Chapter Eleven #2
Biting the inside of her cheek, she shuffled closer, her heels dragging on the lush carpet.
Arching a brow, Stephen gestured for her to sit on the sofa behind him with a broad sweep of his arm and after a moment’s hesitation she obliged, returning her teacup to its saucer before sinking into one of the generously upholstered cushions.
He sat on the opposite end and for a few minutes they both stared into the fire, watching the rhythmic lick of the flames.
“I would like—” she began.
“There are a few—” he started.
Three years of not speaking, and now they were interrupting each other.
It would have been amusing if it weren’t so painfully stiff.
“You first,” he said, granting her the floor.
Abigail took a measured breath as she struggled to put her thoughts in order.
She wanted to do this once, and she wanted to do it correctly.
Dropping her gaze to her lap where her fingers were interlocked, she started again.
“I would like to apologize again. After you came to see me in Connecticut, I . . . I panicked. As a result of that panic, I believed my best course of action was to disappear. In hindsight, I realize that I should have given you the courtesy of a letter. That would have been the far more logical decision.”
“A letter,” Stephen repeated.
“Yes,” she said earnestly. “A letter explaining that I did not want to be found and I wished no ill will between us. I truly did not anticipate how long you would continue to search for me, and I am sorry to have wasted your time.”
“To be clear, you are not apologizing for disappearing and breaking the terms of our agreement. You’re apologizing for not writing me a letter before you did so.”
“Yes,” she said, relieved that he understood. “Precisely.”
“Astonishing,” he muttered, throwing his head back with a bark of laughter. “Absolutely bloody astonishing.”
Her brow furrowed. “What . . . what is?”
His chin dropped with a snap and his amber eyes burned brighter than the fire when they clashed with hers. “Your obliviousness, for one. Do you really not see any wrongdoing in your actions beyond the courtesy of a letter?”
“You never should have asked me to return to England with you!” she cried, springing to her feet.
“That morning in my bedroom, after we . . . after we did what we did, you asked me to come back with you. To give up the pursuit of my dreams so that I might fall in step with what you envisioned as a perfect wife.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he scoffed. “I haven’t ever asked you to give up being a doctor. It’s because of me that you were able to become one in the first place!”
Did the arrogance of men know no bounds?
“If I’d gone with you, would you have let me open my own office?” she challenged, her hands bunching into fists of indignation on her hips. “Would you have let me establish my practice? My list of patients? Or would your expectation have been that I immediately assume the duties of a countess?”
“Would I have wanted my bride to spend all of her waking hours away from our home after being separated for the first five years of our marriage?” Standing as well, he stalked to the window and slammed his palms on the sill with enough strength to rattle the pane.
In the deathly silence that followed, the sound of an ember popping in the fireplace was as loud as a gunshot.
“If I’m being honest, no, probably not.”
Her chest rose and fell as the truth, the hard truth, enveloped the room. A truth that left no place to hide and no one to blame, which was perhaps the hardest part of all. That they were both wrong . . . and they were both right.
“That is why I ran,” she said quietly. “We want different things, Stephen. Things that we cannot give the other. I don’t fault either of us for believing it might work when we started out, but at this point it would be folly to pursue a future where if we’re together, neither of us will have what we truly covet. ”
“What if what I truly covet is you?” He looked at her over his shoulder, and the sudden bleakness in his gaze stole the very breath from her lungs.
“In Connecticut, you told me that you wished you’d never married me.
Is that still true? Tell me it is, and I’ll arrange for a coach to take you back to London today. ”
She parted her lips to tell him precisely that . . . but to her surprise, the words wouldn’t come. Then again, she’d always been a terrible liar. “I wish . . . I wish there were an easy solution. I wish this were a cut I could mend with a few stitches. I wish we could both have what we wanted.”
“You’ve been a doctor for three years.” He went to her and took her hand.
Raising it to his mouth, he lightly brushed his lips across her knuckles.
Resignation had replaced the anger in his gaze.
Resignation . . . and the tiniest, smallest flicker of hope.
“Stay here and be my wife for three weeks. I was going to force you, but that wouldn’t do either of us any good.
So now I’ll ask you. Be a countess, Abigail.
For three weeks. Then freely decide what life you would like to pursue.
If it’s not a life with me, I’ll grant you whatever independence you desire.
An outright divorce would be nigh on impossible, but we can go our separate ways and I’ll never darken your doorstep again. You have my word.”
Her heart stuttered.
The enormity of what he was giving her . . .
Of what he was offering . . .
It was difficult to comprehend.
But it wasn’t hard to accept.
“Yes,” she said, her tongue all but stumbling in its effort to push out the word before he could change his mind. “Yes, I agree. On one condition.”
His eyes narrowed. “What is that?”
“Well . . .”