Ronan’s dark eyes slid down the length of her gown before settling on the curls her lady’s maid had fashioned into a chignon. He lowered his chin against his white linen cravat. “You look beautiful.” His deep voice penetrated the silence and sounded surprisingly sincere.
She tightened her lips. If he thought complimenting her appearance was going to make her kneel, he had yet to get slapped.
He shifted his jaw and slowly made his way toward her, the floorboards creaking under his weight as he advanced. He paused at the table she lingered by, the heated scent of amberwood drifting toward her from his attire.
She paused. That was new. Was it cologne?
He trailed his gaze to the table and eyed her but said nothing.
She stiffly and wordlessly gestured to the table, asking him to sit on the jam- spattered side. Where he belonged.
He eyed her again and carefully setting the closed small wicker basket beside his chair, pushed aside the tails of his coat with a hand and sat down. He shifted, scanning the spangled table of jam and half-eaten scones and met her gaze. “Is there a reason the scones are bleeding?”
If she wasn’t so angry, she would have laughed. But he wasn’t going to win that easily. Oh, no. No, no, no. “They must have known you were coming and threw themselves on the knife.”
He stared. “You aren’t going to make this easy for me, are you?”
She stared back and coolly said, “No.”
He leaned forward and toward her and was about to prop an arm against the table when he realized there was too much jam to bother. He sat back against the chair. “Now I know what the jam is for.”
She really was brilliant. “Exactly. Stay to your side of the table and we will survive. Simply know that
this
is what marriage will look like for the next forty years.”
His hand jumped to his cravat and he tugged on it, only to pause, as if realizing he was ruining the knot. He lowered his hand.
She held his gaze, keeping her tone even and steady. “Why would you tell Alex about us? When I had asked you not to? Why would you force me into something you know I didn’t want?”
He searched her face for a long moment before admitting, “I cannot begin to win your hand without him knowing, and enough lies were told by me to make me sick. You and I deserve better than this. You and I deserve to be happy.”
Her throat tightened.
Still searching her face, he leaned down to the basket and gently lifted it, setting it carefully onto his knee. “I brought something for you. In honor of our engagement.” He rose and rounding toward her, opened the lid and lowered it toward her.
Caroline peered into the well of the wicker basket and drew in an astounded breath. A small black puppy lay curled in a blanket, sleeping peacefully in between occasional leg twitches that hinted he was dreaming. It was the most charming, beautiful creature she had ever seen, with little fuzzy ears that flopped in slumber. Her eyes jumped up to Ronan’s. It was like he remembered their conversation from three years ago. About her wanting a dog.
He held her gaze. “We all need someone to love.”
Caroline stared up at him and the way his brows came together with hope. It wasn’t fair. He was trying to get her to do more than forgive him. He was trying to get her to love him again.
His mouth quirked and he whispered down at her, “I tired him out this morning. I took him to the park shortly before he and I came here. I haven’t given him a name yet, because I wanted to leave that to you. Did you want me to take him out? So you can visit with him?”
He wasn’t supposed to remember the things she had said from three years ago. Nor was he supposed to bring a puppy. Drat him. “Don’t take him out,” she whispered. “Let him sleep. I will visit with him when he wakes up.”
He half-nodded and carrying the basket a few strides away, set it carefully onto the floor. He then rose, strode back toward her and lingered beside her chair, his tall frame towering close.
She breathed lightly through parted lips, trying not to panic or rise from her seat.
Still lingering, he said, “Time away from you got me thinking.”
When a man was left alone with his thoughts it was never a good thing. She eyed him. “About what?”
“About everything. Though mostly about us.” He knelt on one knee, tucking himself close to her gown and gathered her hand into his, clasping it against his warmth. Tightening his hold, he lowered his gaze to it and said, “I have always known there was something special between us. From the very beginning. From the moment I met you. You changed my way of thinking in a way I never expected and made me want to be perfect. Even though I wasn’t. Even though I knew I could never be.”
Her hand trembled in his. For she sensed he meant it.
