“It was dangerous.” She frowned at him.
“Some days more than others.” He shrugged, aware of the warmth of the sun breaking free of the clouds and landing on his bare back. “I managed.”
“Did you capture the man responsible and send him to prison?” she asked.
If only he had.
That day was not one he preferred to remember. The horrors he had witnessed…they were not fit topics for mixed conversation, and there was no reason for him to be discussing the past with his wife. Likely, she would be shocked. Horrified. He knew he was not like most men, and he would do best to remind her of that, not just himself.
“No,” he said honestly, the foray into his past forcing him to reconcile the man he had once been with the man she thought him to be. “I killed him.”
She stiffened, her lips parting.
He imagined he read disgust in the depths of her eyes. Horror. And he told himself it did not matter. He could not change his past for this woman, and nor would he wish to. He had always been proud of the time he had spent with Scotland Yard and the work he had done.
What response had he expected from her? Applause? Christ, he was stupid. And weak for revealing so much.
“I told you,” he bit out. “You didn’t marry a lord, Elysande. I am nothing like the former Duke of Wycombe.”
“And I am glad of it,” she said firmly, staying him with a hand on his arm when he would have turned away from her and gone back to his stack of abandoned garments. “Tell me, Hudson. If you had to kill a man, you must have had good reason. And if he injured you first, I cannot fathom a better one. Your life was in peril.”
Yes, it had been. Henry White had been desperate. He had known he was going to rot away in prison for his crime or otherwise meet a grim end. And he had been determined to do everything in his power to avoid that outcome. Even if it had meant killing the arrogant young Scotland Yard detective who had chased after him.
Recalling that day curdled the warmth of the sun and her nearness with a vicious chill. Bile rose in his throat. He did not want to think of this now. The scar had remained, the only reminder he could not scrub from himself when the blood was long gone.
“He was going to kill me,” he acknowledged bitterly past the knot rising in his throat. “I had no choice.”
Spare words. All he could manage.
“I am glad you fought,” she said softly, the hand on his arm stroking upward until it curled around his bicep. “If you had not, you would not be here.”
Her easy acceptance, her understanding, her touch…the compassion in her expression rather than pity…moved him. A sudden rush of gratitude hit him in the chest, sending the chill away. Deep breaths. Slow and steady. The demons of the past could not claim him. He was in the Buckinghamshire countryside, beneath the sun, standing before the woman he had married. No longer in London, a detective no more.
“Thank you.” His voice was thick as he struggled to convey his thoughts and emotions. “For understanding.”
She was still clutching him, holding him there. And a new awareness flared between them. He could see it reflected in her gaze. He very much wanted to kiss her. But there was the matter of the three bloody months he had promised. To say nothing of one kiss not being enough.
“I wish to know about who you are,” she said simply, “about what has made you into the man you have become.”
It required every bit of control he possessed to keep from pulling her into his arms, holding her against his chest, covering her mouth with his. “Take care in what you wish for. The man I have become is not worthy of you.”
Their disparity had occurred to him before, of course. Whilst he was the descendant of a duke, he had been raised to believe himself a common man. She, however, had always been a lady. But there was a different incongruence, aside from the obvious. She was an innocent young lady who had led a relatively sheltered life buoyed by the indulgences of her aristocratic parents. He had not been innocent since he had been fifteen and a far more sophisticated older woman had taken him into her boudoir and told him what she wanted him to do to her. He had witnessed depravity, death, and crime. The seediest corners of London were known to him. He had no business being either a duke or this woman’s husband.
And yet, here he was.
“Not worthy of me?” She tipped her head back, the shadow on her delicate features disappearing. Sun kissed her cheeks and lips, sparkled in her gaze. “What pedestal must you place me upon to suppose so?”
Her other hand curled around his right arm. That touch was a brand. Keeping himself from grabbing hold of her waist and hauling her into him to kiss her breathless grew more impossible with every moment.
“Not a pedestal. But we are cut from different cloth, the two of us.”
“Perhaps,” she said calmly. “And perhaps not.”
And still, she remained, touching him. Tempting him. A slight breeze rose, and her scent wrapped around him, sweet and light and floral. The need to touch her in return was so forceful, it was an ache in his fingertips.
“I should dress,” he forced out.
The moment was effectively fractured. She released him with so much haste, he would have suspected his flesh had burned hers had he not known the difference. Her cheeks were flushed pink.
