Page 16 of Better Love Next Time
He looked her over as she stood at the foot of the bed the candelabra shaking in her hold. As if he did not know her. And what he saw, he pitied.
She remembered the scandalous list of acts Anthony had given her. She hurried to the bed and laid her palm against the warm expanse of his thigh.
His gaze flicked down in surprise at her intimate touch. She leaned across the distance between them and slipped her hand farther up his thigh, whispering against his mouth. “Julian, I am your wife. And I wish to be your wife. In all ways.”
He clamped an arm over her left shoulder to halt her, plucked the candelabra from her right hand, and planted it beside the bed.
He extricated her hand from his thigh and contemplated the emerald wedding ring on her finger. “I am sorry, Katherine, but it cannot be. God, I do not want to hurt you. But you will never be my wife in all ways, and if I haven’t made this clear in the past two years, I am at a loss as to how to convince you.”
“What can I do? If I were to please you in bed?—”
He groaned.
“You have been faithful to me,” she said. “This must mean something.”
Cursing, he rolled opposite, coming to his feet with an agile fury. “I have been faithful, but understand what it is. A man keeping his vow. Who struggles against his vow every night. Who often damns the day I saved you. Who wishes—” He paced several feet, stopping in the dark, only his words giving his presence away. “Who wishes to be free.”
Oh God, no.
Her heart tumbled over itself. She nearly retched at the image of Julian free.
But where would retching or weeping get her? She didn’t want pity. Though her life had made her a frequent recipient of it. She wanted his singular confidence gazing down on her, his arms enveloping her, his body upon hers. She wanted him to love her. Love her as he once had.
For months she had searched for a way back to them, but too much a coward, she hadn’t approached him with what she knew was her only chance.
It came out in a rush. “We could make a better life together than this. We could be free together. To follow our old dreams. Dreams that are not too old to reclaim.”
“So now you wish to return to England? To be a shipwright’s wife? An earl’s second son? Who works with his hands? When it wasn’t good enough before?”
She couldn’t see his sneer, but it was there, she knew.
A frisson of defeat coursed up her spine. She knocked it back. “I love you, Julian. I always have.”
“And I do not love you.”
Tears shocked her eyes, plummeting down her face. Angry at herself, she swiped them away.
“I am so very sorry for what I did,” she said.
“Sorry.” He laughed and dropped to the chair beside the empty hearth. “The truth. I am sorry as well. I wish I could give you what you want. But I cannot. It’s gone. For good. And you would not want me to lie to you, would you?”
She stared numbly into the candle flame, unsure if it wavered from the tears still awash in her eyes or a breeze stealing through the open window.
“Know I will,” he said after a great length, “always provide for you. My offer of an allowance and initial settlement remains.”
She searched out the cold comfort of the pearls circling her neck. “You have been a most thoughtful husband.”
She couldn’t keep him to herself. Not with a marriage in name only which she had agreed to. Which he had been perfectly honest about.
He regretted saving her from Lord Staverton, who her father had chosen for his adherence to the secret Catholic faith. What would her life be like as the third wife of a slovenly man over sixty? So much worse. At least, Julian had given her freedom to do as she wished.
What she wished for was unattainable.
Gone for good.
She stiffened her shoulders when she wanted nothing more than to fall to her side and curl into a ball upon the bed. She crossed herself and decided this black sorrow would end, one way or another, by the first of July. The anniversary of her son’s death.
Fetching the candelabra, Kitty walked to where Julian sat with his head in his hands.
