Chapter Ten #2
He shook his head.
“You would want a woman with some drama to her, some joy, some sorrow. All emotions for which you could show sympathy for her. Why am I different?” She shrugged a shoulder. Tears gathered on her lower lids. “Why?”
He took the inches separating them and hauled her against him. From breasts to belly to loins and thighs, she stood against him. She loved every inch—and would never tell him.
“You are a ray of sunshine,” he told her.
“A glorious girl with golden tears in her eyes and a heart badly bruised by bastards who should never have touched you. I would have you like this, so near to me, if I could keep you. But I cannot. You deserve a young man, a man who is more handsome, more debonair, more joyous.”
“And what if age and appearance and charm were irrelevant to me? What would you say to me then? What would you do?”
He picked her up on her toes and pressed even more of her to his damnably hard length.
“I would say you must learn for yourself. Learn, my darling torment.” He crushed her to him for so fleeting a second that she barely felt the iron satin of his flesh.
“Learn! Find what you want. I venture that who you want is not here. Nor will he ever be.”
He set her away from him.
Forcing down tears, then outrage, she took her time and found words. They were not kind, not diplomatic, but hers. “Never in all the months we have been together, Rafe Durham, have you lied to me. You do it now, and I hate you for it.”
With her emotions wrinkling her nose and trembling her lips, she stepped backward to his door. She grasped the handle. “I will write to Gus immediately after I leave you.”
He nodded, silent and grim.
“I will be gone before noon.”
*
As Rafe watched her open the door and pick up her skirts, he knew she was already gone from him. She was that fast, her decision that final.
Now she was not even his friend. Not even the darling whom he had cherished in her sickness and yearned for in her health. She was not his, never had been nor could ever be his to have or hold for any day of his life.
Rafe sat in his chair. How could he move? How could he go to her? Talk to her? Save her from hating him?
He stared at the label of the bottle of whiskey on the table to his right. He could not open it. If he did, if he poured, he would drink it to the bottom. Then he would miss her leaving him.
He could not bear to leave the house. Could not stand to see her go. But he must.
He loved her too deeply. Too dearly. That was wrong of him to care so much, after all he had kept so pure between them.
His age was not truly the deterrent to his wanting her, keeping her, having her as his own, his love, his partner. His wife.
That was how he should have her. Completing the wealth of affection he bore her, the admiration he heaped upon her, the desire he yearned to shower over her. The totality of what he felt for her, he knew, could be reciprocated by her for him. If he thought it fair to her.
But it was not and never could be.
He shot up from his chair and paced the room. The fire behind the grate was dead. Cold ashes on the heap of his despair.
He should have waited to tell her how she must address her future. He could have waited until she had gotten her first taste of the brutality of London Society.
But no and no. He was right to have told her.
Explained it to her. Made her see she needed time to learn how to judge a good man, needed experiences to discover how wrongly some men presented themselves as kind or honest or truthful, loyal to good morals and right behavior.
Then she would see how many better men there were than he.
Stronger, wiser—hell, better looking and deserving of a beauty with a wild streak and a will that carried her from the depths of a dungeon to the pristine ballrooms filled with young women’s dreams of a man who could love and treasure his perfect match.
He was so very wrong for her. As a man to catch her up and abscond with her, yes, he was qualified to be that man.
As one to nurse her and cajole her and pamper her toward better health and laughter, yes, he was that man.
He’d had decades of saving others. His mother from a lover.
His sister from another man, too. And one other he had loved with a young man’s erotic passions and whom he had saved from an evil marriage.
But then, saved, she did not consider herself redeemed.
And she left him. Left him of her own accord.
Disappeared for years until he saw her on a street corner, and still, she walked away.
God help him. He was tied to his past, but also to his self-proclaimed mission, his future.
He was a man of commerce, but more than that, he was a man dedicated to a glorious future for Britain.
Out of power now that his dear friend William Pitt was no longer prime minister, he saw rascals in control who thought they could appease Bonaparte.
He was no fool to think the world would not revolve.
It would. And when it did, he would still be here.
With his friends—Halsey, Carlisle, and their fine friend in Seven Dials, Dáire O’Neill—he would build their new alliance with the agents of Scarlett Hawthorne.
He would not be abandoning Britain to idiots.
He had agents to call to him. Runners to set out to find all the French spies in this country, especially this evil Faucon who was so elusive.
It was good work and difficult, needing his focus.
All tasks steeped in his blood. Borne by his bones.
He had to save the British from themselves.
Ahh!
He ran both hands through his hair and strode once more to the window over his garden and stared down into the pitch-black void, then up into the twinkling, starry night.
What a fool he was to try to justify his inability to become her man, her lover, her husband, with trifling excuses like age and charm.
He was a man who rejoiced that, in this world, strong and daring women lived and laughed and loved.
Their numbers seemed to be few—but increasing.
Still, he was a man who had spent his life, by accident and by choice, helping women unable to break the bonds that held them from freedom and renaissance.
He had not been honest with Zeph, and he owed her the full explanation.
He doubted, however, she would want it or need it. He would not look for an opportunity.
He had so far searched for a woman whom he could admire and applaud, a spirit who wished for a fellow traveler, a companion, a lover. He had never found one with whom he wished to share his every intimate moment.
Zephora Butler was that woman. One who had come to him by chance and hideous circumstance. One who had accepted all his help and never flinched, never shied from him, but accepted all he had to give. And then she challenged him. Defied him. Repudiated him.
She was meant for a finer man than he. Though he craved her, needed her—the shining example of what he could save and what he wanted in spite of his knowledge—he could never possess her.
And he would forever hold his peace about that.
Forevermore.
It must be so.
But now he had to find a way to live with himself. Alone.
For how could he live without her?