The Reluctant Bride (19 page)

Branches whipped his cheeks and he rode as if the devil were at his heels. Faster he went, reliving the exhilaration of last night when he'd given in to what no man could resist: the warm, welcoming embrace of a wife he'd desired for so long.

God, he was confused.

Yes, he should have waited until Emily had woken so he could ask her, plainly and directly, what had prompted her brave and epic journey to his bedroom. The uncomfortable truth was that he was a coward. There was no other excuse for it.

Perhaps he was afraid of seeing the telltale stain of acknowledgement when she replied in answer to his question that of course she loved him, and Aunt Gemma had nothing to do with her taking the initiative.

He was surprised to see Emily leaning on the fence as she waited for him at the entrance to the park. She looked so lovely as she raised her hand in greeting but there was a haunted look in her eye. Was she regretting last night?

Fear spiralled through him. Was she about to tell him that she had wanted the consummation of their marriage to fulfil her expectations but that Angus was not the lover or husband for which she'd hoped?

Angus dismounted and tethered Saladin loosely to the gatepost.

‘Is anything the matter?' he asked, the casualness of his tone so at odds with what he was feeling.

‘I wish you would stop asking me that. Every time I approach you, it seems you're imagining I must have some ulterior motive.'

He gave a short laugh, feeling wary but also hopeful. Her manner was light rather than portentous. ‘You'll have to persuade me there's not, then.'

Her mouth dropped open. Clearly, it was not what she'd expected to hear after last night.

After last night. Everything was changed after last night, and yet everything was the same.

He had to be straight with her. Secrets were only for keeping if they saved another pain. ‘Emily, why did you come to me last night? I saw the letter your Aunt Gemma wrote you about the need to be a good wife.'

She blanched and took a step back, gasping. ‘You saw that?'

‘Of course I should never have read it, only it came out, staring me in the face, when I picked up the Book of Children's Verse lying on your escritoire.' He felt she would have no answer that would satisfy him. Tensely, he waited to hear her out. Would she rail at him? Blame him for being underhand? Indeed, that charge held water, now. He felt shamed but glad he knew, nevertheless. They needed this conversation.

Emily looked down at the ground, clenching and unclenching her fists, as if she didn't know where to start. Finally she raised her head and said, ‘What Aunt Gemma advises and what I feel are not the same thing.'

‘But you
did
what she advised. After telling her my presence was anathema.' God, it hurt to say the words out loud.

She gasped again, her face crumpling as she clutched her shawl about her shoulders, almost, it seemed, for protection. ‘Don't you believe that I love you, Angus?' she asked in a small voice. ‘After last night?' She took a tremulous breath. ‘If you hadn't read Aunt Gemma's letter perhaps you'd be a contented husband right now.'

‘But I
did
read her letter.'

She frowned, thinking, her hand straying to his which rested on the gate post. He forced himself not to flinch. Was this part of the act?

Emily's expression was searching. ‘Would you believe me if I told you that I wrote the letter some weeks ago in the midst of grief and despair but that your kindness and patience finally won me over?' Her mouth relaxed into a smile and his heart performed a strange contortion when he saw the tears in her eyes. ‘Even before I knew the truth about Jack I'd started to open my heart to you. I just felt so guilty towards Jack's memory about doing it.'

He shrugged. ‘I'd
like
to believe it.' He couldn't help himself, gently caging Emily's hand with his free one. ‘Yet I have to remind you it was mere weeks ago you asked your aunt if she would help you obtain an annulment.'

She snatched her hands away and put them to her face. ‘I felt so differently then, Angus. I was still in love with Jack. I still resented you.' When she dropped her hands he saw her tears ran freely. Her expression was strained but sincere. ‘I
want
to be with you, Angus. As a wife. In all ways. Do you believe that?'

Angus regarded her carefully. He thought of how sincere she'd been about
not
loving him when he'd married her. She'd never lied about her feelings. Why would she start now?

