Seven Wicked Nights (Turner #1.5)

The enormity of her loss hit her again. What might have been, the life they might have had. Words came on the heels of a short, low breath, fast and propelled by the force of all the years she’d kept those words back. She lifted her head and stared at him through a blur of tears.

“Your father told me if I married you, he’d have Magnus expelled from school. He said if you were still a minor he’d have the marriage annulled. He told me if I thought we could wait until Magnus was graduated, that if we did that, Magnus would never have a living anywhere, not for as long as he lived. He told me he’d already personally seen to it that the Royal Academy would never admit him, and he had. He did that to punish me, to make sure I knew he’d stop at nothing. That’s why Magnus was rejected. If it weren’t for me, he would have been admitted. He ought to have been.”

He set both hands to his head this time and stared past her.

“Your father was right about me. And so are you. I didn’t love you enough to bring more harm to my brother. I couldn’t do that to him when I’d already cost him his dream.”

Crispin dropped his hands to his side. She didn’t move. The silence ripened. At last, he said, “You ought to have told me.”

She leaned sideways against the chair and stared at the window frame past Crispin’s shoulders. She didn’t want to know if he was looking at her. It would kill her to know. “What difference does it make what I should have done or wish I had? There’s only the choice I made. And I am sorry. So sorry to have hurt you. I never wanted that.”

“I married someone else, and by the time I understood what an awful mistake I’d made marrying in anger and resentment, it was too late.” His voice was bleak, and if there had been a way to blot that out, she would have. “My wife deserved better. She was a good and decent woman, and she deserved more from her husband than the man she got.”

That took her aback enough to look at him. She had always imagined they were happy. Crispin would never have married a woman who wasn’t worthy of him. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

He made a face when she reacted by reaching to him. Her hand fell back to her lap. “Don’t you be either, Crispin Hope. You never wrote of her except in the most tender and respectful ways. I always thought it was plain as anything that you loved her very much indeed.”

“Not the way I loved you.”

“Of course you didn’t.” She clenched her hand on her lap. “There isn’t only one way to love someone.”

He strode to her and did not stop moving until she was trapped between him and the chair. Her heart headed toward her toes. His every look recalled what they’d done today, and though she still felt the aches of their encounter, her body wanted him again. She wanted all the marks of their passion, the imprint of him on her soul rising up and taking shape once again. “Then why do I feel as if nothing’s changed with us?”

“The past hasn’t changed. It’s there in our memories. It won’t ever go away.”

The silence was uncomfortably long.

“I loved you.”

“We can’t go back.” She wiped at her tears. “My God, can you imagine if we tried? We aren’t that couple anymore. I don’t know you any more than you do me. Please, let’s be friends. Let’s keep that.”

He stepped back.

Her heart broke again.





Chapter Nine





Two days later

AFTER BREAKFAST THEY WERE ALL sitting in the parlor as near to the fire as they dared now that Hob had brought in the morning post. There were letters for everyone. Crispin had several, most of which he put in his pocket, but he read aloud from one in which a friend of his, a man whose name she recognized from reading the Times, described with lively detail his days spent hiking in Northumberland.

Magnus sat on a chair idly sketching while Eleanor knit. When Crispin had finished reading his letter and they had exchanged news or excerpts from the other correspondence, Portia cleared her throat and said, “I have happy news.”

Eleanor put down her knitting and beamed at her. “I adore happy news, and I should very much like to hear yours.”

“Jeremy and I have advanced the date of our wedding.”

In the silence that followed, Eleanor drew her eyebrows together. “But the day’s been set for weeks now.”

“We’ve decided to be married sooner. Not October, Eleanor, but May.”

“May? Next year, do you mean?”

“No. Next month. Nothing fancy. There’s no time for anything but the simplest of ceremonies, and we’ve decided we prefer it that way.”

Eleanor’s hands stilled. “But May is when we’ll be in London. For the end of the season.”

“You and Magnus may still go, of course.”

“When did you decide this?”

“I wrote to Mr. Stewart just a few days ago.” She was aware of Crispin’s silence, the way he watched her. “He agreed a May wedding was more convenient than October. I should like it very much, Magnus, if we could be married here at Doyle’s Grange on the last Sunday in May. As soon as the last of the banns are called.”