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He nodded.
“He would have liked that. Liked how that appeared.” Her shoulders lifted, her palms flopping upright on her lap. “The reality is that my husband loved his possessions—needed to keep any and all of them his and his alone. He would defend to the death what he owned. I was just another one of his possessions.” Her left hand left her lap and she tugged at the tip of a blade of grass that had turned to seed next to her thigh. “I was his property to protect and he was too proud to accept the apology that was offered to him. Stupid, stubborn man.”
She yanked on the grass, ripping it from the ground. “Stupid, stubborn me. It was my everything. The one thing I was going to do with my life—bear his children, raise the next Earl of Raplan. Take my place in the long and distinguished line of matrons of the Raplan name. Live to see my son become the earl, see my grandson born. That was how my life was supposed to be.”
Rune clasped his hands together as he stayed balanced on his heels. “Yet, I see no husband. No child.”
“No.” Her lips pulled back with a harsh chuckle. “No, you do not. My life, my purpose burnt to ash that day.” She flicked the grass seed upward. “Gone. Just like that. One crack of a pistol and it was gone. Everything.”
She looked to him. “I had one chance and it passed me by before I was even twenty. I will always be marked with the scandal of that day—not fit for a new respectable husband. Not respectable enough for children, for I would taint them as well. That was expressed to me very clearly by everyone that mattered in London. I was somebody before that day. And then I was nothing after that day.”
“So you’ve never tried to move on?”
“No. I am welcome at many balls and parties by my title alone, but a respectable life—a real life with a family—will never be mine. I had my chance. There is nothing to move on to.”
Rune stared at her. At the tilt of her chin—high—as though she were standing, defiant, in front of the pretentious matrons of theton. Refusing to let tears fall. Refusing to let them and the world they lived in hurt her more than they already had.
Her future had been taken by the very people that had given her that original hope for the future. They’d given her the promised land, then ripped it from her fingers.
The disdain, cold and icy, that ran up his spine every time he thought of those people twisted viciously along his back.
More vicious than usual.
Vicious because of the woman in front of him. Her own people had taken everything from her—her dreams, her future. Convinced her she wasn’t worthy of a life of any consequence.
She was so very much like him and she didn’t even understand it, for she was still so embroiled in the pageantry of it. The lives of theton—their parties, their squabbles, their aimless wanderings.
He wasn’t quite sure what to do with the rage he felt on her behalf. He’d nursed his own hatred at the vile aristocracy for so long, he hadn’t realized he wasn’t the only one who had his life destroyed.
His lips pulled inward for a second and then he stood, holding down his hand to her. “Maybe it’s time you open your mind to pursuing the unrespectable.”
She looked up at him, her dark blue eyes shocked for a moment, then lightening, mirth running along the edges of her irises.
To his surprise, she took his hand. “I may have to consider it.”
Her fingers slid along his palm. Even through her kidskin gloves, the touch was warm and soft and sweet and everything he wasn’t. He pulled her upright, noting how light she was. Noting how the sun hit the sliver of creamy skin showing along the slope of her chest between the satin lapels of her pelisse. Noting how she stared at him with those canny blue eyes, as though he’d just opened up a brand new world of wonder to her.
She gained her feet, the front of her brushing against him, and they both froze. Too close.
Breathless, neither of them moved, their eyes locked. The exact moment he’d kiss her if she was a woman in his bedroom.
But she wasn’t and they weren’t. They were on the bloody road.
He was slipping into very dangerous territory with this one.
Dangerous territory he couldn’t afford to dip into.
He dropped her hand, turning stiffly to the horses and walking to his.
She could mount her own mare.
{ Chapter 7 }
“You need only a masonry chisel and hammer—score it in a circle around it, again and again, until it pops open like a walnut.”
Lord Lockford laughed. “A walnut, you say?”
Mirth on her lips, Elle nodded. “And I have popped open many walnuts and many geodes so I do believe I’m an expert at the process.”
