A muscle in his jaw worked, those startling eyes remaining pinned on her, not allowing her to look away. “Of her own volition. Certainly not from any invitation from me. I don’t want her. The only woman I want, now and forever, is you.”
Her heart yearned to believe those words, but her mind was all too familiar with the landscape of disappointment and betrayal.
“The half heart,” she said, thinking again of the smallest offering he had left outside her chamber door, the smooth wood he must have spent hours carving away at, his nimble fingers shaping and cutting. “Why did you give it to me?”
He ventured even closer to her. A dangerous proximity. She knew she should move away, but she couldn’t force herself to do it.
“Because you are the other half of my heart, Bess,” he said softly, tenderly.
So tenderly that tears sprang to her eyes. She swallowed hard against a surge of emotion she didn’t want to feel.
“Please, Torrie,” she whispered, only she didn’t know what she was pleading for.
She was afraid to hope. Seeing him with Lady Worthing had devastated her.
“I was broken when you came back into my life,” he continued, reaching out and brushing a stray tendril of hair behind her ear, “but you fixed me and made me whole. And when you did that, you claimed me as yours. That is why I made you the half heart. I had forgotten just how much I enjoyed whittling, but I remember now.”
“You remember more?” she asked, sensing the importance in what he’d just said, concentrating on that instead of the rest of his confession.
Because she wasn’t sure what to do with Torrie telling her he loved her. That she had made him whole. That she was the other half of his heart. She didn’t know what to do with the way he was looking at her now, with such intensity and open admiration and—dare she think it—love.
“I remember everything.”
His quiet admission shook her as much as his revelation that Lady Worthing was carrying his child had.
Her fingers tightened on the back of the chair, every muscle in her body tensing. “Everything?” she repeated.
“I remember the Althorp ball,” he said, his countenance serious. “I remember what happened before you tripped over your hems and fell at my feet. I was speaking with an old acquaintance, the Marquess of Brisbin. I had asked him if he had been introduced to you, and that is when he said the words you overheard. It was Brisbin, Bess, not me.”
Could it be possible? Her thoughts whirled back to that day which now seemed as if it belonged to a different lifetime. Torrie had been standing with a group of friends, and the Marquess of Brisbin had indeed been amongst them. From her place behind the potted palm, she hadn’t been able to see who had spoken.
Had she leapt to the wrong conclusion?
And was she leaping to the wrong conclusion now?
The words from that night echoed in her mind.
She’s a plain, plump little partridge, isn’t she?
She had been so certain the voice had been Torrie’s. But she had never spoken to him directly. The extent of their interaction had been being in the same ballroom at the same time. Their eyes had met and held. They’d never been introduced.
“Why would you ask him if he’d been introduced to me?” she asked.
“Because I wanted an introduction myself,” Torrie said. “I was drawn to you even then.”
It couldn’t be true. Could it? Had Torrie been somehow interested in her when she had been nothing more than a dowdy wallflower in Lady Andromeda’s castoffs? When no one else had noticed her?
Her heart leapt.
“I was always meant to be yours, Bess, and you were always meant to be mine. I think I knew it then, but I wasn’t ready for you yet,” he continued, voice steeped in affection. “I’m ready for you now, even if I don’t deserve you. And Christ, believe me, I know I don’t deserve you. I’ve done everything wrong. I’ve made mistakes. I’ve hurt you when hurting you is the last thing I would ever want to do. All I want to do is love you, if you’ll let me.”
Dear God.
Her knees threatened to give out in truth.
Elizabeth circled the chair and sat in it heavily, with a complete lack of grace. But she didn’t care at the moment. She was far too busy sorting through all the revelations Torrie had just made.
He loved her.
