an option. If he did not do something quickly, then he would be at risk of wearing a track on the carpet from pacing back and forth.
Leo crossed to his wash basin to splash water on his face in hopes of clearing his mind but was stopped by a letter sitting on the dresser – a letter that certainly had not been there earlier this afternoon. He picked it up and turned it over in his hands, looking for a seal that simply was not there. A special thrill sparked through him. He could not open the letter quickly enough and he consumed the words hungrily.