“My turn for a question,” he said. “What did you mean when you said you are afraid of liking me? Am I to infer youdislike me now?”
“That is two questions,” she said weakly, before drinking the remnants of her brandy snifter. “And no, I do not dislike you now.”
Not at all.
Which was the problem.
A problem that did not seem nearly as troubling with the brandy beginning to take an effect upon her. Her entire body felt flushed. Almost feverish. And concerns which had been multiplying in her mind on the carriage ride to Riverford House dimmed inside her. In their place was an undeniable surge of yearning.
For what, she could not say.
Forhim, perhaps.
Oh, dear.
His gaze had never left her, and he studied her now, almost as if he were seeing her for the first time. “But what of the rest of my question,querida? Why do you not want to like me? What is it you fear, precisely?”
“That I will like you too much,” she confessed and then promptly clapped a hand over her mouth. “And then you will leave me.”
Drat.She had not meant to say that.
He startled her by caressing her jaw. Slowly, almost tenderly. “I am no good for you, Catriona. I am a broken man.”
“Let me try to heal you,” she blurted.
Where had that thought come from? The brandy?Yes, surely.
He shook his head. “Some wounds cannot be healed. They run far too deep.”
For a moment, his mask fell away, and she saw him clearly. Saw his misery, his anger, his pain. And she wanted to soothe it. To chase all the darkness inside him away and replace it with the unending light of a thousand summer suns.
She pressed her hand over his, absorbing his warmth, his vitality. “Perhaps you have not wanted to allow them to heal. Or perhaps no one before me ever tried.”
“Or perhaps I am not worth healing.”
“I do not believe that, Alessandro.” With her thumb, she stroked the top of his hand. She felt somehow more connected to him than she ever had, even as he held her at arm’s length.
“More brandy?” he asked.
She was sure she ought to say no. But she wanted more of the languid, molten heat roaring through her. She wanted to forget her husband was so in love with his first wife he would never love another. She wanted to forget her jealousy, her fears, her disappointments.
“Yes, please,” she said, and mourned the loss of his touch when he took her snifter and rose to his feet.
She watched as he prowled back to the sideboard, refilling her glass. He returned to her, more somber than ever, and also more handsome. She took the snifter and raised it to her lips at once, drinking.
“Easy,” he said. “You are a novice to brandy, no?”
Of course she was. “Yes.”
But she had never before married the Earl of Rayne, a man who made her heart pound and her stomach flutter. A man who was going to come to her bed later tonight. A man who touched her with such tenderness and showed her more consideration than any gentleman ever had, and yet planned to get her with child so he could go back to his life in Spain.
If she were the sort of lady who easily turned into a watering pot, she would have resorted to tears then and there. But she was not. She was Lady Catriona Hamilton, and she was made of far sterner stuff. Strike that, she was now the Countess of Rayne.
The mantle seemed oddly fitting somehow.
Right.
“It is your turn to ask me a question,” he prompted her, interrupting her troubled musings.
