“Why not?” James asked. “You had a lot in common. And it sounds like he chose you, even though you had no dowry. Usually that means a love match, does it not?”
“Perhaps. Our situation was unique.” She paused. Could she really tell him the truth about something so personal? “I didn’t know this until our wedding night, but Robert preferred men to women.”
James continued to stare at her, clearly shocked. “Did you suspect? Before you married, that is?”
“Not at all. I was an innocent back then. I’d not even known that there were others like him, living in secrecy. But we came to an understanding. I would allow him to have freedom to do as he wished, with whomever he desired, in exchange for his mentorship. If I couldn’t have love, I would have work that mattered to me. Perhaps I even thought, in the back of my mind, that something could happen to him and I’d be left without anything but an ability to earn my own way.”
“I cannot believe what you have endured.” James shook his head. “You deserved so much better.”
“The night we were married, I thought things would go as they usually do on wedding nights.” She blushed, remembering how embarrassed she’d been to stand in front of Robert in her lace nightgown, shivering from cold and nerves, only to have him sit her down in front of the fireplace to tell her who he truly was.
“But he told me the truth, right then and there. I’m grateful he didn’t try to bed me, to be honest. Had he done so and I’d found out the truth later, I would have been even more humiliated.”
“What did you do when he told you?” James asked, sitting forward slightly, clearly absorbed in her story.
“I cried.” She chuckled. “Which I mostly never do. I’m not a crier like some women. I can stuff a feeling down just as well as a man.”
James laughed. “Is that what men do?”
“A lot of them.”
“Anyway, continue with your story.”
She’d run out of his bedchamber to her own, where she climbed under the covers and cried herself to sleep like the little idiot she’d once been. “I woke up the next morning with swollen eyes and a broken heart. I’ve always been a romantic and I truly thought we were in love. Clearly, I didn’t know as much about the world as I thought I did.”
“It’s not your fault. How were you to know?”
“The signs were there. He’d never done more than touch my hand. I thought it was noble of him. A true gentleman. But in hindsight, of course, I realized that wasn’t at all true.”
She watched James closely, as he absorbed all this information.
“Regardless of how crushed I was, I’d thought of a plan. I told him what I wanted and he agreed to teach me the craft of architecture. In that way, it was a successful union for me. From that day forward, a close friendship developed between us. There was no one like him. Funny and witty. He made me laugh every day. I loved him very much, albeit platonically. He had several men he spent time with on a regular basis but he always came home for supper, even if he went out again. We had a small staff and I’m sure they knew the truth but no one said a word inside or outside of the house as far as I could tell. He was the kind of man who instilled fierce loyalty and affection from everyone he came in contact with. But he was not a rich man.” Her chest tightened, remembering the reading of his will, discovering that he’d left her only a small amount. He’d not discussed their finances with her. She’d assumed they were doing well enough that she needn’t worry over money ever again. And that may have been true. Had he lived.
James tilted his head to the side, watching her. “Did you do as he did, take lovers?”
She shook her head, chuckling without mirth. “I wouldn’t even know how to go about finding a lover. All of it felt too messy for my taste. Getting involved has always seemed too risky. I had no intention of having my heart broken by some scoundrel.”
“That way no one could betray you as your father did. As Robert, in the end, did as well.”
“How so?” She felt defensive of her late husband. He’d told her the truth. Yes, it had been after the marriage. However, she had been the one in desperate need of a spouse.
“He left you without enough to live on, for one.”
“For two?”
“He didn’t tell you about his true nature until you’d already married him. To me, this reeks of betrayal.”
“If you’d known him, you’d see it differently.”
She could see by the glint in his eyes that he disagreed.
“As I said, you deserved better. But how brave you were. Still are.” James shifted slightly, his tone soft. “I don’t know that I’ve ever admired someone as I admire you.”
“But why?”
“We don’t have enough time in the world for me to tell you all the ways, nor I the poetic tongue to do so.”
“Oh, James, you do say the nicest things.”
