“What are you doing here?” he asked, low-toned.
Heaven only knew, she thought. Except that she did know. She had seen him — with that peripheral vision that betrayed her into watching him when everything dictated she must not — moving steadily out of the big room towards the entrance. Without even thinking, she had sought some excuse and sneaked forth to waylay him thus clandestinely.
“I slipped out unseen,” she answered. “I could not bear you to think me so ungrateful.”
“If that is what you believed me to think,” he uttered in a rough tone, “then you are vastly mistaken. Besides, I have no use for your gratitude!”
Her fingers tightened on his, for both tone and words were poison to her. “Don’t be angry, Denzell, pray. There is — there is a reason for the way I acted.”
“So I should imagine,” he retorted. “Only I was not aware that you thought so little of me.”
“Think little of you? But that is not true.”
“Is it not?” He released her hands. “I do not know why your mama should take it into her head to encourage me. But could you not trust me to obey your wishes rather than hers? Could you not, Verena?”
His eyes were adjusting to the lack of light, and he thought he discerned a tear glistening on her pale cheek. It had the effect of turning his anger against himself, but it did not assuage the hurt. Such hurt as even her rejection of his initial declaration had not dealt him.
“You need not weep,” he said in a dead voice. “I have brought all this upon myself. You owe me no vestige of trust, nor loyalty. It is my own misfortune that I should have crossed your path. Iam not the first man to be disappointed in his hopes of marrying the woman he loves.”
Verena blenched, her distress deepening. But so attuned was she to him at this moment that she recognised the underlying pain beneath his words.
Quietly she asked, “Is that designed to repay the hurt I have inflicted upon you?”
Denzell’s tone hardened. “I am not trying to make you feel guilt, if that is what you mean. I have no secret desire to hurt you, Verena.”
“No more had I, Denzell, when I spoke to you so harshly in the Rooms. I was in no case to be thinking of what you might or might not do, not with any rational consideration. You see, Mama has conceived the notion that I —”
She faltered on the words hovering on her tongue. That was not an admission she wished to make, not even to herself. But Denzell had caught it.
“That you…?” he prompted, an eager note in his voice.
She was silent.
The sudden spurt of hope died again in Denzell’s breast. Yet her words had lifted him. She had not intended to repulse him. She had been victim of her own emotions — would they might be what he so ardently desired.
“Forgive me,” he offered, “if I have misjudged you.”
No, that was more than she could bear. “You have not misjudged me. I am so little mistress of my own heart, Denzell, that I cannot answer for myself. Yet I must distance you. If Mama thinks there is any slight possibility of my finding a future with you, she will return to Nathaniel. He is even at this moment waiting for her answer. Now do you understand?”
“Deuce take it, yes!” he said at once.
In some dim recess he treasured those hasty words she had uttered about her own heart, but the purport of this speech hit him all too strongly.
“Even were it possible, Denzell, that I could think of — of loving you, or of marriage, I could never seek my happiness at the cost of Mama’s renewed sufferings.”
“No, nor ever forgive me for making it happen.”
“You do understand!”
“For what do you take me?” He caught at her shoulders, unheeding that he crushed the delicate fabric of her gown. “Verena, why did you not send to me, and tell me this? You must know I would not dream of putting you to the risk of such a thing.”
“I should have known. Had I not been set so much into a frenzy, had I been able to think rationally —”
“Never mind it. Rest assured that I will not approach you or show by the flicker of an eye that I have any serious intent towards you. I can dissemble almost as well as you when necessity arises, you know.”
A choke of laughter escaped her. “I had not noticed it.”
He grinned at her in the darkness. “No, because all my effort with you has been in the direction of proving my sincerity.”
