Fox froze. His head snapped up, and he took a staggering step back.
“Pardon?” he frowned.
Leah meant to laugh away her words as a slip of the tongue. An accident.
Instead, heat flamed across her cheeks and reduced her excuses to ash before they even began.
“What did you just say? Did I hear that correctly?” His disbelieving eyes watched the blush descend down her throat with avid interest. “First, that you love me? And second, you have done so fortwentyyears? How is that even possible? I thought we first met when I proposed in April.”
Mortification silenced Leah and, in effect, confirmed his words.
“I am not the only one with secrets, it seems. Come now, wife.” He made a beckoning motion with his hand.Out with it.“You cannot withhold this.”
Leah turned away from Fox to face the fireplace, pressing a shaking hand to her forehead.
Was it possible to die from embarrassment? Fox’s affection for her already seemed a tenuous thing, and nothing could send a man running more quickly than the wordlove. Even husbands, she realized.
But he was correct. She couldn’t deny him this secret. Not now.
“Leah?” He stood right behind her.
She took in a deep breath and then pivoted to face him. “We did meet before this past spring. Twenty years ago. At a week-long house party in Staffordshire hosted by Mrs. Gordon.”
He gave a long, slow blink, trying to accommodate the information. “We met at a house party? And in England, no less?”
“My Uncle and Aunt Leith were attempting to marry me off,” she said. “’Twas the summer of ’19.”
“The summer of ’19 . . . I had just purchased my commission then.” His gaze turned inward, as if searching for some clue within his own memory. “I have only the vaguest recollection of that party. We were formally introduced?”
“Aye.”And ye made me feel seen, she longed to add.As if I mattered.
He continued to study her with frowning eyes.
Leah’s blush deepened. His foreboding expression said she would have to tell him the whole dreadful tale.
She swallowed. “We were formally introduced at the beginning of the week. And then one night, Lord Dennis stumbled into my bedchamber—”
“He. Did. What?” Fox enunciated each word with frightening clarity, eyes blazing.
“Nothing happened,” she rushed to say. “He was drunk and simply mistook my bedchamber for another’s.”
“The hell he did!”
“I kicked him when he tried to get into bed with me, knocking him unconscious—”
“Good! The bastard deserved it!”
“—and then ye arrived, knocking on my door.”
Fox stilled at that, frowning in earnest now, clearly sifting through his memories.
“Ye came into my bedchamber tae help. But the noise of Lord Dennis falling had attracted others who wanted tae know what had happened,” she went on. “Ye helped me, staying in my bedchamber. We talked for a long while, and ye were so . . . kind, so gentlemanly. I never forgot ye.”
“How could you not tell me this?” Fox was pacing now, hands laced together in his hair. “Immediately. The first time we met? Particularly, ifDenniswas involv—”
“What would ye have had me say?‘Why, yes, I recall ye, Captain Carnegie. I’ve been deeply infatuated with yourself for more years than I can quickly tally.’”
“Yes!” he all but roared, causing her to jump. “That isprecisely what you should have said. You insist on knowing my own painful past, but then you withhold similarly painful things from me.This, wife, you should have told me.”
