Ghost of Christmas Past (12 page)

“
I didn’t mean then.” Thea slowly shook her head. She wished
now she hadn’t said anything. “I meant later.” The last thing she
wanted to do now was confess that it had been her who had climbed
into his bed the night before the wedding and allowed him to take
the pleasures of a married man before they had even said ‘I do’.
When she made no attempt to expand on her announcement, Rupert
leaned across the table and tipped her chin upward until her eyes
met and held his.

“
Tell me, Thea,” his words were husky yet determined and he
bit back a sigh of frustration when she merely continued to stare
at him. “It was you, wasn’t it? The night before the wedding, it
was you who climbed into my bed.”

Thea
nodded and pulled her chin out of his reach. Her fingers were
clenched tightly around her wine glass and she stared blankly down
at the table as the memory of that night came flooding back with
such sensual force that she immediately wanted to cry.

“
Good God, Thea, why the hell didn’t you wake me up before you
left?” he whispered. Anger rose so quickly that he pushed away from
the table and put more logs onto the fire in an attempt to bring
himself under control.

“
I couldn’t,” she whispered feeling shame and humiliation that
was as acute as it had been the night her world had been shattered
by his careless words.

“
Of course you could. We were due to be married. If you cannot
talk to me after what we shared, who could you turn to?” He didn’t
bother to try to keep his temper out of his voice.

Thea
sighed and began to fee her own patience wane. “You fell
asleep.”

“
Then you should have woken me up,” Rupert retorted
sharply.

“
What for? You made it perfectly clear that you wanted that
woman you were, you were -” She was aware that she was waving her
hand ineffectually toward him but manners prevented her from
actually saying the word aloud.

“
Is that why you refused to see me after the accident? Were
you embarrassed? Did I hurt you when we made love, Thea? Was that
it? Were you repulsed by me; by what we did?” He had barely
finished before she was shaking her head.

“
It was nothing like that,” she snapped. “I told you why,
Rupert. Please believe me about that.”

“
Then why, Thea, why?” he demanded and gave her shoulders a
rough shake. His voice dipped with a mixture of anger and
frustration. He had never hurt a woman in his life and wasn’t about
to start now but he had to get to the truth while it was so close
and he felt as though they were so very close to resolving what had
actually gone so horribly wrong all that time ago.

“
You wanted Barbara,” Thea repeated, fighting
tears.

“
I wanted you. I agreed to marry you, Thea, not her. You were
the one I wanted, Thea. You,” he ground out through gritted teeth
but Thea had had enough and shoved hands off her shoulders roughly
before she turned away.

“
Because when you, you,” once again she waved her hand
ineffectually toward him and took a deep breath. Her voice dropped
to a monotone and she studied him across a few feet that in reality
felt like several miles. “At the end when you – finished, you
shouted out Barbara’s name.” There was no accusation in her voice,
merely a cold declaration, but the stiff way she held herself
warned him just how deeply she had been hurt by it.

He closed his eyes on a bitter curse and thought of all of
the years of misery that had passed. Now he knew. It
had
been Thea and he had
hurt her in the worst possible way. Unsurprisingly, when opened his
eyes to talk to her, he found the space before him empty and the
doorway that led to the hall wide open. She had gone.

With
bitterness in his heart, he slumped down in one of the chairs
before the fire and dropped his head into his hands.

What
now?

CHAPTER SEVEN

At first
Rupert absorbed the silence of the room while he tried to put his
thoughts into some semblance of order. He allowed her to retreat to
the safety of her room because right now they both needed a few
moments to gather themselves. However, the horrible realisation
then dawned that they had been down this route before. The last
time she had retreated behind closed doors he had been prevented
from seeing her for four long years.

Although
opening up the old wounds from the past hurt, and brought forth a
lot of bitter and very painful memories, they were so close to
being able to resolve everything and forge some sort of future
together that he realised it was foolish to let her go anywhere,
even to the relative safety of her bedroom.

With a
sigh he pushed to his feet and within minutes was stalking up the
stairs after her. He didn’t bother to knock and let himself in. The
sight of her standing bereft in the centre of the room unmanned him
but he wasn’t going to be deterred from having this out with
her.

“
Look, Thea, while I can understand that this is a difficult
matter for you to discuss too, we need to get it out into the
open.” He was shaken by the sight of the tears on her face but
struggled to find a way to comfort her. When words failed him he
walked forward and drew her gently into his arms. “My work in the
Star Elite has taught me many things. I have seen death and
destruction and terrible injuries brought about by war. I have
killed, maimed and fought to stay alive, Thea, you need to know
that.”

“
It is the nature of war though,” she replied with a sniff,
unperturbed by the fact that he had been forced to take a man’s
life in order to keep his own. While she could never understand or
accept the need for war, she could understand why he had done what
he had done. It meant that he was able to stand before her
now.

“
I know, but what would you say if I told you that I killed
someone as recently as last week?”

“
I would say that as long as it relates to the job you do, and
is not something you go about doing just for the brutality then
there is just cause for what you have done. Look at Uncle John
upstairs. He has been minding his own business, and has done
nothing to hurt or offend anyone, yet someone has chosen to injure
him in a way that almost took his life. It could very easily have
been you.” Her throat closed up and she had to wait for a moment
for her emotions to settle. “If you and your associates at the Star
Elite are working together to ensure that people who commit crimes
like that are brought to justice, then I can only be glad that the
Star Elite exists and is working to protect the
innocent.”

