But he was no longer hers.
Difficult to remember, when all she longed to do was throw herself into his arms.
“Did I not promise you that I would?” he asked, his accent tingeing his query.
A reminder that he had spent many months in his homeland, speaking his native tongue instead of English. His skin was bronzed from time spent beneath the sun, and she suddenly ached to know everywhere he had been and everything he had done in their time apart.
“You did,” she acknowledged.
But she hadn’t expected him to keep it. Hadn’t dared to hope.
“Will you set down your basket for a moment, Pamela?”
She clutched it in an iron grip, the sweetly familiar scent of rosemary drifting up to greet her like an old friend. “I am not sure if it’s wise to do so.”
If she didn’t have the basket to cling to, very likely she would do something utterly foolish and reckless.
“Why should it be unwise?”
“Because if I’m not holding the basket, I shall throw myself into your arms.”
He closed the last step separating them and gently took the basket from her, placing it on the floor before straightening and holding her gaze. “And what is the problem with that?”
She swayed toward him, as if her body had a will and mind of its own. “You are seeking a bride. The newspapers say it is so.”
And he had not sent her a letter in all the months he had been gone, she reminded herself. Further proof that he had no intention of resuming where they had ended when he’d returned to Boritania.
“The newspapers are not wrong. I’ve already found the woman I want to make my queen.”
Everything inside her withered. The tiny, faint lights of hope she’d kept burning inside her these four long months he had been gone faded and died. And although she had done her utmost to prepare herself for the eventuality that he would marry another, she couldn’t deny that the blow was nonetheless so much harsher than she had anticipated.
She bit her lip, forcing all expression from her own countenance. “I wish you both every happiness.”
A tear slid free of her attempts to keep it from falling and rolled down her cheek.
Theo caught it with his gloved thumb. He cupped her jaw, then paused, catching the fingers of his fine kid leather in his teeth and tugging so that his hand was bare and free. The first touch of his skin on hers had her closing her eyes, the force of it making her reel. Exquisite agony.
It had been so long.
So many lonely nights.
“Have I not been clear, my love?” he asked with such tenderness, that it was impossible to believe he did not care.
“You have been silent,” she forced herself to say. “Four months without word of you, save what I have managed to find in the newspapers.”
And she had read Ridgely’s papers with intense devotion to each detail, poring over every word, every day of those endless months. Desperate for any hint of him that she could find.
His brow furrowed. “Forgive me, my love. Boritania has been in upheaval. The royal mail was disbanded by my uncle in an effort to keep word of his crimes against the kingdom secret. When I first arrived, there were battles to be fought, revolutionaries to win over.”
He looked wearier than she had ever seen him suddenly, as if his mask had dropped to reveal the true man hiding within. And she knew the sharp twinge of regret for thinking the worst of him. For wondering at his lack of correspondence when he was fighting for not just his own survival, but that of his homeland.
From what she had gleaned in the official accounts, the war had ended swiftly two months ago with the death of Gustavson. Supported by King Maximilian and revolutionaries alike, Theo had resumed his rightful throne.
“I know that you had far greater matters to concern you than me,” she murmured, feeling suddenly selfish and foolish. “You are king, after all, and I am merely a widow in London who lives off the goodwill of her brother, dressed in a muddied gown and an old bonnet.”
Belatedly, it occurred to her that she hadn’t removed it when she had come inside, so desperate had she been for the sight of him.
His thumb traveled over her lower lip in a slow, maddening caress as he spoke. “You’ll not speak of my queen so disparagingly. As King of Boritania, I forbid it.”
