“He had personal reasons for leaving here,” he told her. “He came with me to keep me alive.”
Her eyes searched his. “You do not mean just physically, do you?” she said.
“No,” he said. He had not really thought about it until very recently, but he did not believe he would have lived if Ben had not been with him. Not that he would have been more reckless necessarily if he had been there alone. He would have died because he would have lacked the will to live. The presence of his brother, though there had never been anything demonstrative between them and they had rarely spoken at length on any topic of greatsignificance, had been the one thin thread of connection to... Towhat? His humanness? Warmth? Family? Love?
“I cannot recall my exact words,” she said after the silence had stretched again. “I was hurting and I lashed out. But I believe I accused you of being incapable of love. Of substituting righteousness for it. I beg your forgiveness for that. It was untrue, and I ought not to have said it even in anger.”
“We all say things in anger that we regret,” he said. “We can only move on. Put it behind us and continue with our lives.”
“I know that is the accepted wisdom,” she said. “We can never go back and change the past. Therefore we must forget it and move forward. I do not believe it. Or, rather, I believe it misses a crucial step. Or series of steps. There can be a gap between past and present that grows denser with darkness as time goes on. We deceive ourselves when we believe that as we move on we will forget and put behind us what can never be forgotten or changed. Devlin, the six years of your darkness and silence need to be brought into the light. So that you can heal.”
“What sort of nonsense is that?” he asked her, hearing the harshness in his voice. “I must admit publicly that I was wrong? I admit no such thing. I must beg everyone’s forgiveness, cry a few tears, hug and kiss? And then light will flood in, there will be eternal sunshine, and all will be well with the world?” He frowned at her, knew he ought to stop there but did not. “Do you wish me to start with you? I dragged you into that mess with me after asking you to marry me, embarrassed you horribly, and then abandoned you. I fled and did not return until a few days ago. I am dreadfully, abjectly sorry, Gwyneth. I behaved like a monster. Do please forgive me. Come and give me a hug and a kiss, and we will plan a wedding before Christmas. And happiness for as long as we both shall live.” He spread his arms wide and gazed at her with hard mockery.
“Devlin,” she whispered.
He curled his fingers into his palms and dropped his arms to his sides. “I am no longer that person you remember, Gwyneth,” he said. “That person adored you and loved his family and his home and did not see any clouds on the horizon of his life. That man was a dangerous innocent, quite unprepared for what real life was about to hurl at him. I have a connection to that man. I have somehow developed from him. But I am as I am now. I will care for the needs of my family. I will make a home of Ravenswood. I will fulfill my duty both there and in the larger world as a peer of the realm. I will try to do it all with justice and fairness. I will try to be hospitable and even amiable to my neighbors. Within the next few years I will marry and set up my nursery—as is my duty. But I am not the man who kissed you down among the trees behind the pavilion and promised you the moon and the stars. At least, I assume that is what I did.”
“And you will live unhappily ever after,” she told him. He was not sure, because he stood some feet from her, but it seemed to him that her eyes were bright with unshed tears.
“Happiness is anemotion, Gwyneth,” he said. “It is only women who assume that life can be lived from that unstable base. It cannot. I have lived for six years without emotions and I have been perfectly satisfied with their absence.”
She surprised him then. She left the gate and came toward him and did not stop until she was against him. She pressed her face to his chest beneath his chin and wrapped her arms about his waist. His own arms came reflexively about her back and shoulders.
And...
Ah, hell!
His mind went to the women with whom he had lain on the Peninsula. To how they hadfelt.A variety of physical types, sometaller than others or more slender or more curvaceous. Some were more passionate or more skilled than others, or more talkative, or more quietly alluring. He had enjoyed them all, and he had enjoyed makingthemenjoyhim.It had been a pleasurable, satisfying pastime, and it had kept him sane. Or human, at least. He would be able to put names to them all if they came before him now. He had always tried to see them as persons, never simply as bodies presented for his pleasure.
But none of them, held to his body, had felt like Gwyneth. Because with them it had all been about physical satisfaction and sexual enjoyment. A shared enjoyment, yes—he could not remember a reluctant woman or one who went away unsatisfied—but no more than that. With Gwyneth it had never been just about the physical. The yearning for it, yes. But not the yearning for sexual pleasure alone. With her it had always been the longing for Gwyneth herself—for the beautiful, wild, free girl with the light of life in her eyes and music in her fingers and her voice and passion in her soul. And the lilt of her slight Welsh accent. And... Well. And that unique essence of her that could never be put into words.
And here she was now again in his arms. And with her the threat and the danger of everything he had felt with her before. She was wearing a thick pelisse over her dress. He was wearing his greatcoat over several layers of clothing. It did not matter. She was Gwyneth. He would know her if several layers of down blanket were added to everything else between them and he was blindfolded.
It was not a physical knowing. He had never known her in the biblical sense and did not want to. He dared not even think of it. Please... He dared not.
She tipped back her head after a while and looked into his face, her eyes troubled. He kept his arms about her, but he held himselfrigid and kept his expression blank. He had had long practice at both. Her warmth seeped through to his body. He ignored it.
“Kiss me,” she said.
He gazed into her face. Soft, parted lips, cheeks flushed with cold and perhaps something else besides, blue eyes looking very directly into his. Eyes to lose himself in.
“I have always made it a rule not to kiss other men’s women,” he said stiffly. “Or fornicate with them,” he added for good measure.
“I am not any other man’s woman,” she told him.
“Morgan?” he said.
She shook her head. “Aled and I are not betrothed,” she said. “He has never asked me to marry him.” She closed her eyes, and he watched her inhale slowly and let the breath go before she opened them again. “I would not say yes even if he did.”
No? Had he misread the signs yesterday?
She gazed at him for a few moments before half smiling and removing her arms from about his waist and dropping them to her sides.
“Let us go back to the house,” she said. “Mam and Idris will probably be home soon. I am sorry, Devlin. I ought—”
But he had drawn her close again and spread one hand over the back of her head to angle it and hold it steady. She stopped talking abruptly and he kissed her.
The shock of it went through him like a shaft of pain. He had kissed one woman once in his life before now, and that had been more than six years ago. He had taken the bodies of many women for pleasure since then and given his body in return. He had never kissed any of them, though. For a kiss was not about sex, or never had been for him. A kiss was... personal. It was intimate.