Rupert
studied her face but could see nothing but calm acceptance and
sadness in her eyes. “You really are precious. You know that, don’t
you, Thea?”

Thea
merely blinked at him and, although she didn’t push out of his
arms, she hadn’t relaxed against him either.

“
I am sorry about what I did the night before the wedding. I
simply cannot remember saying that. All I can say in my defence is
that I had drunk a lot the night before the wedding and couldn’t
remember exact details about what happened. The morning after, I
stood at the altar waiting for you to arrive and I tried to
remember what had happened, but couldn’t distinguish between what
was actual memory and what was wishful thinking.”

“
You wanted Barbara,” she whispered sadly.

“
No, Thea, I wanted you. I just couldn’t understand why you
would climb into my bed the night before the wedding. I mean, could
you not wait to consummate the marriage on our wedding
night?”

She
tried to squirm out of his arms but he was having none of it and
merely tightened them sufficiently to draw her against his chest.
When she eventually settled against him he leaned back to peer down
into her face. “Why did you climb into my bed that night? Why not
wait, Thea?”

Thea
didn’t want to discuss it but knew that he wouldn’t give up until
he knew everything.

“
Because after I overheard your conversation with your father,
I decided that I wasn’t going to go through with the wedding.” She
saw his frown but couldn’t bring herself to meet his eyes. Instead
she did push away from him and moved to a seat before the fire. “I
simply couldn’t bring myself to be forced into marriage to a man
who wanted another woman. However, I also knew that by refusing to
go through with the marriage, my parents would be incredibly angry
and would either disown me or try to force me into marriage to
someone else and I couldn’t bear that.” She just couldn’t confess
that she had loved him deeply and had wanted to spend just one
night in his arms. “You know how grasping my parents were, they
wouldn’t have given up. By spending the night with you, I could
ensure that they wouldn’t succeed in forcing me into an arranged
marriage to someone else if they didn’t throw me out. I was going
to throw myself on Uncle John’s benevolence and hope that he could
force my parents to leave me alone.”

Rupert
couldn’t help it, he was stunned. He slumped down into the chair
opposite and braced his elbows on his knees and stared at the floor
between them.

“
I waited for you.” He whispered, thinking about the long
morning he had spent in the freezing cold church waiting for
her.

“
I know. Although I had resolved not to marry you, especially
after you called for Barbara, I found myself in the carriage on the
way to the church anyway. I couldn’t bear to think of you being
embarrassed.”

“
You were damned if you did and damned if you didn’t,” he
whispered softly, feeling nothing now but compassion for her
predicament. “I want to make it perfectly clear right here and now
Thea that the contracts may have been drawn up but as far as I was
concerned, then and now, ours was definitely not an arranged
marriage. On the night that you joined me in my bed, I didn’t want
Barbara, I wanted you. I just assumed that it was her because I
couldn’t conceive that you would do such a thing as to climb into
my bed the night before the wedding. I stood at the altar and
thought it over carefully but couldn’t find any explanation as to
why you would be so impatient to get me into bed,” he smiled
ruefully but without rancour and watched colour flood her
cheeks.

“
I am sorry, Rupert.”

“
I am sorry, Thea. We are both wiser in hindsight but the fact
of the matter is that we should never have gone through with the
arranged wedding. We should have been stronger people and been able
to at least talk to each other and settled for nothing other than
complete openness and honesty, but I was too shallow and
self-centred and you had spent your life being pushed and shoved
along by your parents.”

“
I cannot help but wonder if we would have been happy being
married to each other being the people we were. Your time in the
Star Elite and the army has made you stronger, more capable, and
far more of a man who is confident of his place in the world. My
accident and subsequent injuries have made me far more determined
to be independent. I suppose in a way that also makes me selfish
but, as a result of what happened to me, I know who I am and what I
am capable of. I am proud of what I have accomplished,” she
declared proudly.

“
So you should be. There are a lot of people who would have
taken to their beds and never even tried to get back on their feet
again, let alone learn to walk and live by themselves. It is
evidence of your inner strength that you are as well as you are.”
The pride in his voice was accompanied by the respect in his gaze
and she felt a small thrill of delight sweep through
her.

They sat
for several moments in companionable silence and allowed themselves
a few moments for the latest revelations to sink in.

“
Shall we go back and finish the rest of our meal?” Rupert
asked softly. He stood and held his elbow out to her and watched
her nod her approval.

She
wasn’t entirely sure if she could take another bite but didn’t want
to part company with him yet. They had both made mistakes and both
had regrets. She couldn’t quite make her mind up if the
circumstances hadn’t worked out for the best for the both of them.
They had both suffered hardships while they had been apart, but
they had both turned out to be different people as a result.
Although there was still a lot she needed to learn about him, she
felt reasonably confident in thinking that they were more suited
now. Whether they had a future together though had yet to be
seen.

They
wandered slowly through the house toward the sitting room and the
plates of steaming hot food that awaited them. Once inside, she
made her way toward the table but her thoughts focused on the
events that had torn them apart and she failed to notice that the
rug had been rucked up. When her foot caught on the edge and
propelled her forward she had little time to do anything other than
gasp before strong arms hauled her high into the air.

She
immediately clutched at the lapels of his jacket as her heart
pounded in her ears. His closeness should have unnerved her, but
she felt a faint thrill of anticipation at the feel of his warm
breath brushing her cheek as he breathed and she waited to see what
he was going to do.