“Leave me be!” he growled. “For pity’s sake,stoptrying to fix me, Elizabeth!”
She stiffened. “I was only trying to help.”
He slammed his coffee cup down on the table. “You want to help? Then be a wife, and not my mother or my bunkmate!”
In the space of two blinks, he rose and stormed out.
Shedidnotseehim for some hours, and then it was in the company of two of the guests. He was polite, he was elegant, even with his rugged-looking eye patch, and he even managed to make the older woman blush with some well-framed compliments. For a moment, he was the old colonel again—the same man who had devised a revolving door of dance partners for her sisters so they would be spared unsavoury attentions. The same man who had won her father’s good opinion and sat with her in a dark warehouse to be certain she would not fracture after the worst moment of her life.
And then, when they had finished with the guests, he cast a hard look her way before walking away from her.
Elizabeth waited until the other couple were truly out of sight and caught up with him. “Richard! Will you not speak to me?”
His scowl tightened, but he relented with a jerk of his head towards the privacy of their apartment. She followed, tense and worried about what he had to say, but consoling herself that whatever it was, it would be better opened to the air than festering under a haphazard bandage.
He closed the door. “Elizabeth, do you want out?”
“Out? I… do not know what you mean.”
“You are too intelligent to trifle with me. It has been almost two months, and you are still holding me at a distance. I have to beg your permission to kiss you, and I feel as if I am kissing a wooden statue every time.”
Her hands moved helplessly. “We knew it would take time. You offered—you said you would not rush me.”
“But I thought you would make some effort of your own!”
“I—I have,” she whispered, but even then, she could not be sure that she had done all possible.
He paced a short circle, then came back. “Do you know what I see when I look at you, Elizabeth? What is in your eyes each time I try to come close to you? All I see is Darcy’s reflection. Damn it, if you mean to make a go of this, you have to forget him!”
Her eyes were stinging now, and it was becoming difficult to breathe regularly. “I c… can’t!” she sobbed. “Why must I? Can I not love you both?”
“Apparently not, and I was a blasted fool for thinking you could.” He snorted and gesticulated. “I mean, what have I to offer the woman who could have had Fitzwilliam Darcy?”
Her jaw hardened. “Stop it, Richard. I came with you! I even left the only family I had for you—I was never even able to say goodbye to my own sister! Is that not evidence enough that I chose you?”
“No, you said it yourself. You had no choice, and now, neither do I. I live each day with a woman so breath-taking she could have laid thetonat her feet, and I cannot touch her. I am responsible for her well-being and happiness, but I can do nothing to contribute to them. Do you think I am a saint, Elizabeth?”
She blinked, and her chin drew back. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means I have desires, too! It means I, too, have lost everything dear to me, and the one thing I can call my own will not have me! I see you every day, living here, walking by, tempting me with your beauty and your sweetness, and none of them are for me. You are not a man, Elizabeth, but…” He abruptly clenched his fist before his face, cutting off whatever else he had meant to say, and turned away from her.
Blood was ringing in her ears now, and when she dared to blink, a cascade of moisture fell over her cheeks. “I never said I would not have you. I assumed… one day… we would have a family.”
“Really. You would have a child with a one-eyed cretin who makes your skin crawl?”
“Richard!” She balled her hands and stalked towards him. “I have never said or implied any of that!”
“You say it every time you look at me. Your eyes scream it—you think they do not? It is why you cannot lie, Elizabeth, because every fibre of your being betrays you.”
“It has nothing to do with… with anything! How ridiculously small of you to blame your missing eye for this. It means nothing to me!”
“You mean itwouldmean nothing to you, if you already loved me, but you don’t.”
She crossed her arms. “Do you love me? Answer me honestly, because I cannot read you so easily as you claim to read me.”
He hesitated. “I care for you.”
“But as you have said, that is not the same thing.”