Slowly he nodded, though he could still picture the words which branded his soul from the paper on which they were written. He knew he should simply accept her words at face value, but the pain scored deep. ‘I could almost believe that, Emily … after last night.' He chose his words carefully. ‘Nevertheless, it is true what your aunt said about an annulment harming your reputation. That a reputation and a pretty face is all the insurance a woman can look to in this world. I want to believe that your feelings for me were pure—'

‘You surely can't accuse me of play-acting in your bed, Angus!' she flared.

‘No, I won't do that.' He sighed. ‘I'm sorry, Emily.' He truly was. ‘I wish I'd never come upon Aunt Gemma's letter.' Miserably he looked down at his balled fists. ‘Knowing how much you detested the sight of me, just weeks ago, is painful to my pride. I wonder how you can have changed your feelings towards me so quickly.'

She appeared to be making an effort to keep her breathing steady. Through gritted teeth she asked, ‘And what about the knowledge that you married me because I reminded you of your former mistress?'

‘Jessamine?' Startled, he saw her distress was genuine.

‘You married me because of Jessamine.' She spoke crisply, as if resorting to this false pride were one means of taking control of her feelings. ‘You married me for atonement … not because you loved me.'

Saladin snorted. Angus loosened the reins so the horse could crop the grass at their feet, then he raised his head to meet the confusion in Emily's expression.

Clearly she had investigated Angus's relationship with Jessamine more thoroughly than he'd realised. Resigned, he watched her shoulders sag.

He couldn't let her labour under such a misapprehension. ‘You're wrong. I married you because I
loved
you. I'd loved you for two years.'

He raised his hand to stay her response. He wasn't finished yet. He had to tell her. He'd been a fool not to acknowledge he must one day confront what he'd spent four years trying to forget. It seemed only right that it would be for Emily's benefit.

‘But you already know that. You cannot have been blind to what I've felt here—' He touched his heart as he smiled at her. ‘Now you want to hear about Jessamine.'

He was resigned. Besides, what Emily said was true. Jessamine's spectre had stood between them as much as Jack's had.

Emily's look was challenging, her mouth set, her eyes dark with angry pride as she waited, as if she truly believed Jessamine had been a contender for his affections. How far off the mark she was, but at least it showed she harboured strong feelings about it.

‘Jessamine took her own life,' he said, and so he began with her death because he knew so little about how Jessamine had lived before she'd met him. Wearily, Angus sketched the few details his late mistress had shared with him: the taunts that she was Robespierre's bastard she'd endured from the innkeeper's family who'd fostered her in Paris. The hard life which had not become easier after her birth mother had reclaimed her when she was ten, for although she then lived in comfort, her mother wanted to take control of her mind. Then her escape from her mother, hoping to find refuge with a relative.

‘But something terrible happened because Jessamine had recurring nightmares in which she'd scream that the tide was coming in to drown her. Almost every night.' Embarrassed, he glanced at Emily. He should not have been so revealing, yet it was something that had always troubled him. Jessamine's terrors had been profound as had Angus's inability to bring comfort. ‘She was terrified of small dark places and said she'd have died in one had it not been for her unlikely rescue by an English soldier, the man who then claimed her as his wife and brought her to Spain.'

‘If honour was so important to Jessamine,' Emily asked after outlining what Major Woodhouse had told her, ‘why was she prepared to be your mistress?'

Angus hid his shock that Woodhouse had revealed so much. What must Emily think of him for taking a man's life? Haltingly, he replied. ‘She believed honour required her to offer the only thing she had in return for my protection. It's true that she would have starved without me. And, ultimately, I
had
been responsible for her protector's death.'

Thoughts of the war evoked terrible memories but this was perhaps the worst. Forcing back the mud and blood-soaked images, Angus muttered, ‘Yet I couldn't leave him to die painfully from his mortal wounds, or fall into enemy hands, in which case Jessamine would have died at the end of a bayonet, too. I don't believe I had any choice.' He drew in a difficult breath. ‘Still, I should not have allowed her to … force her attentions upon me for there was little love on either side.' He dropped his eyes and said more softly, ‘She was desperate for something more from me that I couldn't give her.
That
is what haunts me.'

