Chapter 20 #3
He sighed. “Ardmore promised he could arrange your release within the hour. But he had a number of stipulations he wanted me to agree to. Stipulations that at their face value seemed inconsequential, like dropping our investigation of him, but that in the end I knew would be tantamount to treason and worse. I wanted to agree. I thought I could. Especially after he urged me to remember how beautiful you are.” His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed.
“And how … how lecherous soldiers can be.”
“They didn’t,” I retorted, knowing precisely what that was supposed to mean, in case he still had doubts. “No one … hurt me in that way.” Though it had been a near thing. If I were arrested again, I didn’t place very good odds that I would escape such a fate a second time.
Sidney’s face was twisted with repressed torment.
“Well, I couldn’t know that, could I? And he spoke with such authority, such cruelty.
” His skin flushed with outrage. “I wanted to tear him limb from limb. Maybe I should have.” Every muscle in his body seemed to tighten, preparing to pummel something.
“But I knew what you would say almost as if you were whispering in my ear. I knew that if I agreed I would be making a deal with the devil. That my soul would be his and everything that had come before would have been for naught.”
It was obvious he was referring to more than what had occurred in Dublin or even since our first encounter with Ardmore.
That he was speaking of the horrors of the war and his harrowing search for the traitor who had betrayed so many members of his battalion, and the bullet that had by some miracle not taken his life.
All of it. Even our struggle to reconnect and rebuild our marriage.
None of it would have mattered if he’d allowed Ardmore to own him.
“So I … I told him to go to hell.”
A surge of admiration swept through me. “Maybe I was whispering in your ear.”
He turned to glower at me. “But how do you tell the wife who you love with every fiber of your being that you weren’t willing to sacrifice everything to save her?” Anguish was writ in every line of his face, scored so deep that it robbed the breath from my lungs.
I realized then that he was far stronger than I was. That sacrifice was not always noble. Not when it betrayed who you were. When it betrayed who they were. For how long could love truly last in the aftermath?
There were some things that were greater than ourselves. Some things that were more important than one person. Even the person we loved most.
I stepped closer, grasping his shoulders and arching up onto my toes to kiss him, heedless of who might be watching.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t as cooperative.
“Stop!” He pushed me away, anger blazing in his eyes. “You should be slapping me, not kissing me! You should be furious!”
“Why?”
His head reared back at my calm response. “Haven’t you been listening?”
“I have.”
“Then you understand that when Ardmore offered to save you, instead of accepting his terms, I told him no! I left you there! Suffering.” He was yelling now, his rage and revulsion with himself eating him alive.
“So because you wouldn’t burn our world to the ground just to have me released, what … a day, maybe two … earlier than I was, I’m supposed to hate you? And who’s to say Ardmore could have even upheld his end of the bargain? Remember, he wanted you to be the one arrested, not me.”
Sidney’s mouth had opened to continue arguing, but at this pronouncement it snapped shut.
“That’s right. You were supposed to be the one detained. But O didn’t follow orders, and I was imprisoned instead. So who’s to say that O or anyone else would have complied with Ardmore’s request to see me released?”
I turned away, watching the breeze ruffle the last of the autumn leaves clinging to an oak tree. “If they had arrested you, I’m not sure I would have been as strong as you.”
“Of course, you would.”
I turned to look him squarely in the eye. “And you wouldn’t have held that against me?”
He clearly realized what I was doing. “That’s different.”
“How?”
He scowled. “It just is.”
I shook my head. “It isn’t, Sidney. And you know it.” I grasped the front lapels of his coat, pulling him closer so that our faces were inches apart. “Stop being stubborn.”
He was gathering his words to voice another argument.
I could see it in the dogged set of his jaw.
So rather than let him, I arched up on my toes again and pressed my lips to his.
Not that my force was any match to Sidney’s should he wish to set me away.
But this time he didn’t. This time after a moment’s wavering, he drew me deeper into his embrace.
When he did pull away, it was only to break the kiss, nestling me close to his side as if he wasn’t ready to let me go. As if he would never be.
“Maybe we should return to the motorcar before we’re given a citation for public indecency,” he murmured, attempting to lighten the somber pall that had fallen over us.
I smiled faintly, continuing to lean on him as he led me back down the walk toward the Pierce-Arrow.
However, my relief at discovering he hadn’t been entrapped by Ardmore was tainted by the guilt I felt knowing I was still keeping secrets from him.
I’d been fortunate that neither had come to light during our conversation, but I feared it was only a matter of time before they were impossible to continue hiding.