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‘You can’t possibly know that,’ he grated. ‘Hell, I certainly couldn’t.’
‘I do know,’ she said, raising his clenched fist to her mouth and kissing the grazed knuckles. ‘You might have struggled to be kind to the child, but you would have tried. Otherwise you wouldn’t have experienced any guilt over the way you felt when it died. You would have just shrugged your shoulders and walked away. You are a good man,’ she said. ‘And you deserved to have a wife who appreciated just how good and kind you are. A wife who would have at least tried to make you happy. A wife who wanted you to touch her. Give her children. None of what happened was your fault.’
He shifted in the hay beside her and gave a sort of disgruntled huff. Then he rolled onto his side, so that he was facing away from her. She might have thought he was putting an end to their conversation and establishing some distance between them if it hadn’t been for the fact that he kept tight hold of her hand, so that as he rolled the movement tugged her up against his back. Just as though he wanted to drape her over himself like a human blanket.
She snuggled closer. For he’d made it clear he hadn’t been rejecting her. It had been pride that had made him turn away, she was sure. Men didn’t like appearing weak, and he probably regretted spilling all those secrets he’d kept hidden for years. He’d made himself vulnerable to her. Because he trusted her. Or thought she’d understand what rejection of that sort felt like after the way her own aunt had betrayed her.
Yes, if any two people knew what betrayal felt like it was them.
She hugged his waist, wishing there was something she could do to ease his pain. To let him know that she didn’t think any less of him for struggling the way he had in the coldness of his arranged marriage, and with his feelings about the way it had ended.
And suddenly it occurred to her that there was one obvious way to do both.
‘Do you know what?’ she said. ‘You still deserve a wife who wants to make you happy. Who appreciates how good and kind you are. Who wants you to touch her and give her children. And, what’s more, I rather think I’d like to be that woman.’
She raised herself up on one elbow so that she could look down into his face. Not that she could see it clearly, in their gloomy corner of the barn. But she certainly felt his entire body tense.
‘Are you saying,’ he said repressively, ‘that you have fallen in love with me? After just one day?’
‘Oh, no,’ she admitted. ‘But I think I very easily could. I’ve resisted the thought of marriage before, because I couldn’t see the point of exchanging one sort of prison for another. I just kept thinking I’d only have to put up with living in Aunt Charity’s house for a limited time and then I’d be free. But I don’t think marriage to you would feel like a prison at all. You don’t seem to want to change me into someone else. You quite like me as I am, don’t you?’
She hurried on, because now she’d started she might as well get it all out into the open.
‘And I wouldn’t even mind handing my fortune into your keeping, if we ever get our hands on it. I’d feel as if you’d earned the right to it. I’m sure you would put it to good use. Could you not do with an injection of capital into whatever business you are in? If you don’t mind me saying so, you don’t seem to be all that plump in the pocket, or you wouldn’t have fallen into such difficulties today, would you?’
‘You...you don’t know what you are saying,’ he hissed, rolling over onto his back so he could look up at her. And then, probably because he couldn’t, he reached up to touch her face.
Then snatched it back.
She smiled to herself in the dark.
‘I’ve already told you I wouldn’t mind you touching me,’ she said gently. ‘The way a man touches his wife. In fact,’ she admitted daringly, ‘I think I would like it very much.’
‘And I repeat: you don’t know what you are saying.’
‘Not...not entirely, no. But I do know that I couldn’t lie next to any other man, the way I am lying here with you, and feel like this.’
There was a beat of silence before he said, in a voice that was scarce more than a whisper, ‘Like what?’
‘All sort of tingly and warm. As...as if something very wonderful is about to happen. Something to do with your lips. And your chest.’ She reached between them and laid her hand on his chest, where she could feel his heart beating a rapid tattoo. ‘And your legs.’ She ran her bare foot up and down his calf. ‘I have the strangest urge to wrap myself all around you like a vine.’