When he raised his head once more it was to find Emily's eyes locked upon his face and knew she intended puzzling out what he wanted to extirpate from his mind forever.

Steadying herself upon the gate post, she asked softly, ‘What did
you
do, Angus … that she would take her own life?' She was worrying her lip with her teeth, trembling; and he wanted so much to take her into his arms to warm her, now that his anger was directed at himself. How badly he wanted her approbation, but he feared she would withdraw once he satisfied her curiosity.

Emily reached out her hand, dropping her arm before she'd touched him. ‘You've felt the need to make amends ever since, haven't you? You were driven to rescue someone who needed your help, not because you loved her – Jessamine or me – but because you couldn't live with your guilt.'

He did not deny it though there was so much more to it than that.

‘Last night you made me your wife, Angus.' Her voice was strained. ‘You cannot alter the fact that you accepted me when I came to you, though I would have spoken to you first had I known you'd read the letter I wrote Aunt Gemma.' She heaved in a breath and looked appealingly at him. ‘I wrote that letter when I thought Jack a hero and I was mourning his baby. But last night you attributed the basest of motives to my coming to you.' She looked miserable as she snapped the slender frond of an overhanging tree branch causing Saladin to startle.

The noise galvanised Angus into a response stronger than the hopelessness that held him victim.

‘I admit it was wrong of me, Emily, to keep the truth about Jack from you for so long. I admit, too, that I was wrong to read that letter.' He balled his fists and shifted his weight to his other foot. ‘But I did and it changed everything.'

Puzzled, she shook her head. ‘I do love you, Angus, but why is it so important when marriage is a contract? We made a good start last night at fulfilling our contract. I came to you out of more than just duty. Do not tell me that your feelings have changed because you doubt my love for you.' Her voice, which had sounded a reasoning note, suddenly turned harsh. ‘On account of a silly letter written at a time when you knew I did not love you … weeks ago! Did your love turn to scorn the moment you discovered you could have me, after all?'

‘No!' He gripped her shoulder, then let his hand fall. ‘No, Emily.' He tried again, and succeeded, the anger gone from his voice now. He even managed a smile. ‘Foolishly, I imagined I could win your heart through gallantry.'

He was relieved she did not draw back when he put his arm around her shoulders and clasped one of her hands. In fact, she moved closer and he felt a surge of warmth he'd never expected to feel again. He might even have kissed her had the
unfinished business
not continued to swirl about them.

‘You need to hear how Jessamine died.' He stilled. Like the calm before the storm, he prepared himself to make a clean breast of everything. Jessamine's death had shocked his sense of self. It had never fully recovered and Emily needed to know the worst of him.

She raised her chin and said with surprising perspicacity, ‘If it'll ease your guilt, then tell me. Otherwise, I don't need to hear it.' And then she put her cheek briefly against his chest and he felt her love like a conquering force do battle with the demons that lurked within him.

For a moment he nearly backed away. Was truth always the only way?

In this case, it was.

He began carefully, his arm still around her shoulders, the other clasping her right hand, standing in the dappled shade of an elm tree while Saladin cropped the grass nearby.

‘Let me begin with the death of her hopes and dreams for I killed those when I delivered the bullet which ended her husband's life. Don't be afraid, Emily.' He heard the bitterness in his laugh. ‘I did not kill Jessamine … at least, I didn't kill her like I killed her husband.'

‘I did not think you did.'

He cleared his throat for the words were so hard to dislodge. ‘Jessamine killed herself because I refused to play the gentleman.'

The truth was like a knife, twisting his entrails. He had no excuses. After he finished backing up this damning assessment it would eradicate any lingering charitable thoughts Emily might still entertain.

‘Jessamine appeared on my doorstep because she had no one and nowhere to go. After what I'd done, I could not cast her off. She was bound to me, yet her grief, her silent determination that she warm my bed in return for the essentials of life, were intolerable.' With a sweep of his arm, he swatted at a fly, needing distraction, wanting to pace, some kind of release. Emily said nothing but he could not meet her gaze which was fixed upon his face.