He hadn’t been welcoming Lady Worthing’s advances.
He was having a child.
He remembered.
He remembered, and it didn’t change the way he felt about her.
Torrie followed her and sank to his knees on the carpets for a second time, taking her hands in his. She didn’t pull away, because she needed his touch. Needed the connection.
Neededhim.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “This isn’t the way I wanted to tell you. I’ll give you all the time that you need. And if you can never return my love, I understand. I’ll love you enough for the both of us.”
He was breaking her heart. Breaking it all over again, but in a different way. Because she could see now that she had allowed her own fears to overtake her. She hadn’t trusted in him, in the man he had shown her he was—compassionate, tender, loving, charming, loyal. Instead, she had rushed to believe the worst of him and had closed herself off from him in the process. How deeply she had wronged him.
“I should have trusted you. I’m so sorry that I didn’t.” Tears pricked her eyes, fell down her cheeks. “I love you too, Torrie. I think that I always have.”
His fingers tightened on hers. “You love me?”
She nodded, sniffling. “You are the other half of my heart as well.”
He brought her hands to his lips for a reverent kiss. “Thank God, Bess. I was afraid I’d lost you forever.”
“You could never lose me.”
She knew that now. Their bond was unbreakable. She had merely been too afraid to believe in it. Her confidence far too easily shaken.
More kisses rained over her knuckles. “Say it again. Please.”
“I love you,” she repeated. “But Lady Worthing and the child…what do you intend to do?”
“I will do my duty by the child,” Torrie said. “I would never ask you to acknowledge the child publicly or to see the child. But I intend to make certain the child has everything he needs.”
He wouldn’t be the first lord with a child born on the wrong side of the blanket, and nor would he be the last. And Elizabeth was no hypocrite. Her own father had been illegitimate, even if she had only made the discovery recently through Torrie. She would love the child, would support Torrie in any decision he made.
“I will love the child because he is partially yours,” she told him. “Whatever must be done, we will do it. We’ll do it together.”
Angel had finished her plate of cooked chicken and wound herself sinuously against Torrie’s side.
“Will you come home with me where you belong, my love?” he asked her. “You and Lady Razor Claws?”
She smiled through her tears, love for him banishing all the doubts and worries, all the pain of the last few days. “Yes, we will.”
CHAPTER18
“You are certain, my love?” Torrie asked Bess for what was likely the tenth time in as many minutes as their carriage ambled through Mayfair on its way to the Earl of Worthing’s town house.
“I’m certain,” she said firmly, giving him a reassuring pat on his thigh.
Under ordinary circumstances, his wife’s gloved hand in such delightful proximity to his cock would have stirred him. However, this was decidedly not ordinary circumstances, and the call they were about to pay was one he had been dreading every day since Bess’s return to Torrington House. Still, he knew that it had to be done.
“I deeply regret having to involve you in this tawdry affair,” he said grimly.
For it was the devil’s own coil in which he found himself, and thanks to his own aimless stupidity. Thank Christ for Bess, who had forgiven him for the debacle at the ball, and who loved him in spite of himself.
How he appreciated the woman at his side. Gloried in her. Loved her desperately, more with each passing day. He was so damned proud to have her on his arm, at his side.
“I would far prefer to be at your side than anywhere else,” she said, cutting through his heavy musings. “I promised to be your wife for better or for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish you. And I meant those vows.”
