He felt as if he’d just sliced open his own chest and torn out his heart. “I should never have doubted you.”
“No.” To his surprise, she reached up to press her fingertips to his lips. “People are dying. I can understand why you felt you needed to ask. I kept the truth of my association with the French a secret from you when I should not have, and that will always be between us. It’s not good for a man and woman to keep things from each other. Secrets destroy trust. And without honesty and trust, love is just . . . a shifting mirage.”
He took her hand in his, pressed his lips to her palm, then curled his fingers around hers. “My love for you was never a mirage.”
They stood face-to-face, nothing touching except their hands. He could feel the tiny shudders trembling through her, breathed in the familiar theater scents of greasepaint and oranges, looked into the deep blue eyes that were so much like those of her father. He said, “Do you ever think what would have happened to us if you hadn’t listened to Hendon all those years ago? If you had listened instead to your heart and married me when you were seventeen and I was twenty-one?”
“I think of it all the time.”
He leaned his forehead against hers, drew in a deep breath.
She said, “I did the right thing, Sebastian. For you and for me.”
“You can still say that? Despite all that’s happened?”
“Yes. We would have destroyed each other had we wed. I couldn’t have continued on the stage as Lady Devlin, yet I would never have been accepted into society. So what would I have done instead? Sit home and embroider seat cushions? I’d have been miserable, and in the end I’d have made you miserable too.”
“We could have found a way,” he insisted.
Although for the first time, he was aware of a whisper of doubt.
Faint, but there.
That night, a new storm swept in from the north. A fierce wind rattled the limbs of the elms in the garden and sent dead leaves scuttling down the street. Hero could see streaks of lightning rending the sky, hear the patter of wind-driven rain against the window. She lay alone in her bed, her eyes on the tucked blue silk of the canopy overhead, her hands resting low on her belly, on the swelling of the child she had made with a man she’d barely known but who was now her husband.
She heard him come in when the storm was at its fiercest. But though she listened carefully, she didn’t hear him mount the steps to the second floor. And so, after a time, she drew on her dressing gown and went in search of him.
She found him in the dining room, beside the long windows overlooking the wind-savaged garden. He had his back to her and did not turn when she paused in the doorway. He’d stripped off his wet coat and waistcoat, and she could see the tense set of his shoulders through the fine cloth of his shirt. The air was damp and close with the smell of the rain and the tang of blood and an elusive scent she realized suddenly was pealed oranges. And she knew the pain of a woman who has given her heart to a man who lost his own heart long ago to someone else.
But all she said was, “I hope that’s not your blood I smell.”
He turned his head to look at her over his shoulder. “It’s not. Jacques Collot is dead. He was telling me about how he came to know Eisler had the blue diamond in his possession when someone put a bullet in his chest with a rifle.”
“You didn’t see who did it?”
“I was too busy trying not to get shot myself.”
Crossing to the table beside the dying fire, she poured a glass of brandy and went to hold it out to him. “Here.”
He took the glass from her hand, his fingers covering hers for a moment. He said, “There’s something I must tell you.”
“Tell me later. You should come to bed. You’re wet and cold.”
“No.” He set the brandy aside and reached to draw her into his arms. “I’ve put it off too long already.”
She felt his hands slide down her back to rest on her hips, holding her—but not too close.
He said, “I first fell in love with Kat Boleyn when she was sixteen and I was just down from Oxford. Hendon grumbled about it, although if truth be told, I think he expected some such thing. It’s not exactly unusual for a young man to have an opera dancer or an actress in keeping. What he didn’t expect was that I’d want to spend the rest of my life with her.”
“You don’t need to tell me—”
“No, please, hear me out. When I told him I’d asked Kat to marry me, he flew into a rage and swore I wouldn’t see another penny from the estates until he was dead. I told him I didn’t care.” A sad smile touched his lips. “The world well lost for love and all that.”