Page 58 of The Winter Husband
He glared at her, the old, baffled, knife-silver glare he used to shoot at her in the early days.
She prodded, “One day more? A week?”
“I’ll take you when it’s safe.” His brows drew together. “I won’t break my promise.”
A chasm yawned inside her.What if I want you to break it?
“Did you think I’d forgotten, Marie?” His voice, gruff. “A man stands by his word, or his word is wind.”
“So you’ll bring me back to Quebec. Just like that.”
“If you want to go home—” he yanked off his hat, tousling his hair “—I’ll see it done.”
She stepped toward the table and seized the back of a chair to keep upright. “Yes, I want to be home.” She swallowed a sob. “More than anything.”
Those words weren’t quite what she meant, she regretted them the moment they left her mouth. The idea of home had changed. Once, home was the manor house she shared with her father, the one with the rope swing in the back yard. Then home became the orphanage, the camaraderie of her friends, and the kindness of the nuns. Now home washere,in this cabin that always smelled like pine, in Lucas’s world of trees, in Lucas’s strong arms.
He stood just inside the door, his stance stubbornly fixed. He might as well be across a sea. His throat worked, like he was trying to summon words. She waited, mentally begging him to speak so she wouldn’t have to. She squeezed her eyes shut, warding off her own faint-heartedness. She’d vowed to be the one confessing. A hundred thousand words pressed behind her throat, but she supposed they all boiled down to one single truth, riding just ahead of tears.
“I’ve been thinking on this, Lucas.”
Stone-cold quiet, her husband.
“For days, weeks, I’ve tried to imagine being back behind the stone walls of my old orphanage.”
How could he just stand there, as straight as a soaring pine?
“E-every time I do,” she stuttered, “those walls turn into pine woods in my mind.”
“That’ll change.” His jaw shifted. “Once you get back to Paris, you’ll forget this place ever existed.”
“How could I ever forget?” She clutched her arms in a vain effort to shield her sore heart. “I love the clear, clean smell of snow. I love the blue of the sky, and the way the river gurgles under the ice. These past months I’ve felt so…alive. Paris is no longer my home.” She braced herself. “My home is with you.”
He shuddered like a pine struck with an ax.
“Are you saying—” he stopped on a sucked-in breath “—you don’t want to leave?”
“Yes.”
The word rang in the air, pure truth.
“You would live here?” His gaze sharpened. “In this lonely place? With me?”
“Not so lonely when I’m in your arms.”
She heard a soft, whooshing sound—his hat, tumbling to the floor. He closed the space between them in two steps and cupped her cheeks.
“Say it.” His fingers pressed into her. “I need to hear it, Marie.”
She’d said so many things. She couldn’t remember half of them, not while Lucas looked at her with such intensity. His astonished expression gave her courage to speak the words she’d feared most, and had saved for last.
“I love you, Lucas.”
Oof.
Her feet left the ground as he hauled her up against him.
“I’d lost hope.” He pressed his forehead against hers. “I thought you didn’t want this. I thought you didn’t want me.”
