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Alex followed her eyes and said simply, ‘I heard you crying as I went past to my room. I started to go to bed, but I had to come back and then I found I could not leave.’ Hebe was so touched that she could not speak. After a moment he added, ‘Where were you going?’
Hebe swallowed. Now, if ever, was the time to have courage and follow her heart. ‘To your room.’
‘My room? But why?’
‘Because…because—’ Hebe broke off, feeling the blush rising steadily up her throat to stain her face. ‘Because I wanted to go to your bed, Alex.’ There, she had said it.
The shuttered look had come down over his face again. Hebe could have wept. ‘Why?’ he asked harshly. ‘Because you feel guilty about not giving me an heir?’
‘No! Not guilty, but sad about that. And sad too that I should have driven you from my bed because of my nonsense about love matches and the fact that I did not have the courage to tell you that I am not afraid of…of you.’
Alex stared into her face with the look of a man trying to unravel a deep and mysterious riddle. ‘You are not afraid? After what happened in France? After I raped you? After I have seen you recoil every time I tried to touch you?’ He sounded incredulous.
‘You did not rape me,’ Hebe retorted, furiously. ‘And I did not want you to touch me because if you had I would have found myself in your arms and I knew you did not love me.’ She had lost her temper now, with herself or with him she could not tell, but it made saying all this much easier. ‘I was such a fool, I said those things about love matches and I told myself I could not possibly be a proper wife to you because you loved Clarissa. I should have been happy with what I could have…’
‘I? Love Clarissa?’ His voice cut across her tumble of words, silencing her.
‘Why, yes. You proposed to her. You were amazed and delighted when she wrote to accept you. You stopped flirting with me. Mrs Fitton said that when you got her second letter you…you… She said you groaned Clarissa’s name, then said “my love, my love” as though your heart was breaking.’
‘How the devil did she know that? And what was she about, to tell you of it?’
‘She told me she came into the room quietly, not realising you were there, just when you opened the letter. She told me the first day I came here because she thought I was an old friend of the family and I had expressed anxiety about how you must feel with your double bereavement. She meant it for the best, Alex: she was furious with Clarissa and thought I might be able to help you if I knew, I think.’
‘No wonder you were so difficult to convince when I came to London. Hebe, once and for all, I do not love Clarissa and I do not think I ever did.’
‘But you proposed to her!’ Hebe’s feet were growing colder by the minute but she was quite unaware of them, or of the cold draughts playing over her exposed skin in the fragile gown.
‘I had been on the receiving end of yet another lecture from my father on getting married and starting a family. Clarissa was beautiful. It was the fashion to believe one was in love with her. I proposed, she laughed at me and sent me on my way. I wonder now if I asked her because I knew she would say no, and at least I could show my father I was trying to put his advice into practice.’
‘Then when she accepted you, you had no choice but to pretend to be happy about it,’ Hebe said, with a wave of joyful comprehension running through her. ‘It would have been dishonourable to tell anyone of your true feelings, let alone jilt her.’ Her courage was building with every passing moment. Dare she… ‘Alex, that day in the garden, before her letter came…were you going to say anything to me?’
Still he did not touch her, his hands clenched so that the knuckles showed white as he stayed framed in the doorway. ‘I was going to ask you to marry me, Hebe.’
‘I thought so,’ she breathed. ‘Why?’
‘Because I love you,’ Alex said, finally uttering the words she had dreamed of for so long. ‘What would you have said?’
‘I would have said yes, Alex, because I love you.’
For the longest moment he stayed still, his eyes reading her face as though he could not quite believe her words, then his arms came down and round her and she was crushed against his chest. Hebe t
hought he was going to kiss her, but he held her away so he could look into her face.
‘When I knew I was no longer tied to Clarissa I had no idea where you were—on the Rock being flirted with by half the officers of the Mediterranean fleet for all I knew. I could not leave home because of my father and my brother, but I wanted to find you so badly. It was you I was speaking of when Mrs Fitton heard me, only you my darling, enchanting, lost Circe.
‘Like a dream, as I was reeling from William’s death, you walked into my house. I could not believe it was possible to be so happy. Then you tell me that I raped you, that I had hurt you and that I had made you pregnant. It was as though I had despoiled the most precious thing in the world. I dared not touch you, all I could do was to try, somehow, to make some small amends. And then—’ his voice broke ‘—then you were…ill.’
‘Oh, Alex, darling, how can I convince you that there is nothing to forgive?’
As though he feared his dream might shatter, Alex bent his head and found her lips, his mouth gentle. Yet the kiss was not tentative: Hebe felt utterly cherished, sheltered by his love. Shyly she kissed him back, her lips moving sweetly under his, parting to the urging of his, until she gasped at the invasion of his tongue and the heat of longing and desire lanced through her.
Without knowing it, her fingers dug into his back through the thick silk and she sensed the change in his body as he realised she was truly not afraid and that she wanted him.
Suddenly there was the sound of footsteps and an exclamation. Alex swung round and, peeping below his sheltering arm, Hebe could see Starling, improbably clad in heavy flannel nightrobe, slippers on his feet and a nightcap on his head. He had a bunch of keys in one hand and a candle snuffer in the other.
‘My lord! I beg you pardon, I was doing my rounds and extinguishing the candles, as you see. Is everything all right, my lord? I did not look to find you here in the corridor…’ His voice trailed away in the face of a situation beyond the experience of the most superior butler.
‘Everything is quite all right, I thank you, Starling. I was merely kissing my wife.’