Ronan leaned in closer, his gaze still lowered.
“At the time,” he offered, “I wasn’t ready to share my shame and what my life really was like, but I have had someone helping me reorganize my priorities and my life. And I am ready to finally share who I really am with you.” Emotion broke into his voice. “I have never been in love, Caroline. I never wanted to be. I never saw it as a good thing. I never told you certain details about my life because they held too much pain for me. But I…I want you to know everything. I want you to understand me. If you are willing to understand me, that is.”
Caroline felt her soul melt at what appeared to be a genuine attempt to give her the one thing she had always asked of him throughout the years. The one thing he had kept tightly folded against his heart. She gently set her other hand atop of his. “I have always wanted to know more about you,” she quietly said. “You know that.”
He nodded but wouldn’t meet her gaze. “And I have always denied you knowing me in that way. But not anymore.” He let out a breath. After a long moment of silence, he said, “My…my mother, whom I am fortunate to remember quite well, was a wonderful, wonderful soul. She was the sort of woman who knew how to make everyone laugh. Especially me. It didn’t matter how distraught I was, she knew how to tap at my good spirits and lift me up. My father was a gruff, notorious rake. He always had been. There were whispers that he was involved with illegal activities and that the estate money was coming from those activities. But when it came to my mother, he was none of those things. He was utterly devoted to her. He never talked to her of love or did any of those romantic things a woman would want, but he didn’t have to. You could see it in the way his features brightened when she walked into a room. He loved her. Mind you, we weren’t a perfect family. My parents argued quite a bit, and more often than not, they were violent toward each other during those arguments.”
Caroline tightened her hold on his hand.
Ronan, in turn, tightened his hold. “I uh…I hated it when they argued and would usually sit in my closet with both hands over my ears so I wouldn’t have to listen to any of it. And then…my mother died. I was nine. She was in a carriage on her way to see my aunt, her sister, when a wall that was being constructed for one of the new buildings toppled and crushed several surrounding carriages on the street. One of them happened to be the one my mother was in. She had been very pregnant with what would have been my brother or sister. Neither survived. It was instant death.” He sniffed hard, still staring at her hand.
Tears stung Caroline’s eyes, sensing his pain. She had never known how his mother died. He had never spoken of it.
He cleared his throat and shifted on his knee. “I was…I was supposed to be in that carriage with her but my uncle, her brother, had taken me to the park that day to float wooden boats on the lake. I…I sometimes wish he hadn’t. I sometimes wish I would have been in that carriage with my mother. If only to have seen her for a breath longer.”
Caroline’s features twisted. “Oh, Ronan.”
He shrugged, rapidly blinking while still staring at their joined hands. “Fate is strange that way. When she died, my father became a different man. He blamed my aunt for my pregnant mother leaving the house to go see her. He no longer wanted to be in the house and stayed out a lot. During our time of mourning, he didn’t pray, but went to parties. And when he did remember to come home, he’d pat me on the head to superficially ask me how I was and then lock himself away, reading the works of Marquis de Sade. Don’t ask me why. I didn’t know much about it, but apparently, prior to marrying my mother, he was known in his circles
as
Marquis de Sade for reasons only whispered. Some even say he assisted Mrs. Berkley in creating the Whipping Society.”
A breath escaped him. “That was well beyond the time he drowned himself in brandy, parties, men, women, excessively buying things he didn’t need, forgetting he had a life. Forgetting
I
had a life. I’d find him senseless on the floor, covered in vomit, thinking him dead too many times to count. I relied on my aunt and my uncle, who were my mother’s siblings, for the comfort my father never gave me. They are the only reason I retained any amount of normalcy. And then my aunt had to go fall in love with a Frenchman and move to France,” he muttered. “I hated that bastard for taking her away but eventually got over it. I had my uncle, after all. But my uncle had his own problems with his wife who had made him miserable. And then…”
His voice cracked. “I came to trust a woman I shouldn’t have. A married, well-respected woman who…who debauched me at fourteen against my will in a carriage on the side of a road. She gave me money for it and I accepted that for myself from that moment on. Regarding Theodosia, her brother committed suicide after what had been done to him by the same woman who had debauched me.
