He remembered with deep shame how he had used her the night before. He remembered how she felt inside, how he had been less than gentle there with her. How he had taken and taken and taken. He did not want such memories of Emmy. He wanted her to be that sweet child again. He did not want to remember how he had lusted after her, how possessing her body had driven him wild with the desire for release. He wanted the gentle memories, not the harsh reality.
He went down on his haunches in front of her and looked into her face. She gazed steadily enough back at him, though color crept into her cheeks.
“Emmy,” he said, “how are you?” Foolish question. How did hethinkshe was?
Her mouth smiled fleetingly.
“Are you hurt?” he asked, realizing the ambiguity of his words even as he spoke them. He had meant physically. He could remember the seemingly endless moments of stretching before the virgin barrier had broken. He could remember the involuntary vigor with which he had worked to his climax soon after sheathing himself in her newly opened depths.
She shook her head slightly. He felt a moment’s relief about that at least, but he could hardly expect her to admit to soreness or pain even if she felt either, he supposed. If there was soreness, she should at least have had the consolation of this being the morning after her wedding night.
It should have been Powell...
“I will not insult you by asking for your forgiveness,” he said. “What I did was unforgivable.”
There was light in her eyes suddenly. She shook her head vigorously.
“I know,” he said, “without having to ask you, that you consider yourself equally guilty, Emmy. But you were not. You came to help me. Even through your happiness yesterday, you saw that I was unhappy. And so you came last night to comfort me—as you always used to do when you were no more than a child. Your generosity was boundless, and I was scoundrel enough to take advantage of it. And so I have destroyed your happiness. You do not intend this morning to continue with your betrothal?”
She frowned briefly in that characteristic way of hers when someone was speaking too fast or too long. But she understood his final question. She shook her head.
“You have already spoken with Powell?” he asked.
She nodded, her eyes huge and sad.
“Poor Emmy,” he said. “I am so very sorry. How did you do it, I wonder. But you can always make yourself understood when you want to. I have spoken with your brother already.”
Her eyes asked the question. She still did not understand, of course. Her sense of honor had led her to breaking her betrothal, but she did not fully understand. Perhaps she had thought she could retire quietly into her old way of life.
“I shall wait to talk with a few other people today,” he said, speaking more slowly. “Luke. Your sister—your sisters. Your clergyman brother-in-law, perhaps. And I shall stay to lend you some moral support today. But I will leave at first light tomorrow. I should be back the following day with a license. Our wedding can be solemnized three days from now.”
Her eyes were wide with bewilderment and then disbelief. She shook her head.
He rested one knee on the floor. “Yes,” he said. “Oh yes, Emmy. We will marry.”
She tried to get to her feet, but he was kneeling too close to her and would not move. She sat down again.No,she told him.No, no, no.Her eyes gave him no reason, only the adamant refusal.
His smile was somewhat twisted. “You loved him, Emmy?” he asked. “Youlovehim? And only yesterday you were facing a happily-ever-after with him. ’Twas an evil day for you when I came home. But it signifies nothing in what must now happen. In three days’ time you will be Lady Ashley Kendrick. You will be respectable again.”
The very idea of Emmy’s not being respectable was preposterous. Innocence shone from her eyes despite last night’s dark deed.
No,she told him again. But now her eyes and her expressive hands said more. He did notneedto do this. She had given freely. She wanted and expected nothing in return. There was no need of this.
“Emmy,” he said, and for the first time he touched her. He set his fingertips against the back of one of her hands. “I had your maidenhood last night. Your brother knows it this morning. Everyone in this house and at Wycherly will know it before the day is out. Thanks to my perfidy, you are a fallen woman today.” The absurdity of his words was clear to him—as was their truth. “You must allow me to do what is honorable.”
He saw her eyes move to his jaw, which was doubtless darkening into a bruise. And he watched them fill with tears and knew that he must wait. There could be no conversation, no communication while she could not see. None of the tears spilled over.
She loved him, he knew. Only the deepest love could have prompted her actions of last night. But it was not a sexual love, even though paradoxically that was the form it had taken last night. She did not love him as a woman loves a man. Her love was purer than that—and he had sullied it. And now, he knew, he must forever shackle it to himself, and perhaps destroy it and her in the process.
And so he had to destroy himself as well. He had been loved unconditionally, and he had selfishly squeezed the life and the joy out of that love. It was a heavy burden. The heaviest of all.
“Did you understand me?” he asked when he could see that her vision had cleared. She had to understand that there was no choice whatsoever. “We will marry. My seed might bear fruit.”
He watched awareness come into her eyes and color to her cheeks. He watched understanding dawn—that they had been together as man and wife, that perhaps they had begotten a child. Even to him, though he had thought of it before, the idea was dizzying.
Not Emmy. Not in Emmy.
He could not think of her so. He did notwantto think of her in sexual terms. He did not want her as his wife, his woman. He loved her too dearly. Sexual passion and marriage were foul things.
