“Habit.” He shrugged, still staring at nothing. “Self-preservation. Self-defense.”
“What people do not know, they cannot use against you?”
“Something like that.” His eyes slanted begrudgingly to hers then focused outward again. That was when she noticed he was watching a ragged boy slipping over the melted puddles on the ice a few yards away. He was swaddled in so many filthy old coats that his body resembled a barrel balanced on two skinny little legs. Without skates, the unyielding wooden soles of his too-big boots slid here and there with every determined step as he hawked a tray of hot chestnuts to warm the revelers. For several moments Galahad watched the lad struggle but doggedly refuse to give up selling his wares and earning those next few pennies, which were probably the difference between eating and not. “He’s probably more of the real me than all those others you just described. At least inside…” His gloved hand splayed across his chest as if he could still feel that lost boy within. “And that’s not someone I want the world to see anymore.”
She had suspected it, but her heart still bled. “How long were you on your own for?”
“Eight long years.”
“Oh, Galahad…” She hugged his arm, wishing she could make it all better and devastated that she couldn’t. “I’m so sorry…”
“It’s the past, Venus.” Typically, he withdrew, stiffening as he tried to shrug it off. “And undoubtedly best left there. It was what it was—I survived—so I choose not to dwell on it.”
“Don’t you?” As he clearly wanted to skate again—preferably as far away from this conversation as was possible—she took the lead and refused to allow him to lose her. “Mine wasn’t anywhere near as bad as yours and yet I still do.” Perhaps some of her own truths might loosen some of his? “I don’t dwell exactly, I just know that it influences my decisions and impacts my judgments. Like last night. I fully expected The Den to be the sort of depraved place where my father lost all ourrent money while he drank himself into oblivion. I do not mind admitting that it unsettled me when it wasn’t.”
The Claypoles whizzed past laughing and waving and dragging several others in their wake, so Vee paused long enough to do the same, before she trusted Galahad with something as important as he had Billy with his takings. Hoping that her honesty might coax out a confidence in return to help clear a path between them, because she was all done with the barricades—both his and hers. All done with fighting against that invisible pull between them. So done with trying to hate him and denying what both her heart and her head clearly wanted. “Similarly, and entirely because I was deprived of the secure, traditional sort of family that I read about in fairy tales and I craved growing up, I’ve set my cap to all manner of unworthy men in the vain hope that one of them would bethe oneto make my own fairy tale with. It’s a pathetic trait that has caused nothing but humiliation and heartache, but one I have been working hard to correct. Especially since Lord Argyll.”
He didn’t seem at all surprised by the substance of that confession, more that she had made it so openly. “How do you explain Lord Dorchester?”
“Habit.” As his previous words fit perfectly, she used them. “Self-preservation. Self-defense. Thanks to my stupid name, my lack of blue blood, and some inconvenient and exuberant meddling from Mother Nature—” She briefly touched her own chest. “—I have always been the sort of woman men desire but do notwant. At least not in the forever sort of way, so I decided to listen to my seemingly sensible, bookish head for a change and not my foolish, needy, gullible heart. Lord Dorchester was—is—a very different kettle of fish from every other gentleman of my acquaintance as he is the only one who has never shown the slightest bit of desire for me as a woman.”
He regarded her without outright bewilderment. “Thatappealed?”
“After Lord Argyll, yes. Very much so.”
“Yet I still caught you re-readingMuch Ado—a story about unrequited love and longing coming good.”
“Clearly, I’d convinced my head, but not my foolish, romantic heart.” She laughed bitterly at the ridiculousness of it. Of the ludicrousness of her own warped logic and contradictions. Contradictions that she hadn’t even realized until he had pointed them out. The overwhelming urge to read about her favorite fictional couple to fill the void left by her lack of feelings for Dorchester should have told her that he was wrong long before she had been forced to acknowledge it. “What can I say, Galahad? I have always been a dreamer and the worst judge of a man’s character, and as a result I’ve always ended up with my stupid heart disappointed or broken in some way.” Nerves at laying herself so bare made her tummy flutter and constricted her throat, and yet, bizarrely, she wanted to entrust him with her whole self. Needed him—just him—to be the one to know the real her completely. “That in turn has made me cynical, and that also taints my judgment. I no longer trust myself to see things clearly. I hear alarm bells everywhere nowadays and always think the worst. Second-guess myself at every juncture and yet still take it all to heart. Further proof that we all dwell on the past in some shape or form and allow it to hold us back—even from what our hearts most want.” She let go of his arm to stare at him levelly, daring him to be as honest with her as she had been with him. Daring him to trust her with his truth, too. Willing him to take that leap. That gamble. “Or do you disagree?”
He skated around her as he pondered it. Or pondered what to say.
Or more likely pondered how to avoid answering at all.
The silence stretched and she felt foolish. So self-conscious, her eyes dropped to her toes and would have stayed there had his finger not tipped up her chin. He withdrew it immediately the second her wary gaze met his equally wary one, yet the potency of that brief touch lingered on her flesh even when he put several feet of distance between them.
“You do know that it is possible to desire a woman and want her at the same time, don’t you?” His smile was cautious as his eyes raked her up and down, so thoroughly she felt it everywhere. First from the front,then behind her back as he continued to glide around her, assessing her, like a fighter in the boxing ring sizing up a feared opponent.
“What has that to do with the past influencing our futures?” She was going to get a straight answer out of him if it killed her. Or completely humiliated her. Or she died of utter mortification. Or her heart made a total fool out of her yet again because she’d got it all wrong.Please, God, I hope I haven’t.“For once in your wretched life, be honest with me.”
“Well, if I’m being honest…” He shrugged but held her gaze. “I’m sorry for every idiot who ever broke your heart. I’m sorry about your name and all the problems it has caused you over the years, but I have to confess that I like it. It suits you. And I, for one, shall be forever grateful to Mother Nature for her exuberant meddling, as she did a fine job on you, Venus. A mighty fine job.” The emotive green eyes darkened as he dropped his voice to a silky, private murmur and skated much too close. “So fine that if I’m being brutally honest, I find myself desiring you more than I’ve ever desired any woman in my life—and you know already that I want you. I’ve never been any good at hiding that.”
Her irritation was instinctive, because he was using her confession and his own lust as an excuse to deflect again. To avoid having a meaningful conversation about himself. About them. To hide, yet again, behind his beloved deceptive showmanship.
Or so the jaded cynic in her thought, until the molten heat in his unusual green eyes morphed into something else.
Something more honest and vulnerable than she had ever seen there, but more enticing somehow as a result.
“But what you might not know…” His feet slowed and his body drifted toward hers braced, as if heading into battle. “What I’ve never let you see before now… never even dared admit properly to myself before now because it scares the hell out of me…” His index finger found hers and reverently grazed it as he swallowed. “… is that I’ve honestly always wanted you in the forever sort of way, Venus.” His reluctant smile was one of resignation. Of fear and uncertainty. Ofsurrender. “And it turns out I’m just not strong enough to fight that anymore.”
Was that a declaration?
It felt like one, but she needed clarity. Needed all the answers. All the secrets. Needed to know him properly before she listened to her foolish, needy heart again. Knew somehow that this man, this complex and frustrating man, didn’t so much have the power to break her heart as to possess it completely.
“Galahad, I…”
“Get off the ice!” The bloodcurdling shout from beyond caused immediate panic to erupt all around them. “It’s breaking up!”
Chapter Twenty-Five
