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Afterward, he turned off the lights and she lay tucked against him, drifting toward sleep, when he said, “Have you changed your mind about telling me what happened tonight with Fiona?”
She stifled a groan and lay very still in his arms, knowing they needed to talk about it, yet still longing to forget it and pretend she was already fast asleep.
“Gen?”
She tipped her head back and looked at him through the darkness.
His black eyes were waiting. “Well?”
“You’re not going to like it.”
He touched the side of her face, a tender caress that did her heart good. “Given that it concerns Fiona, you’re probably right.”
“Great. Go to sleep.”
“Fat chance.” He reached through the curtains and turned on the light.
No getting out of it now. She plumped the pillows and sat up beside him. “Last week, while you were in London, Brooke and Fiona came back together. Fiona stayed the night. There was a lot of wine at dinner. Both Fiona and Brooke got pretty drunk. Eloise and I came up to bed early, essentially to get away from them. Much later, there was a knock on the sitting room door....”
Rafe sat silent at her side as she told him everything, all she could remember, of what Fiona had said to her that night.
When she’d finished, he asked gently, “Is that all?” His calm, his seeming unconcern, surprised her. She had thought he would be angry. But he took it all with a hint of a smile—or maybe that was just the crescent scar making it seem that he was smiling.
Mixed in with her relief that he hadn’t shut her out, she found she was angry for him. “It’s more than enough, don’t you think? I swear, Fiona is such an evil cow.”
“She has her agendas,” he said wryly.
“What agendas?”
He shook his head. “What was that in the hallway tonight?”
She considered pressing her point, asking again exactly what agendas he meant. But she let it go. “Fiona seemed frantic to convince me that she couldn’t recall a thing she’d said that night last week, that none of it was true anyway—which is funny, considering she said she didn’t know what ‘it’ was. I think she meant to have me believe she’d had some kind of blackout during which she babbled nonsense, and I should simply forget it ever happened.”
He framed her face in his wonderful, huge hands. “My poor love, it must have been gruesome.”
“It was. I wanted to slap her until her ears rang and tear out her hair. Instead, I gave her tissues to mop up her tears and then I dragged her back to her room.”
He brushed her cheeks with his thumbs. “And you were never going to tell me?”
“I was, yes. Eventually. When...I thought the time was right.”
Those obsidian eyes gleamed at her. And then he kissed her, slow and tender. “Would you hate it so much to know you were married to a gardener’s bastard and not a true DeValery after all?”
That one was easy to answer. “I wouldn’t, no, not at all. I’ve always known anyway.”
“Known what? That I’m a bastard?”
“No. That some people think you are.”
“What people?”
She was in all the way now. She confessed, “Some English girl I went to school with, a boy in the village years and years ago...”
“People love to carry tales.”
“Yes, they do.”
He made a chiding sound with his tongue against his teeth. “And you never once brought it up to me.”
“I told you, I didn’t care. And I was afraid that it would hurt you. I didn’t want that. You are the finest man I know and I...” She couldn’t do it. Couldn’t quite say the most dangerous word. “I’m so very, very fond of you.”
He studied her face for a long, uncomfortable moment. And then he said, “As I am of you.”
She was thinking that she should try again, make herself say it. I’ve fallen completely in love with you, Rafe. But before she could work up the nerve, he shoved the covers back and jumped from the bed.
“Rafe, what in the world?”
“I want you to come with me. I’ll get you a dressing gown.” He turned for the dressing room.
She stared at his magnificent backside as he walked away from her. “Come with you where, exactly?”
He disappeared in the other room for a minute. When he returned, he wore track pants, a T-shirt and house shoes. He carried her favorite kimono in one hand and her slippers in the other. “Here you go.”
“But it’s the middle of the night. Where are we going?”
“You’ll see. Come on.”
So she put on the kimono and slippers. Then he grabbed her hand and led her out into the sitting room, where he got a flashlight from a side-table drawer. He went to the outer door, pulled it open and waved her out.