“Theodosia wanted to right what had been done to me and others by financially assisting, but in the end, she had rotted herself. Simply know, Caroline, that I tried to crawl out of that life with that ten thousand investment I had made. And when I lost everything in that fire, I found myself stumbling back to it. But I’m done with that way of life, Caroline. I am. I’m done. I wanted to be years ago.”
Caroline’s fingers dug into his. Dearest God. Yanking her hands from his, she brought them up to his face, and despite his resistance, she forced him to look at her.
Dark, anguished eyes finally met hers.
And she knew it was real. All of it.
A sob escaped her. Ronan, her beloved Ronan, had lost his pride, his innocence, and his soul at fourteen. A soul that had chivalrously yanked an obscene book from the hands of a thirteen-year-old girl for reasons she only now understood.
Unable to bear it, Caroline set her forehead against his, pressing her hands tighter against the sides of his shaven face. “You…you should have told me,” she choked out. “I would have done my best to…to understand you. Not turn you away.”
His hands jumped to the sides of her own face and pressed his fingers and palms against her cheeks. “I had to learn how to see past my shame. I’m still learning. It’s hard but I…I enrolled in a school that is helping me with it. And I’m not alone in this. There are other men whose problems go beyond mine.”
She swallowed. “A school?”
He nodded against her. “Madame de Maitenon has been assisting me to overcome more than my inability to kiss. She has been helping me to better understand myself and what you need me to be. It’s been an unexpected journey for me. That day, when you wanted me to kiss you, it wasn’t that I didn’t want to. I had to learn to disassociate what had happened to me with Lady Stanbury. I’m still learning how to do it.”
Her lips parted and she slowly released him.
For the first time since knowing Ronan, she felt as if she were touching more than his hand. She felt as if she were touching his soul. It was so overwhelming, tears blinded her and another sob escaped her.
This
was the man whom she had always wanted to embrace.
This
. A man open with his thoughts and his life. She lowered her gaze, tears dripping from the bridge of her nose, and confessed in anguished disbelief, “I always knew there was more to you than you allowed me to see. And I…I thank you for sharing your life with me. It allows me to better understand you.”
His fingers gently cupped her chin and lifted it so that she might meet his gaze. His dark eyes intently and heatedly held hers as his forefinger gently swiped away her tears. “Forgive me for not sharing myself with you in the way you deserved. I wasn’t helping you understand me.”
She swallowed. “Does my brother know any of this?”
“Some of it. But not all. How do you tell a friend who has everything that you have nothing? It’s…it’s pointless. Despite all the griping your brother has ever done regarding his father and your mother and his family, he has no idea how charmed his life really is.” He paused and added, “Though I did manage to get the bastard to enroll in a school for virgins with me. Having him there at the school is worth a king’s ransom.”
An astounded laugh escaped her. “Alex enrolled? In Madame de Maitenon’s school?”
He smirked. “He damn well did. Though I dare say he didn’t do it willingly and he didn’t do it for me. He did it for Lady Chartwell.”
She blinked. “Who?”
“Lady Chartwell conducts the admissions at the school. Apparently, the two haven’t been able to keep their hands off each other. Though he won’t admit to it, Madame says he and Lady Chartwell are very much involved.”
That was who her brother had been secretly seeing. “Is she a good woman? This Lady Chartwell?”
“What I know of her, yes. I only met her once, when I applied for the school, and then another time when I dragged your brother in, but Madame speaks very highly of her. She trusts her with everything.”
Caroline pressed her hands together anxiously. “Alex ended things with her. Because of me. Do you think I should talk to him about it? Or that perhaps I should call on her about it?”
“I wouldn’t worry. Something tells me their paths are about to cross again soon. Hell, Hawksford gave me a bloody nose over her. And I’ve
never
seen him territorial over a woman like that. And I didn’t even do anything. For some reason, he thought she and I were involved. I only met the woman once.”