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“Do what you will,” he said. Then his expression softened. “You should go to bed. No doubt you’ll want to be fresh for your first morning in your new studio.”

She watched him snatch up his jacket and stride out of the room. The sudden quiet pressed around her, leaving her with nothing but her doubts to keep her company.

She pulled the sheet up around her neck, not wanting to stay in his bed any longer yet loath to leave it because that would confirm that this entire evening had been one misguided failure. He’d made her feel like a fool, coming to him as brazenly as she had. She should’ve known that he had no interest in indulging in a wedding night when he hadn’t joined her in her chamber. Instead, she’d found him reading old letters and drinking in the near darkness of his room.

The letters. Her gaze flicked over to them where they lay forgotten on the side table next to an empty glass. Why brood over letters on their wedding night? What was he trying to remember?

Chewing the inside of her lip, she stared at the stack of slightly crinkled paper. She knew she shouldn’t look at them, but she wanted to know. Gavin, the man she knew better than anyone else, had suddenly become a mystery to her. If this marriage was going to survive, she needed whatever insight she could glean to clean up the mess of that evening.

Slipping off the bed, she padded over to the table, stopping to don her dressing gown along the way. Carefully, she picked up the first letter in the stack and tilted it to read by the light of the dying fire.

My love,

I wait every hour with bated breath, hoping for one of your letters to arrive. You can hardly understand how it tears at my heart that we’re apart. The longing unmans me, but when I see your script on an envelope I’m full again and there’s hope knowing you think of me while I’m away.

Her shaking hand dropped to her lap. They were love letters. Gavin’s love letters, undated and signed only with a single “G” at the bottom, no doubt returned to him at the end of the affair by the object of his affection in exchange for her own letters.

She picked up another one.

My dearest heart,

I depart from Cambridge tomorrow, and each hour that brings me closer to you is precious.

Another began:

My love,

I was a fool to think being away at university and separated from you was the cruelest kind of torture. My exquisite torment is now knowing you are so near, yet I’m unable to see you as the whim strikes me. In truth, I would have you with me always, for my love is hardly satiated in those quick, fleeting moments when we are together.

I know we must hide our love . . .

Hide their love? She scanned the rest of the letter, searching for a reason, but there was none.

She drew in a shaky breath. The night of their engagement he’d told her he’d loved once, and now she held the evidence of that lost love.

She picked up the last letter, ashamed to be looking at Gavin’s private correspondence but unable to stop herself.

My darling,

I must see you. Although I would never be so presumptuous as to hope your affections could ever reach the depths of mine, neither can I bear the thought of losing you.

I will selfishly tell you that you hold my happiness in your hands, and I implore you to reconsider my question.

—G

The raw pain and longing in these words tugged at her. He’d loved once. Deeply. His heart had already been won and lost. What did she have to offer him other than a marriage of convenience necessitated by a foolish mistake?

She’d hardly paused to stop and think about what she’d done, dragging him down into this mess as she tried to save herself. And now she’d been rejected, the woman he didn’t want.

He was right. Things needed to go back to the way they had been. They might be sharing a home, but that was all. He was her friend, and she’d do well to remember that fact.

Still, even as she reshuffled the letters into their original order and replaced them exactly where she’d found them, she couldn’t help feeling raw and more than a little ridiculous. Back in her room, she went to her vanity drawer, removed a brass key, and locked the door that should’ve led to him.

Gavin let his head hit the padded back of the carriage with a dull, unsatisfying thump. Then he did it again and again. And again.

He needed to get out of that house and away from her. The irony that he was escaping in a carriage Mrs. Sullivan had helped Ina hire until they were established enough to purchase one wasn’t lost on him. No matter where he looked, Ina was all around him.

He’d had plans for their wedding night—or rather, plans for what wasn’t to happen on their wedding night. He’d wished her good night at her bedroom door, forcing his feet down the hall even though every part of him wanted to stay.