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“Now you know the whole truth,” she continued, her voice hardening. “I’m utterly ruined, barren, and a murderess.” Bending, she picked up her wrapper and draped it back over herself. “So you see, I cannot marry. Ever.”
Chapter Sixteen
The look on his face said it all as he stared at her, his deep blue eyes full of shock, disappointment, and pity.
She could stand all but the last. “Don’t feel sorry for me,” she said, knotting the sash around her waist with vicious little jerks. “I’ve made peace with what I am, and my life is a good one, all things considered. I’m alive and doing some good in the world.”
Still, he said nothing. “You understand I feel no remorse for killing him,” she went on, filling the uncomfortable silence. “If my lack of contrition consigns me to Hell’s eternal fire, then so be it, but I cannot regret it. The man was a murderer long before we met. He killed others—I know not their exact number, but it was more than a dozen—and had their bodies hidden. He thought himself immune to justice. I showed him otherwise.”
It helped to remember her hatred of Fairford, to feel the resurgence of her old wrath. If she didn’t have that anger to lean on now and keep her strong, self-pity would drown her. She’d lost her child and any others who might have followed. Now she would lose the love of this good man, a man who cared enough to want her for his wife, a man she’d grown to love more deeply than she’d thought, if the pain she was experiencing was any sort of gauge.
“Mon Dieu, say something,” she demanded, fighting back a fresh bout of tears. She tensed as he stumbled toward her like a drunken man. His eyes had filled with tears, too, but he didn’t seem to care.
And then his arms were around her.
For a moment, she stood in a state of complete astonishment, unsure what to do. He shook like a tree in a storm, his breath coming in great, shuddering gasps at her ear as he buried his face in the curve of her neck.
Softening, she returned his embrace, the ache in her breast almost unbearable as she reached up to stroke his hair. He was such a good, kindhearted man. “Shh. Don’t be troubled for my sake,” she whispered. “As I said, I’ve made peace with my lot.”
“No, you’ve given up,” he accused, his voice rough with emotion as he pulled back to look her in the eyes. “You’ve decided you’re not good enough—but you’re wrong.”
“But…I’m a murderer,” she whispered, unable to fathom how he could possibly overlook such a thing. “I shot him in cold blood and watched him die—and I felt nothing but satisfaction. Does it not make you afraid to know I’m capable of such a thing?”
His expression grew grim. “What you did was not murder. You meted out justice with good cause and ended a terrible evil. He was the criminal, not you. Had I been present and known of his deeds, I’d have shot him myself and spared you this undeserved guilt. He tortured you and took the life of your child. If such actions are undeserving of retribution in the form of a slow and painful demise, then no man is deserving of death. You ended his life too quickly, in my opinion.” His gentle fingers stroked the hair back from her face. “And no, I don’t fear you. Not in the least.”
Hope mingled with disbelief. “But what of my scars? Do you not find them revolting?”
In answer, he bent and kissed her as the butterfly kisses the flower. “I’ve scars aplenty, and I know them for what they are: evidence of having won a battle, of having survived. Our bodies—and the marks they bear—are things we have, not who or what we are. You are not your scars, Jacqueline, any more than I am mine. No mark on your body can change the way I feel about you.”
All at once, the desire she’d been keeping banked blazed high and swept through her. Emboldened, she stretched up and kissed him back. Emotion swelled as his lips moved over hers, as his arms once more closed around her.
Every shred of inhibition evaporated. Reaching up, she threaded her fingers through his hair and pulled him closer. His response was instant in the tightening of his embrace, in the hardening of his nethers against her belly.
For the first time in years, she felt no fear of a man’s desire for her.
When his hands reached inside her wrapper to caress the bare skin beneath, she didn’t tense—until his fingers ran across a ladder of scars. But he didn’t stop. He didn’t even pause to explore the different texture. His hands skimmed lightly over, leaving an intermittent trail of sensation that made her sigh with want.
An overwhelming need to touch him took over, and Jacqueline reached beneath his jacket to unbutton his waistcoat. Her urgency must have translated itself, because he shrugged it off and began to undress. A few more tugs, and his linen shirt pulled free of his breeches and over his head.
She drew back in surprise. He’d said he was scarred, but she hadn’t really believed him. His chest was marked all over with them. Some were mere nicks. Others were more serious in nature.
“See this long one here?” he murmured, guiding her hand diagonally across his belly. “That’s where a thief tried to gut me. Nearly succeeded, too. Had he applied just a bit more pressure, I’d not be here.” He shifted her fingers to an ugly slash just beneath his ribs. “That’s where a man stabbed me while trying to escape when I caught him attempting to steal another man’s horse.”
One by one he pointed out his scars, telling her how he’d acquired each. He didn’t have nearly as many as she, but he had a fair few, some of them quite alarming. One in particular, a long, thin scar that ran vertically all the way from one shoulder down his back, looked as if someone had tried to cut him in half.
“I earned that one when a man tried to split my head open with a cutlass,” he said, chuckling at her gasp. “I ducked, and the curve of his blade ran the length of my back instead. It looks worse than it is—my men were already pulling him away when he got me. It’s naught but a scratch compared to most of the others.”
Her fingers traced the shiny, pink skin. “You are lucky to be alive.”
Twilight eyes stared into hers as he cupped her face between his warm, dry palms. “More so now than ever before. Don’t deny me, Jacqueline. Don’t turn me away.”
Her answer came in the form of a kiss. She didn’t protest when his strong arms crushed her against the unyielding wall of his chest. She didn’t protest when he backed her up against the bed and fell with her onto it. Nor did she flinch when he parted the halves of her robe to view her nakedness, or when his lips grazed her belly, pausing to press gentle kisses against it one after another, blazing a trail upward.
A moan escaped her as his hot mouth closed over one hardened nipple, sending lightning streaks of pleasure racing down through her. When she could stand it no more, she nudged him toward the other and clutched his hair, awash in ecstasy as he brushed his fingertips against the mound’s outer flesh while his lips and tongue assaulted its sensitive peak.
The secret place between her legs began to throb, the hardness at the juncture of his thighs inflaming her hunger. Reaching down betw
een them, she felt the turgid length of his shaft as it strained against confinement.
