He stared at Pamela’s sketch, noting how she had captured the intensity in the duke’s expression as he had gazed down at his bride. “You’ve represented them very well, love.”
As usual, she shrugged away his praise for her skill. “I’ve only just begun. Perhaps with a few more hours of work, it shall truly resemble them.”
“It does resemble them,” he told her firmly. “You are so very adept at creating sketches that come to life, Pamela.”
“It is a middling talent,” she persisted in her humility. “Which is just as well, for I am an utter abomination when it comes to embroidery and watercolors.”
Damn it, he hated the way she refused to acknowledge how skilled she was. It was plain that she had spent all her life living for everyone around her instead of for herself, and he loathed that, too.
He took her chin gently in his thumb and forefinger, angling her head toward him so that he could see her blue eyes beneath the brim of her smart bonnet. “Nothing about you is middling.”
She opened her mouth, looking as if she were about to argue.
So he lowered his lips to hers, smothering her protest. Just for a moment. And Deus, the way her mouth felt beneath his, all warm and welcoming, it was heaven. A heaven he didn’t deserve. And just like that, his reason for seeking her out returned to him.
He broke the kiss as a light mist began to fall. The air was cold, the sky predictably gray. He wondered if she had not grown cold, sitting here by herself, sketching away. Pamela was forever looking after everyone else and neglecting herself. He had noticed that about her as well.
“I must tell you something.” He forced the words out, so painful, past the fear that what he was about to say would ruin everything they had.
He reminded himself that it wasn’t fair, continuing with her as if he had no plan of leaving. As if he would remain at Hunt House forever, and they could carry on making love in every corner without anyone ever growing the wiser. She deserved more. So much more than he could give her. But he could give her honesty. The truth. He could tell her who he was.
“You look so very somber,” she murmured, her brow furrowing, her expression turning pinched with concern. “I’m not certain I should like to hear it.”
“And I don’t want to say it,” he confessed, his chest tight and aching. She was the sun rising after a decade of darkness, and he couldn’t keep her. But he was greedy and selfish, and he wanted as much of her as he could have, for as long as he could have it.
“Tell me,” she whispered.
He took a deep inhalation, preparing himself, and then exhaled slowly. “My name is Theodoric Augustus St. George, and I was once in line for the throne of the Kingdom of Boritania.”
There. He had done it. The impossible had been spoken aloud. He waited, his stomach in knots.
Silence greeted his confession.
Pamela’s lips parted. In shock, he supposed. But she said nothing.
He hastened to fill the quiet. To explain.
“I was exiled by my uncle, Gustavson, who has assumed the throne after the disappearance of my younger brother, King Reinald,” he added.
“My God,” she said at last, her voice hushed.
Theo couldn’t tell how she felt. If she was angry or shocked or hurt. Perhaps a combination of all three. She sat there on the bench staring at him, pale and so lovely he ached just to look at her. Slowly, she closed her folio, and settled it in her lap.
“Do you believe me?” he asked, for there was also the possibility she would think him a liar.
And he could not blame her. His story was more tangled and twisted than vines.
“I suspected,” Pamela murmured slowly. “When I saw your surname this morning, it reminded me of what I read inTheTimesabout a Boritanian princess’s visit to London.”
“Stasia is my eldest sister,” he acknowledged.
“Your accent, your secrets, your scars. My God, your scars, Theo. What caused them? Will you tell me now?”
He didn’t want to.
Speaking of it to her…he didn’t want that hideousness between them. But she had asked, and he had lied to her for far too long.
He scrubbed a hand over his face. “From my uncle’s men. I was held captive in a dungeon before my exile for weeks, tortured slowly. I was whipped and beaten and cut and burned daily, on almost every part of my body, except the places that are deemed holy, for not even my uncle would curse his soul by angering the gods he worships. It was only by the grace of my brother Reinald that I was allowed to walk free, directly onto a ship that set sail to England. If I return to my homeland, the punishment is death.”
