Raith’s breath came thick and fast as he leaned his right elbow on the table, pressing his hand tight against the offensive wreck of his features, and closing his eyes. He had never been so near to disgracing himself with unmanly tears. Curse the wench, and her well-meaning interference! She little knew what she had put him through. He felt wrung out. Every instance of insult and ignominy that his mutilation had made him heir to had come crashing in upon him.
A whisper reached him. “Raith...”
He shook his head with vehemence, unable to respond. Let her not attempt to condole with him — or plead, whatever she intended. Not yet awhile. He could not answer for his own responses.
But Rosina was too affected to be wise. His aspect was heart-rending, and she could not endure it. Her own eyes were moist, her voice husky with emotion. “Raith, I know how you must be feeling...”
He reared up. “No, you don’t know! God send you never will!”
She flinched. “I beg your p-pardon, I never meant—”
“Spare me, I beg of you! I know well enough what you meant.” He passed a hand roughly across his brow, and jerked out, “It is not your fault. In your innocence, how could you know—?”
“But I want to know, Raith. I am your wife. You say we have a marriage other than you intended. Help me to be the wife you would wish for. Give me something of yourself.”
Raith dragged his fingers down his cheek, and turned his gaze upon her, his heart ragged. “This? You want to know of this?” He drew a breath loaded with the anguish of memory. “Then for a beginning, picture to yourself a female, for whose services I had paid, running screaming from the room upon first catching sight of it.”
Rosina put a hand to her mouth but she did not speak. He hardly noted her reaction, turning to stare at the candles, tormenting remembrance in his head.
“She was not alone. I took to wearing a mask for such occasions. I had reason to wish I might do so at other times. There was a ball once, in Spain, where a bevy of ladies were obliged to use their fans for protection. But I saw them while they shunned me, whispering and pointing.”
Silent, the tears that trickled down her cheeks evoked more by the evidence of his pain than by the words he said, Rosina listened with her eyes fixed upon the wicked injury that had made of him something of an outcast.
Raith spoke on, as if his tongue, once loosened, must run with the narrative. “Once I thought I had found the inconceivable. A female, not respectable, with whom I became involved, who seemed indifferent. Until I found out her particular penchant was to seek out those with deformities for an obscure fancy of her own. My disgust then equalled that which I evoke myself in women.”
He leaned his elbow on the table again, dropping his chin in his hand, looking spent. His gaze found Rosina’s face and a strange look came into his eyes.
“What, do you weep for me, Rosina?”
“Yes.” She sniffed, and wiped away the stains with her fingers. “It is cruel.”
“It is human nature.”
There was a silence. He watched her, feeling a swelling in his chest for the recognition of her tender heart. A considerable lessening of his suffering had been afforded in the telling. He had said it all without intent, driven by her mad action. But now he could not be sorry for it. He felt instinctively that Rosina’s compassion was not born of pity for his wound, but rather for his anguish. Was there that in her past which enabled her to comprehend his humiliation?
“You should weep rather for yourself. You must now live with it as well as I.”
Rosina turned her luminous black orbs upon him, and the wistfulness was pronounced. “If you will let me.”
His chin was still resting in his hand. As of instinct, he shifted his fingers, to cover the whole scored side. “So that you may pity me? Allow me some small measure of pride.”
She bit her lip, and a hint of mulishness crept into her face. “I agree that you have pride — and a good deal of it false.”
“I have false pride?” Raith sat up, dropping his hand, and shifting to face her, hardly aware as he did so that he effectively removed the maimed side from her immediate view. “I will be glad if you will tell me how you know so much, when we have been married a bare day or two.”
An impatient sigh came. “What has time to do with it? Today you came to me with a mouthful of gentle sentiment. Yet when I ask you for this one thing, you will not oblige me.”
Was she still at that? Had she not seen enough? “You did not ask. You took it. To my cost.”
“Yes, and for that I am deeply regretful.” She was pulling at the ends of those unquiet fingers of hers where they lay in her lap and his gaze riveted upon them. “But I am asking you now, Raith. It can only be pride that will not let you give in to me.”
Raith groaned. This was so unfair. How she played upon his feelings. “Rosina, I beg of you, change your seat tomorrow to the other side.”
The coal-black eyes registered acute disappointment, and her lip quivered. “If you so command me, my lord, I must obey.”
Raith reached out and grasped her restless fingers, holding them still. He spoke softly withal, the menace almost a caress. “How dare you put me at so vile a disadvantage, you unprincipled wretch?”
A tiny smile curved her lips. “Well, but you are there sir, and by your own effort.”
