It was Lydia who caught him this time as he made to move away from her. “It’s worth everything to me,” she said.
“Do you mean it?” he asked softly.
“Oh, Nathan, of course I do.” Lydia lightly touched his cheek with the back of her hand. “You can’t know how desperately I’ve wanted to hear you say those words.”
“Perhaps I can,” he said.
At first she didn’t understand what he was saying. There was a hint of expectancy in his voice, but the cause of it eluded her. Her eyes widened as realization was brought home to her. “But you know,” she said. “You must know the way I feel, the way I’ve felt all along.”
“Must I?” he asked. “You ran away from me on the occasion of our very first meeting.”
“I was frightened…and fascinated. Of course I ran.”
“When I saw you later that evening you made certain I knew you didn’t want anything to do with me.”
“I was embarrassed and worried you’d tell my parents where I had been.”
“You hated that I won the wager in your father’s poker game.”
“I thought you did it just to torment me.”
“You wanted Brig then.”
“I was stupid.”
Nathan was caught off guard by her admission. He smiled slowly and his chuckle sent a delicious frisson of warmth through Lydia. “Yes,” he said. “Youwerestupid.”
Not at all offended, Lydia nodded happily.
“You also found out enough about the wager between Brig and me to set the both of us up.”
“I was stupid only to a certain point.”
“We deserved everything you did to us,” he said, clearly remembering the jump from her bedroom window.
“Even the fertilizer in the flower bed?” she asked.
“Especially the fertilizer.”
“It could have been deeper,” she said.
Nathan kissed her smug smile and finally began to believe that she really did love him. There was no bitterness in her tone as she recalled the trick that had been played her, no resentment or ill will. In spite of how he had wronged her, she had come to love him. “I would have never wished for you losing your memory,” he told her, “but there was a part of me that was grateful when it happened. I was being given a second chance with you, or perhaps it was my first real one, only I didn’t know quite what to do with it. You accepted me so easily then, so trustingly, that I was afraid for you. I couldn’t bear to see you hurt and yet I was the one who was doing it to you.”
“You loved me then.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement of fact.
“I…yes, I suppose I did.”
She smiled because he sounded surprised. “I loved you then, too.”
Nathan shook his head. “You only thought you did.”
“What I felt for you then was quite real, Nathan. Don’t belittle my feelings because I couldn’t remember the past. While we were on theAvonleiI was in love with you. I never understood how much in love until we arrived at Ballaburn and I discovered I couldn’t hate you as I wanted to. I left because I had so little control where you were concerned. I was afraid of surrendering my very soul if I stayed.”
“Instead you took mine when you left.”
Her eyes darted over his face. He meant it, she thought wonderingly. He really meant it. “I didn’t know,” she said softly.
“That’s because you married a coward. I was afraid to tell you.” He sighed and his smile was rueful. “God, Lydia, I think I’ve been afraid of you from the very beginning. I’ve never wanted anything the way I’ve wanted you.”
