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Because she understood, as they all did, what the gift meant to Percival. He’d nothing of his beloved mama’s to remember her by. His father had seen to that. All that remained of Diana’s possessions was the chess set. Worth a fortune.
Brushing away her own tears, Esme met her husband’s bored gaze.
His lordship yawned. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “It’s been a long day. I had better say good night.”
“You make me feel ashamed,” Esme said.
Varian was leaning back upon the pillows, his hands clasped behind his head. Through half-closed eyes he studied his wife, who sat cross-legged on the bed beside him. “I suppose you can’t help it,” he said. “I am so noble, so inexpressibly saintly. Naturally, you adore me. Worship the ground I walk upon. I am, after all, the great light of the heavens, your beautiful god.”
Her wistful green gaze traveled from his face down over his naked torso, then back to her folded hands. She sighed. “It is true. This is how I feel.”
“Sometimes. In your rare moments of tranquility.”
“It is not easy to be tranquil about you. I look at you, then I look at myself ...” She hesitated.
“And?”
She made a small, helpless gesture. “I do not understand why God would put together two people so different.”
“You think the Almighty has made some sort of ghastly mistake and, being all-wise, must eventually correct it?”
She moved uneasily. “Yes, I think this sometimes, and it makes me anxious.”
“It makes you crazy sometimes,” he corrected. “It’s made you think idiotic things: that I don’t want to live with you, for instance, and that I don’t want your children. However, I mean to make you see the error of your ways.”
She lifted her head. “Then you will take me to Mount Eden?”
He nodded.
“And—and we shall make a family?” She blushed.
He shrugged. “I have no choice. You find all prevention methods thoroughly revolting. I shall not wound your tender sensibilities again—or my own,” he added half to himself.
“But do you want them?” she persisted. “They may…it is possible they will be like me. I would try my best to prevent that, but there is no recipe. One cannot make children as one does a poultice.”
His mouth twitched. “Are you trying to persuade me or talk me out of it?”
“I thought perhaps, when you imagined children, you would picture sons in your own image. Men often do,” she said defensively.
He nodded. “I’ve imagined that. It fills me with inutterable horror. Fortunately, it is scientifically impossible, I believe, to get children exactly like me, even if I could make them all by myself, which is an even greater scientific impossibility. Since I must make them with you…”
He eyed her consideringly. “You’re rather small, and horribly bad-tempered. Still, you did promise to grow, and on the whole, I tend to find your temper exciting. The shouting and vituperation, I mean,” he clarified. “Not the homicidal or suicidal aspects. Fortunately, if I keep you very busy breeding and attending to my every whim, you won’t have time for violence.”
“Do not tease.” She nudged him with her knee. “I am not so savage as that.”
“I only worry that you’ll find domesticity boring.”
“Tsk. You do not understand.” She edged nearer. “There are other ways besides battle and blood feud to test one’s courage. This day you fought like a brave warrior. Yet all the days and weeks before you fought as well, a greater struggle in many ways.” She laid her hand over his heart. “That is the battle I truly wished to fight, Varian...by your side.”
The touch warmed him. The words made him ache. “I know,” he said gently. “Unfortunately, I was determined on martyrdom. I went after redemption with a vengeance—trying to prove myself worthy, I suppose, of the wonderful creature I married.”
She drew her hand away. “I am not wonderful. Ask my father. All the same, I can—”
“Wonderful,” he said firmly. “Why do you find it so easy to face harsh truths and so hard to accept the pleasant ones? When I’ve anything tender or sentimental to say, you oblige me to camouflage it with witticisms and silly jokes. I wouldn’t mind, if only you didn’t keep missing the punch line.”
“The point of the joke, you mean?”
“The point of everything.” Sitting up fully, he took her hands in his. “I love you,” he said, “as you are. “
“Nay, you need not say—”
“Listen to me,” he said.
She bowed her head.
“Do you recall the night on the way to Poshnja, when I said you were the flame and I the moth?” he asked.
She started to shake her head, Albanian style, then managed an awkward nod. “Yes, I recall.”
The small gesture, toward him, toward the England that was her home now, nearly undid him. But he was determined make her understand, and believe, fully.
“I said you were always bursting into flame.” He twined his fingers with hers. “You set things on fire inside me. Wishes, dreams, needs I’d hidden so deep I hardly realized they existed. They were like dead wood, kindling. You set the spark to them.”
She kept her gaze fixed on their twined hands. “That night, you meant desire.”
“Desire drove me, yes. At the time, that was all I comprehended. It kept me with you when my old self urged me to run away as I always had, from every difficulty. From tomorrow. From life itself, I think.”
“You are not the only one who has wished to run away,” she said guiltily. “Yet you have not done so once in the time I have known you, while I have, several times.”
“Not to escape your problems, but to meet them head on. To fight for honor, independence. Last night, this morning, you were fighting for your rights, your marriage. Forme.” , “I caused you distress, all the same.”
“Perhaps that was nec
essary.” His soft chuckle made her look up. “It seems I can only learn the hard way,” he explained. “Because of you, I’ve learned I can fight not only unscrupulous rivals, but circumstances as well.
Whether I want to or not. Mostly not, it would seem. I’ve been kicking and screaming the whole way. Because it has been horrible, Esme.”
“Yes, horrible,” she sadly agreed.
“And glorious,” he added. “As you are. As life is. You think the Almighty made a mistake. I think some angel sent you.” He released her hands and, smiling, stroked her cheek. “One who’d evidently read Childe Harold and decided it would do better transformed to comedy.”
“Childe Harold?” Esme moved his hand away. “You speak of Lord Byron’s poem? The one about Albania?”
“Albania is only part of a long tale about an unhappy wanderer. The night in Bari when Percival lied about the black queen, he’d been reading the first canto.”
Closing his eyes, Varian quoted, “ ‘For he through Sin’s long labyrinth had run, Nor made atonement when he did amiss, Had sigh’d to many though he loved but one, And that loved one, alas! could ne’er be his.’ “ He bent to whisper in her ear, “Who does that sound like to you?”
She shivered and drew away. “Nay, that is not the whole passage. Percival lent me his book weeks ago. I do not recall every word, but I remember it goes on to describe how the man would corrupt the girl he loved and then betray her with others while he spent all her money.”
Varian opened his eyes. “You know it, do you? Did you also know that your aunt told Percival I was like Childe Harold?”
“Perhaps she saw you so. But with me you have not wandered aimlessly about, sulking and acting tragically.”
“Because the mischievous angel decided my pilgrimage would be different and put Percival in my way. All that’s happened since the night he lied about the black queen—every conflict, every fear and heartache—all of it was necessary, all part of a journey of discovery.”
Drawing her back onto the pillows with him, he threaded his fingers through her hair. “Most important, on this journey we discovered each other,” he went on.
