Chapter 24 #3
He dropped his hands and started to pace.
“I don’t think you understand what you are asking.
If we were to leave, I would have nothing.
Your situation wouldn’t become better; it would become worse.
You wouldn’t only have your mother to worry about, but you would have me as well.
I hired my own tutor with funds Garrett was able to present as ongoing gambling debts to my father.
I was never sent to school; I can thatch a roof, but you should be married to a gentleman, not a laborer.
And if I ever secured a position worthy of you, my father would hear of it and find us. We would have to live in hiding.”
Without his hands holding me up, I let my legs collapse under me, and I sat on his bed.
“Why?” I asked. “I know your father is a terrible person, I’ve seen him treat his servants in the most despicable manner, but you are his son.
Certainly we could find a way to live most of our lives away from him and bear his monstrous personality during the few times a year we must see him. ”
“No, Anna. It wouldn’t be like that. For Garrett and Julia, perhaps, they could work out an arrangement like that someday, but not me.
Father has always punished me the most, and he will not hesitate to hurt me by hurting you.
He would be relentless, and I simply will not let you live your life like that. ”
“I don’t want to live my life without you. Not if you love me. Each day we spend in each other’s company, I’m more and more convinced you do. I’m fine living in hiding from him if that is the only path you will accept. I’m not afraid of being poor. I’m only afraid of losing you.”
David took in a slow, shaky breath, walked back to the door, and rested his forehead on it. “This is torture.”
I pushed myself off the bed and came up behind him, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Then make it stop.”
He heaved a deep sigh and turned around to face me.
“That’s what I’m trying to do. Living with you has been excruciating.
My wife sleeps across the corridor from me every night.
I can hear you when you walk past my room.
You’ve kissed me exactly twice since we’ve been married, and I held you once through the night.
All three of those moments repeat in my mind whenever I’m not forcing myself to keep busy.
You’ve laughed with Julia and built something beautiful here, in the wreck of a home I despised growing up.
You are everything I’ve ever wanted and the one thing I can never have.
” His voice hitched, and I could see the pain written all over his face.
“At some point, the torture has to stop, doesn’t it?
I can’t be tortured forever. Not if I want to remain sane. ”
“If I actually am everything you’ve ever wanted, why can we not remain married, and married truly? Your father made you unhappy enough during your childhood. Let’s not allow him to take away the joys of the rest of your life as well. I’m in love with you, David. I want to be your wife.”
Something changed in his eyes at my words. Desperation was sucked away into a type of hope—a desperate, unlikely hope. Ice bursting into flames. He took a half step forward and stopped.
I grabbed his lapels and moved my face only inches away from his. “Stop keeping your distance, husband. It is torture for both of us.”
“I cannot.”
“Well, I can.” I threw my arms around his neck and tucked my head to the side of his.
He didn’t resist my embrace or pull away.
Instead, he exhaled a deep, ragged breath and let his head drop to my shoulder.
His arms, which had been stiff at his side, wrapped around my waist, and he pulled me closer, inhaling deeply into my hair.
I held him while we came together in this desperate moment, breathing each other in softly.
Whatever happened next, I wanted it to happen together.
I pulled back slightly and pressed my mouth against his cheek, just below his ear.
“I love you. I don’t know exactly when it happened, but I do.
” I kissed him again, this time lower, along his jawbone.
“My kisses shouldn’t be numbered as if you are keeping track of them until they are gone.
Please don’t make me leave you and call it a kindness. It would be too cruel.”
His fingers dug into my back, like a drowning man needing something to cling on to.
“You’ve been my hope for a better world for so long,” he murmured, his mouth hovering over mine.
“But I’ve never thought I could turn that hope into a reality.
There are so many obstacles in our way that I cannot see a clear path. ”
“Darling.” I kissed his mouth gently. His lips were so soft, so giving; they sent a wave of belonging rushing over me.
Poor, wealthy, hidden, or living out in the open—it didn’t matter to me as long as we were together.
I pulled away and pressed my forehead onto his, needing a moment to breathe and wanting him to hear my words clearly.
“We don’t have to see our future to believe in it.
That is exactly what hope is—not knowing but believing anyway. ”
I could see the moment David let go of his panic and despair and started questioning his determination to force me away. He nodded, the motion making my head shake with his, two people so utterly connected no one should have the power to tear us apart.
He lifted his hands to my face again and studied my eyes, my nose, the curve of my mouth.
He traced the lines of my jaw with his thumbs.
“These last few weeks have been miraculous. I didn’t think I would ever be happy, and I can’t help but feel like if we try to make this work, I will be the most selfish man on earth. ”
“It isn’t selfish of you,” I told him. Hesitant shadows creeped around his eyes. “Our happiness will forever be entwined. In gaining your own happiness, you would also be granting mine.”
I watched the thought settle on him, the certainty of my happiness being dependent on his own. Whatever torturous devices he’d used to keep me at arm’s length finally seemed to fall away.
“Anna.” He whispered it as reverently as a prayer.
I held his gaze, encouraging him silently.
“Anna,” he said my name again, this time firmly, as if in that one word our worlds would unite.
His fingers slid into my hair, and he pulled my lips back to his with an urgency I’d never felt in him before.
His mouth covered mine, drinking me in, the fingers of one hand slid up my back and behind my head while his other hand pulled at my waist.
My breath hitched at his sudden fervor, the tension of the last hour fading away. I basked in the feel of David relinquishing the last of his doubts and reveled in the spots of light that seemed to burst forth wherever his fingers and mouth touched me.
And when I thought I could bear no more of only being kissed and not kissing in return, I pressed forward until he was against the door, and I held him there with my arms, my mouth, my body, with everything I had.
I would not let him go, and I would not allow him to send me away either.
That was my promise, and I told it to him in every way I could imagine.
He answered accordingly.
I trailed kisses down his cheek, under his chin, and released his back with one of my hands, lifting it to the cravat at his neck. I tugged at the knot, needing more of him to kiss.
His hand came over mine, stilling it, even as his mouth captured mine again, distracting me from my target. But it only took his mouth leaving mine to press a kiss to my temple for me to remember my goal. I tried once again to loosen the knot at his neck.
He shook his head. “I can’t . . .”
Images of him pulling away when I’d rolled up his sleeve and of his shirt hanging open when I’d been sick came back to me. He always pulled away, never wanting to show them to me. “I know about your condition. I don’t care.”
He stilled even further. “My condition?”
“Those marks on your skin. I don’t care about them.
Dr. Clarke said they aren’t hereditary. They won’t affect our children.
” I’d asked about those children in a very different way when speaking with Dr. Clarke.
At the time, I’d thought that would never be a possibility for us.
To talk of them now, after declaring war against anyone or anything that would pull us apart, made the room seem brighter.
Our future family could be one of laughter and hope.
“You spoke to Dr. Clarke about my skin?”
“Yes.” I took a deep breath. How long had it been since I’d taken a full one? “I’m sorry if that was a breach of your trust. You said he was your doctor as well, and after I saw the same spot on Julia’s arm, I thought perhaps they were the reason we couldn’t . . .” My voice trailed off.
David’s eyes had gone cold, his body rigid.
“What?” I asked. I placed my fingertips on his cheeks, but he didn’t even notice my touch.
“You saw a mark on Julia?”
I nodded. Surely he knew about it.
But the look on his face contradicted my assumption. David’s jaw clenched, and it looked as though he might be ill. He took hold of my hand, unlocked the door, and, with a quick glance for servants or his father, pulled us into the corridor and toward Julia’s room.