The constriction returned to her throat, the constriction that felt alarmingly like tears. She lay back and forced herself to speak. “Goodnight, then.”
“Goodnight, Alicia.”
He blew out the candles so only the glow of the fire remained. She listened to him settle. He tugged off his boots and drew his greatcoat over him for warmth. There was an odd intimacy in hearing the creak of the chair and his soft sigh as he extended his legs towards the blaze.
She stretched out. The bed was warm and soft and the sheets smelled fresh. She was weary to the bone but no matter how she wriggled, she couldn’t find that one comfortable spot.
Recollections of the day tormented her. Harold’s desertion, which should have been a considerably sharper blow than it was. If her original plans had eventuated, she’d now be lying in his arms. She should regret his weakness, his absence, but all she felt was vast relief. Her mind dwelled on Kinvarra’s unexpected gallantry. The fleeting moments of affinity. The powerful memories of their life together, memories that tonight stirred poignant sadness instead of furious resentment.
Kinvarra had turned the chair towards the hearth and all she could see of him was a gold-limned black shape. He was so still, he could be asleep. But something told her he was as wide awake as she.
“My Lord?” she whispered.
“Yes, Alicia?” He responded immediately. “Can’t you sleep?”
“No.”
Their voices were hushed, which was absurd as there was nobody to hear. The wind rattled the windowpanes and a log cracked in the fireplace. He had been right, the weather had worsened.
“Are you cold?”
“No.”
“Hungry?”
“No.”
“What is it then, lass?” He sounded tender and his Scottish burr was more marked than usual. She remembered that from their year together. When his emotions were engaged, traces of his Highland childhood softened his speech.
Strangely that hint of vulnerability made her answer honestly. “Come and lie down beside me. You can’t be comfortable in that chair.”
He didn’t shift. “No.”
“Oh.”
She huddled into the bed and drew the blankets about her neck as if hiding from the cruel truth. Hurt seared her. Of course he wouldn’t share the bed. He hated her. How could she forget? He just played the gentleman to a lady in distress. He’d do the same for anyone. Just because Alicia was his wife didn’t make her special.
When they’d first married, she’d tried to establish some rapport between them in the daylight hours, but when she’d rebuffed him in bed, he’d rebuffed her during the day. He hadn’t wanted her childish adoration. He’d wanted a woman who gave him pleasure between the sheets, not a silly little girl who froze into a block of ice the instant her husband touched her.
She blinked back the tears that had hovered close so often tonight. She’d cried enough over the Earl of Kinvarra. She’d cried enough tears to fill the deep, dark waters of Loch Varra that extended down the glen from Balmuir House, his ancestral home.
“Hell, Alicia, I’m sorry. Don’t cry.” She opened her eyes and through the mist of tears saw he’d risen to watch her. The fire lent enough light for her to notice that he looked tormented and unsure. Nothing like the all-powerful earl.
“I’m not crying,” she said in a thick voice. “I’m just tired.”
His mouth lengthened at her unconvincing assertion. He reached out with one hand to clutch the back of the chair. “Go to sleep.”
“I can’t.” She wondered why she didn’t let him be instead of courting further misery like this.
“Damn it, Alicia …” He drew in a shuddering breath and the hand on the chair tightened so the knuckles shone white in the flickering firelight.
“I’m not … I’m not attempting to seduce you,” she said, and suddenly wondered if she was being completely truthful. What in heaven’s name was wrong with her? Surely she couldn’t want to revisit the humiliations of her married life.
Kinvarra was as taut as a violin string. Tension vibrated in the air. “I know. But if I get into that bed, there’s no way I’ll keep my hands to myself. And I don’t want to hurt you again. I couldn’t bear to hurt you again.”
She was shocked to hear the naked pain in his voice. This wasn’t the man she remembered. That man hadn’t cared that his passion had frightened and bewildered his inexperienced bride.
This man sent excitement skittering through her veins and made her ache for his touch. She raised herself against the headboard and drew in a breath to calm her rioting heartbeat. Another breath.
Her voice was soft but steady as she spoke. “Then be gentle, Sebastian.”
Alicia hadn’t used his Christian name since the earliest days of their marriage. The shock of hearing her say “Sebastian” meant he needed a couple of seconds to register what else she’d said.
His grip on the chair became punishing.
He must be mistaken. She couldn’t be offering herself. She’d never offered herself in all these many years. Even in the beginning, he’d always had to take. He’d come to hate it, so that when she’d finally suggested a separation after those miserable months together, he’d almost been relieved.
Of course, he hadn’t realized then that his agreement would lead to ten excruciating years without her.
She sat up in the bed and watched him with a glow in her blue eyes that in any other woman he’d read as blatant sexual interest. She’d taken her beautiful hair down and it flowed around her shoulders, catching the firelight. She became his fantasy Alicia. He had to be dreaming.
A frown crossed her face, he guessed at his continuing silence. “Sebastian?”
“You don’t know what you’re asking,” he said in a constricted voice, wondering why the hell he tried to talk her out of fulfilling his dearest hopes.
He’d wanted his wife for ten lonely years and now she was near enough to touch. He’d always been blackguard enough to want more from their forced intimacy tonight than mere conversation.
Then he’d remembered those disastrous encounters at Balmuir House. He couldn’t bring himself to inflict himself upon her once again.
She raised her chin, a signal of bravado that had been familiar in the young Alicia. The memory made his gut clench with longing.
“You’ve chased one lover away. Honour compels you to offer recompense.” Then in a less confident voice: “Sebastian, once you wanted me. I know you did.”
He swallowed and forced his response from a tight throat. “I still do.”
She’d taken her thick red cloak off when she entered the room. Now she raised trembling hands to the buttons on her mannish ensemble. An ensemble that looked anything but mannish on her lush figure.
Her travelling garb was cut like a riding habit and the white shirt was suitably modest, high at the throat. Even so, when her fumbling fingers loosened that top button, every drop of moisture dried from his mouth and his heart crashed against his ribs.
The Earl of Kinvarra was accounted a brave man. But he recognized the emotion holding him paralysed as ice-cold fear.
Tonight provided a miraculous second chance to heal the breach in his marriage. But if he hurt Alicia again, he’d never have another opportunity to bring her back to him.
He needed patience, restraint and understanding to seduce his wife into pleasure. Yet he burned like a devil in hell. What was he to do? He wanted her too much. And wanting her too much would destroy the fragile, uncertain intimacy building between them in this quiet room.
When his family had presented him with such a beautiful bride, he’d been sure they’d find joy in each other. Instead every coupling had been furtive and shameful, accomplished in darkness and ending with his wife in tears. No wonder he’d lost his taste for forcing himself upon her, although to his endless torment, his desire had never waned.