He supposed they may, but he had only one comparison. He said nothing, struggling to find the right words to say, now that he had initiated a conversation.
But she was perceptive. “Ah, I see. Your last bride did not.”
His last bride.
How haunting it sounded. How final. For it was. Death was life’s end, and no one understood that fact better than a man who had wept into the freshly turned earth over the graves of his wife and son.
The abrupt pain slicing through him was almost palpable. As always, he forced it down through sheer will.
“No,” he was able to answer simply. “She did not.”
“Yours was a love match from the beginning?” his new wife ventured to ask.
He swallowed against a rising tide of grief. “It was.”
“I am sorry.” Her countenance was open. Kind.
Too kind.
Alessandro flinched. “I do not want your sympathy or your pity. Both are meaningless to me.”
She paled. “Of course, my lord.”
Cristo, what a bastard he was. He had not meant to lash out at her. She was not at fault for the pain he had been dealt in his life. His aim was to put her at ease. Tonight, he would come to her bed. Their marriage would begin in truth.
He passed a hand over his face and sighed. “Forgive me. I am not accustomed to having a wife.”
Not for the last few years, anyway.
Though he had known being a husband once more would feel strange, he had not been prepared for the enormity of his emotions. Ordinarily, he kept his emotions at bay. He had been a machine of war for so long, he had forgotten what it felt like to be a man.
Tofeel.
“I understand, my lord,” she told him.
No, you do not.
But he did not care to go down that road. Not with her. Not today. Not ever.
“The past is where it belongs,” he said dismissively. “We shall leave it there, as it has no bearing upon our union.”
She looked as if she wanted to argue. Instead, she nodded. “If that is what you wish, my lord.”
“It is the way it must be.” For he did notwantto feel. He did not want to speak about Maria and Francisco. He did not want to relive the pain of losing them, the agony of his darkest days when the despair had been enough to drown him.
“Of course,” she said quietly, returning her gaze to the window.
The carriage was not large, and the distance separating them was small. He could extend his arm and settle his palm upon her knee without exerting any effort. But they may as well have been an ocean apart.
His fault, and he knew it.
He cleared his throat. “We will leave for Wiltshire tomorrow morning. Given the lateness of our nuptials, it seemed best to wait.”
She frowned, her attention returning to him once more. “I was hoping we might postpone the honeymoon, my lord.”
He studied her, attempting to measure her mood. “Why?”
If her hesitance was being caused by more Montrose-related nonsense…
