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‘So...’ She couldn’t resist teasing him a little. ‘Aside from your penchant for brunettes with brown eyes, did Horrible Annabel really break your heart?’
Rafe sighed as he settled back in his chair, even though his toes were still curling inside his boots. ‘I was young and foolish and proposed before I really knew her. Any decision taken in the heat of the moment should never be trusted because it is always wrong. Especially concerning matters of the heart.’
‘I shall take that as a yes then.’ She sat back herself to stare at him, those beautiful, big brown eyes quizzical. ‘Why did she call it off?’
He sighed again while he weighed up whether to lie or not, then he jerked his head upwards rather than answer.
‘Because of Archie?’ That came out more outrage than a question and he shrugged at her response, not wanting to trust it even though a part of him did. ‘Whatever for?’
‘All manner of reasons.’ He tried to act nonchalant, hoping it sounded as convincing as he intended. ‘Because we barely knew one another. Because we were too young to march down the aisle. Because she wasn’t sure of her feelings.’ Oh, good grief, this was painful. But after this afternoon, it felt wrong not to be as brutally honest with her as she had been with him. ‘Because she did not see herself as a nursemaid. Because she felt I had been disingenuous about him before she accepted my proposal. Because she had assumed his condition was caused by a difficult birth or an accident or some such, and because she desperately wanted children of her own and she wasn’t prepared to risk having them with me.’ The minutest drop of bitterness leaked into his tone before he banished it with a decisive thump of his empty glass on the side table. ‘Suffice it to say, there seemed to be no talking her out of so many objections, so we bade each other a polite adieu.’
‘Oh, Rafe...’ The pity clouded her eyes and brought a lump to his throat as she leaned forward to squeeze his hand. ‘I am so sorry.’
‘It is what it is.’ He swallowed past the lump to force a wry smile. ‘With the benefit of hindsight it was for the best because Archie is right: she was—is—mean and vain and full of her own importance.’ He unfolded himself from his chair to retrieve the decanter in case her intuitive dark eyes saw how much that crushing rejection still hurt, or how much it churned up the previous crushing rejection from his own mother.
‘She was—is—also as shallow as a puddle.’ Incensed on his behalf, Sophie snatched the decanter from his hand and topped up both their glasses with more brandy. ‘Good riddance to her, I say, for if she cannot see past her own upturned nose then she doesn’t deserve you or Archie.’ She thrust out his filled glass huffing. ‘Aren’t some people just dreadful excuses of humans? Horrible Annabel, my callous father, your selfish mother. Your dreadful, money-grabbing, conscienceless predecessor.’ She waved her glass to encompass the cluttered drawing room Rafe had inherited. ‘They don’t possess a decent bone amongst them. I want to knock all their heads together. Or better still—knock their worthless teeth out!’ As the same fire she had displayed at the barricade or when she had first hoisted her SHAME ON YOU, LORD HOCKLEY banner returned with a vengeance, he couldn’t help but laugh.
‘There she is!’ He toasted her with his glass. ‘That’s the indomitable Sophie Gilbert I know. I knew she wouldn’t disappear for long.’
‘Yes...’ She averted her eyes, her teeth worrying her plump bottom lip and drawing his to it like a moth to a flame. ‘I lost her for a little while earlier... I am so sorry about that.’
‘I’m not.’ Was it the right time for him to offer his theories? He supposed it couldn’t hurt. The woman was always too hard on herself and in just a few days they were more friends now than enemies. An irony which was not lost on him when he avoided anything more than transient, superficial relationships with women nowadays. Yet it was undeniable. They were friends—or at least they shared the bond of kinship which was almost the same. ‘Bottling such things is never wise. I’ve seen it time and time again on the battlefield after comrades have fallen. The men that keep all that pain inside risk letting it fester and turn to poison. Releasing it is much healthier. A bit like lancing a boil. It hurts like the devil while it’s happening but it is only once it is all out that the healing starts.’
‘I sincerely doubt I shall ever get over it.’ She was talking about Michael, he realised, Michael and their unborn child—not the loss of her house. By comparison, clearly that tragedy did not come close to the first she had suffered.
‘You loved him a great deal, didn’t you?’
‘I did.’ It felt churlish to be envious of that, but he did. Annabel had never loved him with such unbreakable and resolute fervour. He had known that at the time, deep down, but like a fool he had ignored it. Rushed in even when his own head had warned him to proceed with caution.
Without thinking, she touched her chest. ‘His death broke my heart.’
‘Hearts mend.’ He shrugged, not quite believing that rot himself. ‘Or so they say.’
‘Did yours?’ A question which deserved an honest answer.
‘Again, with the benefit of hindsight, I don’t think it was ever broken in the first place and certainly not in the way it should have been had I truly been in love. It was more bruised...’ At the disbelieving quirk of her eyebrow, he laughed without humour. ‘All right, I’ll concede to bludgeoned but it emerged intact. Intact but jaded. Jaded enough to avoid all romantic entanglements since.’
‘You shouldn’t give that awful woman that much power. You should find someone else to skip off into the sunset with purely to spite her.’
And there was the rub. The undeniable reality of his situation. ‘But it wasn’t one woman, Sophie. It has been all of them. Annabel might have been my only serious romantic skirmish, but I’ve dealt with that sort of prejudice and rejection all my life. Enough to put me off any sort of attachment for good.’
‘So you have given up women completely? I do not believe that.’ The look she shot him was loaded with innuendo. ‘A man who can charm the birds from the trees as effortlessly as you do would have no trouble charming women, and no matter how noble you are, you do not strike me as a saint.’
‘All right...perhaps I haven’t abstained completely since Annabel...’ He paused and bit his lip. It felt odd discussing such things with a woman, and an unmarried one to boot, until Rafe reminded himself that Miss Sophie Gilbert was, by her own admission, no blushing virgin. ‘But those relationships are always superficial and transient. I know better than to seek anything beyond that, for however strong and sincere the initial attraction seems, it always withers on the vine once they learn of my particular responsibilities. Although to be fair to the fairer sex, it isn’t just the women who recoil from it. It has a similar effect on everyone who comes near us—as if Archie’s condition is catching.’
‘Ignorant people always fear what they do not understand.’
Because the genuine sadness swirling in her lovely eyes brought the lump back to his throat, he diverted the same question back to her. ‘But I am quite content nowadays with my status as a social pariah, hence I am eschewing all contact with the human race voluntarily for a life filled with non-judgemental and less fickle horses in the middle of nowhere. All much safer for everyone and most especially me. Why have you not ventured forth again yourself?’ His hand flapped to encompass her appealing figure and face. ‘You are as far removed from an old hag as it is possible to be.’ Which was about as much of a compliment as he was brave enough to offer when she appealed to him too much.
She swallowed as she closed her eyes briefly, then sighed as she allowed him to see her pain and the sheen of fresh unshed tears in her eyes. ‘I cannot do that again. Cannot risk it as I fear the stitched-together remnants of my heart would not survive another loss. It’s safer up on my shelf, gathering dust.’
‘Lonely though.’ Which struck him as such a huge shame when she clearly had such an enormous heart.
‘So is raising horses in the middle of nowhere, so people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.’
‘Talking of houses.’ Rafe sat forward. ‘I want to rebuild yours. It is the least I can do after my dreadful, money-grabbing, conscienceless predecessor neglected its upkeep for so long that his neglect left you homeless and almost killed your poor aunt.’
She shot up from her seat like a firework and shook her head, lost for words. Before her pride got in the way and she refused him, his logic and a stark reminder of her circumstances tumbled out in a rush as he closed the distance between them.
