“And if you discover that I am not who you think I am…?” he asked.
“I already have,” she breathed. “And I find that you are precisely who I think you are. The only difference is that I now understand that I didn’t know the man you were.”
He chuckled.
“Neither did I.”
“And now?”
“Businessman. Employer and guardian of my staff. Husband. I find that I rather enjoy these roles.”
“And you suit them.”
Her hands trembled in her lap.
“I understand if you wish the marriage annulled,” he went on quietly. “How could you have guessed? How could anyone want such a past tied to them?”
Catherine stared at him, her heart a storm. The boy she had known, the man she desired, the husband she had married, all entwined with this shadowed figure of East London’s hells.
Can I look past it? Does such a past leave a stain on a man? Can he step out of such a shadow, or can I?
The silence stretched between them, taut as a drawn bow. Catherine drew a breath, but no words came.
CHAPTER 28
Gideon stood before the long mirror in his chamber, tugging the cuffs of his evening coat until the monogrammed links gleamed just so against the black cloth. The glass threw back a polished image. A man of wealth, bearing, and, most importantly, a man who had buried the filth of Whitechapel beneath satin and starched linen.
But the reflection felt hollow tonight. And Catherine’s silence gnawed at him still.
She could not bring herself to speak the words I wanted to her. The horror was too great. How could any woman accept such a man? Such a past…
She had also not said the words he dreaded. That he was notAaron Tarnley. Instead, she had borne the truth of his past like one might cradle a shard of glass, carefully, unwilling to drop it but unwilling to draw it close either. Since their return from London, her eyes had been watchful, her smile faint, her voice kind yet cautious.
This is true torture. I have known the torture of flesh. The pain of blades and beatings. And I would endure an eternity of those over one second of this… this… not knowing!
He had known fear before. Fear of hunger, of the knife in a stranger’s hand, of waking in the gutter with nothing. This fear was worse. The fear of losing her. Not to death or another man, to truth. His truth.
Yet tonight we must smile, play gracious hosts, and win Isabella Merrick’s future.
Gideon wanted nothing of the sort. He wanted to lock the doors, to banish his guests. But he could not. He had promised to help, and he would remain true to his word. He grimaced at himself in the mirror. For once, there was no sneering voice in his head. No ghost at his shoulder.
I made my confession. I showed my strength and resolution. There can be no criticism.
Except that he had lacked the courage to make the ultimate confession. He had not told Catherine who he really was.
That revelation, if it came out, would surely not be taken well.
Gideon descended to the great hall where Catherine awaited him. He felt that he was heading to the gallows, to the death of this brief way of life that he had… enjoyed?
He tried to tell himself that it had been an interlude, and an unwelcome one. A circumstance forced upon him by the actions of others and his own spur-of-the-moment chivalry. Then he turned a corner of the staircase and saw her.
Catherine was ethereal in a gown of pale blue that softened her features into something transcendent.
Her eyes were liquid, and they drew him into their depths with the inexorable pull of the strongest tide. Her lips glistened, and her cheeks glowed. Those lips were parted slightly, as though she were breathless, and one hand rested lightly on her stomach as though to quell butterflies.
As he reached her, she placed her hand upon his arm, light as a feather.
Gideon longed to close his fingers over hers and anchor her to him. But he did not dare. She seemed as ephemeral and fragile as a soap bubble. Even a word might make her vanish from his life forever.
