Chapter 22 #3
“Fleur …” he said. But he stopped and broke eye contact with her.
He looked over her head to the stables, where the groom who had taken their horses was trying to look engrossed in his task of removing her sidesaddle.
“I am coming with you. Go and change and pack a bag. I shall be here in one hour’s time or less. ”
She said nothing else, but watched him as he strode away from her, untethered his horse, and swung himself into the saddle.
“One hour,” he said to her as he took his horse past her and turned its head for the driveway.
He had stolen half an hour and convinced himself that it was no serious sin against his responsibilities to his family and dependents.
Now he was stealing two days. He was not so sure he would be able to quiet his conscience this time.
Except that she needed him. For some reason that only she could understand fully, she needed to see the grave of the man she had accidentally killed. That grave was thirty miles away. She needed his escort.
And except that he loved her.
IT WAS A VERY comfortable carriage, Fleur thought, relaxing back against soft green cushions and noticing that the springs made a mockery of the rough roads over which they passed. What a difference from the journey she had made by the stage just a few days before.
And yet she was not relaxed, either. The Duke of Ridgeway sat beside her, both of them silent, just a small space separating their shoulders.
Why had he come? Why was he taking such an interest in her affairs? And why had she let him come? She might have said no. She might have argued the point more vigorously.
“Why?” she asked, as she had more than an hour before outside the stables. “Why are you here in Wiltshire? Why are you taking me to Wroxford?”
He did not look at her, but out of the window. She thought for a while that he would not answer.
“You know that you did not murder your cousin’s valet,” he said, “that in large measure you are not responsible for his death. And yet you have to see your involvement with him to its conclusion. You have to make this journey, a thing that very few people except you would understand. I feel something similar with you.”
She said nothing more for a while. She understood his answer. It made sense to her.
“I don’t understand,” she said at last. “I have never understood it, though in your case I find it particularly difficult to understand. The duchess is very beautiful. You have a daughter who thrives on your love and a home that must be one of the loveliest in all England. Why do men like you need women for casual and sordid relations? I don’t understand. ”
He continued to look out of the window. “I can’t answer for other men,” he said, “only for myself. I will not say much about my marriage, Fleur, because I owe my wife privacy, if not myself. I will only say that it is a difficult and an unhappy marriage and has been from the start. Sometimes it is difficult not to feel certain cravings. But I was faithful to my marriage until that one occasion with you.”
Fleur looked at his profile, at the scarred side of his face. Cravings? Did he not have a normal marriage?
“I don’t know why it happened on that occasion,” he said.
“I had not planned it and you did nothing to entice me. You stood still and quiet in the shadows. I could not even see you clearly. Perhaps …” He stopped talking, and Fleur thought that he would not continue.
But he did after a while. “Perhaps something in me recognized you. I don’t know. ”
“Recognized?” The word came out as a whisper.
“My pearl beyond price,” he said quietly.
Fleur watched him swallow.
“And then I was angry,” he said, “because having made the decision to be unfaithful, I wanted a night of forgetfulness. I wanted to be able to blame you afterward. But you did nothing, only allowed me to use you. It was a dreadful experience for you, Fleur, and it was quite unpleasant for me. I got what I deserved, I suppose.”
“Why did you send Mr. Houghton to find me?” she asked. “Was it just guilt?”
He turned and looked at her for the first time. “For a long time I told myself that that was the reason,” he said. “I suppose that with my head I am still telling myself that. Don’t probe any further, Fleur.”
They stared at each other for a long while before she looked down at her hand, which was lying palm-down on the seat between them. No, she would probe no further. She did not want to know the truth. It was too strange, the fate that had brought them together, and too cruel.
She could feel his eyes on her hand too. And he set his own beside it, that beautiful long-fingered hand that had once terrified her and that still disturbed her and made her feel breathless. Their little fingers almost touched.
They sat like that, still and silent, for a long while before he moved his little finger to stroke lightly over hers. And she spread hers and bent it so that their two fingers twined together.
Their eyes watched their hands. They touched at only the one point. They said nothing.