Damien’s eyes flashed with that fire she remembered so well. “I would have been willing to risk that or any other trial for us, Alissende, no matter what the cost. My brother was not, and so he chose the easier path—as did you, when you turned away from me and pretended that we were naught to each other before the eyes of society. There is nothing else to know.”
“There is more to why I acted as I did.”
“Tell me, then,” he demanded quietly, “for I cannot fathom it. We sharedeverything,then, Alissende. Do you not remember? Nothing was left unsaid between us. Ever.”
“This was, Damien,” she protested, “for there was no time to tell you. Lady Margaret was expecting a babe.”
He stared at her in stunned silence. When he spoke at last, each word was uttered with careful distinction. “She carried my brother’s child?”
Alissende nodded, her heart somber. “I learned of it on the morning of the tournament. Margaret sent a hasty and desperate message to me, begging me to come to her. She told me that her sire was sending her away, and when I found her in her rooms, her face was pale and tear-streaked. I was only able to speak with her in private for a few moments before the guard Lord Welton had assigned to her forced her out to the carriage. But she managed to tell me before she left.”
Damien dragged his hand through his hair, still looking stunned. “Jesu, I cannot believe it. Alex never spoke of a child.”
“Perhaps he did not know. Margaret had only known herself for a short time, and she shared it with me that morn out of desperation over her circumstances and our long-standing friendship.”
Alissende looked down at her clasped hands, remembering, letting the difficult flashes of images wash through her mind once more. “I did not see Margaret again after that day, but I heard later that her child did not survive its birth, and she was left with naught but her disgrace, a broken heart, and several years of penance, served in an abbey away from all those she had loved.”
Damien just shook his head, grief and shock still apparent in his face. He closed his eyes for a moment and tipped back against the wall.
When he looked at her again, she forced herself to meet his gaze, even though it was painful to acknowledge what she was about to say to him. He deserved not only to hear the truth of it in her words but also to see it in her eyes, after all that had passed between them.
“What I did to you that day, Damien, and tous,” she said, her voice quiet but resolute, “arose from selfish panic. I had lived until then as a pampered young woman, carefree and blithe through custom of my wealth and social standing. When I saw what happened to Margaret, I realized that it could have been me.Icould have been the one sent off in disgrace, burgeoning with child. Even more unbearable to think on, you could have been sent off to exile or worse, for I knew you well and did not doubt that, unlike Alexander, you would have stayed to fight anyone who bid you leave me, no matter the cost, including that, even, of your life.”
She glanced away for just an instant, fortifying herself against the grinding ache inside, so that she might say the rest of it. “I refuted you out of fear, Damien. I was young and foolish, afraid of what could happen, and I deemed it better to break our hearts quickly than to find ourselves suffering the drawn-out agonies Margaret and Alexander were enduring.”
A tiny, choked sound came from her throat, and she looked at him through the building heat that made his face a watery blur before her. “I was wrong, of course. Horribly so. And yet being mistaken in something has never had the power to change it back to the way it was, has it?”
She held Damien’s gaze, feeling that old connection between them flare up briefly again, as if they had never been wrenched apart…the understanding they had once shared that had gone deeper than words. He saw, now, the truth behind what she had done that day. It did not change aught between them—it could not—but at least he knew why.
His expression was drawn, as if the weight of this burden, lifted after all this time, had left him exhausted. He shook his head slowly, looking down. “Ah, Alissende, I wish that I had only…that we had—”
He stopped, the rest of the words too difficult to say. She knew it as well as he did; it was too late for words to mend the chasm between them. Too late to alter the path that they had taken, or to make the people they had become with time, suffering, and hardships transform back to the innocently passionate lovers they had once been.
Looking down, she closed her eyes, willing the tears back as she murmured, “I know, Damien. I wish it, too.” But one tear slipped down her cheek as she raised her gaze again and forced what might have passed as a smile. “The final irony, of course, is that I needn’t have feared suffering Margaret’s fate, though I did not know it then.”
That brought Damien’s troubled stare up to hers once more.
She shook her head slightly, her fingers coming up to press against her lips, before she could rein in the grief that always bloomed inside of her with these bitter thoughts. Taking in a shaky breath, she admitted, “I told you three nights ago that there would be a better moment and place for me to speak of the reasons behind my certainty that a babe would not come of our joining; it is now. It has become apparent over the course of time that I am unable to bear children.”
He frowned. “But when I first arrived, your mother…she worried about the possibility of it, did she not?”
“My mother has not accepted the truth. I can do no less, after four fruitless years of marriage with Godfrey. My inability to conceive caused much strife between us. And during that final year it led to many other kinds of suffering as well—”
Her voice broke, then, and she stopped speaking, closing her eyes and forcing the difficult memories back by sheer will, though the throbbing ache inside her refused to subside. And so it was that when she felt Damien’s hand touch her own, it took her by surprise.
“I am sorry, Alissende. It seems that neither of us has found much in the way of peace these past years.”
With his understanding, the aching inside her seemed to ease a little. But the same regret that shadowed every breath she took tinged his voice as well when he spoke, and she looked at him, knowing instinctively that there was more he wished to say.
He appeared to choose his words carefully. “I am grateful for your honesty, Alissende. But in turn, there is something I need you to understand. You must cease blaming yourself for not telling me the truth earlier. There is no way for either of us to know what might have turned out differently back then. But even now, had you told me it all when I first came back, I would not have—”
His mouth tightened, and he paused for an instant, his expression so earnest and filled with the same kindness and warmth he had shown her when they had loved each other that her heart felt like it was breaking all over again.
“I am trying to say that it would not have changed the decision I made upon my arrival at Glenheim,” he continued. “I did not set the terms of our arrangement to wound you, Alissende. It is simply that I cannot go back. I am no longer the same man I was.” His jaw tightened. “Aside from that, none who are close to me will be safe from interrogation if my Writ of Absolution is ever discovered to be false, and for those two reasons all must remain as it stands between us.”
“I understand,” Alissende murmured, knowing he was right and yet finding herself desperate to call up whatever remaining strength she could find to combat the fierce longing that had blossomed anew with the gift of his candor. “And I agree, for I too have changed in many ways.”
He nodded, the movement jerky, as if he was trying to convince himself of the truth of what they’d both avowed. Alissende said nothing more.
