“Not for a moment,” she said with a smile.
“But he is the love of your life,” Gideon murmured, pressing her to deliver a painful blow.
I deserve it for how I have treated her. I deserve the lash.
“He was a memory from a time when I was happy. But that’s all he was. We were good friends as children, but it is you that I married.”
“But—but our marriage could have been annulled. I do not think I would have stood in your way.”
“Wouldn’t you?” she asked.
He shook his head emphatically.
“The old me would have taken it as a personal insult. I would have wanted to fight him.”
“And now?”
“I would have done anything I could to win you back. But fighting is what our father wanted Aaron and me to do. It is what he trained us for. And where has it gotten either of us? Aaron was driven mad, and I have spent my life refusing to allow anyone to get close to me. I believed that love equated to weakness.”
Catherine resumed her walk and bent to pick a violet as she passed. “I think it is the opposite.”
He hurried to catch up with her as she inhaled it, and then accepted it when she pressed it into his hand. “I am beginning to see that.”
“Yet, neither of us has spoken it,” she said, carefully.
Gideon took a breath, feeling unaccountably nervous. Catherine looked at him expectantly, lips parted, eyes wide. She sensed the confession he was about to make, anticipated it. Wanted it.
I must say the words I have been conditioned to regard as anathema. The ultimate sign of weakness.
“I… love you,” he said, simply, allowing himself to be vulnerable before her, before anyone, for the first time.
He blinked. She had spoken at the same time, but he hadn’t heard her. Had she understood him?
“I love you,” he tried again at the exact moment that Catherine had the same idea.
This time, they both understood. They laughed. Kissed. Whispered to each other the same words, one after another. Gideon savored her voice speaking those words. He relished saying them himself.
Catherine was right. It did not make him feel weak. Quite the opposite.
That night, Caerleon lay quiet under the hush of summer stars. Catherine sat before her mirror, her hair unbound, her gown loosened. Her heart fluttered. She remembered Gideon’s words, his vow to strip himself of secrets, to offer her nothing but the man he truly was. The thought filled her with an ache of tenderness.
A soft knock came. She turned, her breath caught.
“Come,” she whispered.
Gideon entered, hesitating only a moment before closing the door behind him. He stood without cravat, his shirt loose at the throat, revealing the hair that furred his broad, muscular chest. His eyes, dark with feeling, fixed upon her. For a long breath, they said nothing. Then he came to her, knelt at her feet, and took her hands.
“I have nothing to give you but myself,” he murmured, “I know that titles and wealth mean nothing to you. I would give up both in a heartbeat if you asked.”
Her throat tightened. She cupped his face between her palms.
“I do not ask for it. But if you came to me with nothing, my answer would be the same. You are enough.”
“Me as I am. Not who I pretended to be,” Gideon said, “I am Gideon Tarnley. I was never the boy you remembered. We shared an upbringing, but he and I were and are very different.”
“I know,” Catherine said firmly. “I thought that I loved Aaron. For my entire life, I thought it. He was my ideal. The memories he and I shared were of endless summers. Play and imagination, and…it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t real. I was in love with an idea that never existed. I think…”
She floundered, trying to communicate something that she could not quite bring into being.
