He held her gaze. “You read it to me once. At Farnsworth Hall. Do you recall?”
“I do.”
Was he imagining it, or was there a wealth of meaning in her tone, her expression, the way her eyes seared him?
“You were in the library and it was well after midnight,” he said softly. “I met you there. You were in a dressing gown that buttoned to your chin, and your hair was bound in a fat braid that ran down your back. We sat on the carpet before the fire.”
“You teased me desperately about those buttons.” A small smile curved her delectable lips.
Yes, he thought.Remember us. Remember me. Let us go back to the Julianna and Sidney we were that summer.
He swallowed. “I had no trouble undoing the tiny buggers, despite the impressive number of them and their unusually diminutive size.”
Her flush returned, but she did not look away. “I read the poem to you, and you kissed me. You told me you felt those words to your soul. That you felt as if it had been written for you.”
He had. What a besotted arse.
“I still do,” he admitted.
Her lips parted. “I wish I could believe that. But the poem is no truer now than it was then.”
“You doubt my sincerity?”
“I doubt myself when I am in your presence.” Her chin tipped up in that way she had that suggested she was donning armor and preparing for battle. “You are disastrously charming when you choose to be. I allowed it to dupe me before, and it was nearly the end of me. I cannot afford to do it again.”
What the bloody hell was she on about? Charm? Him? He was reasonably certain he had none. But that was hardly the most serious accusation she had just cast upon him.
“I never duped you, Julianna.” He searched her eyes, trying to understand her. Failing. “Everything I said to you that day, that summer, was true. It remains true now.”
He was putting his pride in jeopardy, taking a risk. Making himself vulnerable to her. The last time he had done so, she had laughed at his proposal and disappeared to New York City, only to return two years later with the daughter she had been keeping from him.
He had to know why.
Sidney knew what had happened to force her return; she had wanted her inheritance so she could run her business and live as Emily’s mother. What he did not understand was why she would suppose he would want nothing to do with their daughter. Why she would keep her a secret.
What had happened to change her mind two years ago, to make her run, to send her away from him?
“I wish I could believe that,” she told him, her voice sad, resigned.
She still held the book in her hands. Neither one of them had touched their breakfasts.
“You can believe it,” he urged. “Believe it, Julianna. Believeme.”
“Sidney, stop. Please. I cannot do this with you.”
“Cannot do what?” He tamped down the urge to slam his fist on the table and give vent to the frustration coursing through him. “Why not with me? Speak, damn you. Explain yourself.”
Her lips compressed. “I have married you. Let that be enough. Do not ask more of me, I beg you.”
Did she truly believe he could be satisfied with having her body and not her heart? With living this half life? He had married her to raise Emily as his own, but it had not taken him long to discover he had also married her for himself.
“Look at me, Julianna,” he said when she glanced away, attempting to erect a new wall of defense. To the devil with that. He would scale that wall just as surely as he had scaled the others before it. “There was not one day in the time we were apart, not one bloody day, when I did not think of you, when I did not long for you.”
Her gaze returned to his, bright and so very blue. “Why are you saying these things to me now?”
“Because they are true.”
And because I love you.Though he did not say the last aloud. He kept it within, his last secret from her. His only secret from her. Whilst she had kept so many from him.
