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“Bea, I know you never wish to return to the past. I understand why, and I know now you’re right about that. But please, I ask you to join me for a short time in the drawing room. We used to take turns reading to each other in the evening, and I’d like to again.”
Frustration filled Bea. As a marchioness and wife, her recently discovered freedom had significant limits. Was William’s request just that? Or was it an order? She stopped and looked up into his eyes.
“What if I decline politely?”
“Then I will bid you goodnight—and hope for a different answer when I ask again tomorrow.”
She didn’t bother asking what he would do if she refused that invitation, too. Though hopeful and patient, he gazed upon her with utter determination. This was the man who, despite his strict adherence to propriety, had tenaciously held to his values in Parliament, whether or not popular at the moment.
This was also a man who held tremendous power in her life—not only over her, but their children. As her lord and husband, he had every right to remove the children from her care. She swallowed. “My lord, I…it could not have been easy when the children left London. I haven’t thanked you for your understanding. I know you could have prevented them from going with me. Prevented me from going, even.”
“Itwasn’teasy. But I would never do that to you, Bea. Never.”
She nodded. “I can’t—can’t remain for long. But we can sit together for a short time.”
With a smile that mirrored little Ben’s, he bowed, then conducted her to the drawing room. After she settled into a wingback chair, William sat on the side of the settee closest to her. He gestured to something on the low table between them. His stationery box.
“Perhaps we won’t have time tonight, and I accept that. But perhaps you’ll allow me enough time to read one letter to you. I wrote to you every day you were gone.”
She frowned. Every day? No, she had received his weekly letters, written to the family at large.
A muscle worked in William’s defined jaw. “They’re addressed to you, though some of them are more like diary entries. I—I penned much of what I wish I had shared with you during our marriage, Bea. Not with the intention for you to read them, not truly.” His hands bunched into fists. “But I couldn’t hold it in any longer.”
Staring at Pandora’s box between them, Bea knew both fear and curiosity.
“In some ways, sharing the contents with you is the most difficult task I have ever faced. Greater even than watching you and the children leave.”
“Why?” she whispered. “What’s in there?” If odiousness awaited, more painful secrets, she wanted no part of it.
“Everything,” he choked out. “All my love for you.”
Bea’s eyes widened and she couldn’t speak.
William reached into his dinner jacket and extracted a key from an interior pocket. He held it up. “I’m no Lord Byron. You can expect little in the way of flourishes.”
Staring at the key, she asked, “WhatmayI expect?”
“Unvarnished truth. Have you wondered what I think of you—what I have thought of you since I saw you across a crowded room and you opened your fan for me?”
She closed her eyes, remembering that evening and how her hands had trembled with excitement as she signaled her interest in an introduction.You’re not that girl anymore.She opened her eyes. “I don’t want to be hurt.”
“What you will do with this”—he gestured toward the case with the key—“shall remain up to you. I’m hoping it can change our future. But at the very least, I believe it could provide some healing of the past.”
With a shaking hand, Bea reached for the key.
