“And does it look as if I care for all that?” she exploded before recalling they were surrounded by couples. Spying more than one set of curious gazes on them, she closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. Trying not to focus on the feel of his hands or the gentle swaying as his large body conformed to the tight, square pattern of the dance.
Weariness filled her, until she thought she might burst into tears. She could not do this again, could not work past the grief of him leaving her.
Or rather, she could. She had learned in the past week that she was stronger than she had ever thought. But the very idea of having to battle her way through the pain again had her heart breaking anew.
“Why are you here, Peter?” she whispered, too exhausted down to her bones to manage more.
He seemed to sense the brittleness in her, for when he spoke, his voice was gruff, back to what it had been. Back to what she loved. “I had to see you.”
“Why?”
He blinked, seeming at a loss. Then, “You did not leave for London with Redburn.”
“No.”
“You did not marry him.”
Lenora frowned. It was not a question, yet there was an undercurrent that seemed to beg for an answer. “No. I knew we would not suit. I broke off our engagement.”
Immediately she wanted to bite her tongue. Why had she told him as much? He would not care that yet another of her engagements had failed.
Yet his shoulders, tense up until then, sagged with obvious relief. “I’m glad,” he said in a voice that barely reached her ears for all the noise surrounding them, yet seemed loud to her hungry heart.
“Why?”
The one word, harsh, tearing from her throat, finally broke her from her weary grief, replacing it with a deep anger. How dare he come here and undermine the foundation she was trying to build her new life on? She stopped in the middle of the dance floor, not caring that she was making a spectacle of herself, pulling herself from his arms. About them, couples twirled and spun, a dizzy array of bright colors that made her feel as if she were the center of a riotous kaleidoscope.
“Why are you glad, Peter?” she demanded. “By all accounts, you were more than happy to let me marry Lord Redburn, were more than happy to leave without a word of farewell.”
“I was never happy to leave you,” he rasped.
“Then why did you?” she cried. The words burst from her, startling her with their vehemence. There had been a time she would have curled into herself and apologized for making a scene. But she was through holding in her emotions. And she refused to give any more time to this man who had not wanted her.
She fought back the tears that threatened and glared at him with all the anger that simmered in her before storming across the floor for the side of the room. The dancing couples parted for her like the Red Sea. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”
He let loose a low curse. “Of course it matters.” He followed her, grabbed her arm. “Lenora—”
She threw her arms up, breaking his tentative hold. Panic rearing that, even now, she wanted nothing more than to fall into his arms. “Don’t,” she managed.
His lips pressed together in frustration, but he nodded, his hands curling into fists at his sides. “I never wanted to leave you. But it was the only way I could see.”
“See what?”
“For you to be happy.”
The confession knocked the breath from her. “You thought that by leaving, you were making me happy?”
He didn’t answer, but she could see from the pain that flashed in his eyes, the way his fingers twitched up to his pristine cravat before dropping heavily again to his side, that was exactly what he’d believed.
She felt a softening in the general region of her heart, his unintentional vulnerability affecting her as it always had. She longed to caress the side of his face, to kiss away the self-recrimination that sat heavily on his brow. She swallowed hard, trying to hold herself together by sheer force of will.
Yet she couldn’t sit silently by and watch his torment. “You did not make me happy by leaving, Peter,” she said in a low, pained voice.
Hope flared in his eyes. A dangerous thing, for she was beginning to forget why she should hold him at arm’s length.
Her resolve was decimated by his next words.
“I was a fool, Lenora. I should never have left. I should have fought for you. No matter that I’m big and rough and uneducated. No matter that I don’t deserve you. I should have never let you go so easy.”
