A waning moon lent pale, silvery light to the scene, and the openness of the empty night helped dispel his haunted confusion. Below, he could see the dark bulk of the main buildings and the gardens that had been laid out in medieval times. All the land visible in every direction belonged to him.
His word was law at Aubynwood and half a dozen other manors, he had been a soldier of uncommon bravery and skill, and when he spoke, the most powerful men in Britain listened. That being the case, why did he fear one small, soft woman? A woman, moreover, who had never been anything but warm and undemanding.
He knew the answer, of course, but he would rather not think of his mother and his wife. When he had told Diana that deep caring caused deep betrayal, it was Medora Brandelin that he’d had in mind. As an example of perfidy, she was more than enough.
The deep chill of the stone column numbed his bare hand. It was December and in a few days he would be thirty-one years old. The first part of his life had been dominated by what he felt about his parents: anger, despair, and rejection.
In India he had grown beyond anger to detachment and cool efficiency. Usually he was satisfied with the man he had become, but now he saw clearly just how his disastrous past had crippled him. It had been easy to overlook that deficiency in himself when his relations with women had been purely physical, but with Diana there was more than lust, and caring had triggered this firestorm of doubt and confusion.
It was grotesque to be afraid of his own mistress. Yet the past held him with such heavy chains that he was unable to accept the gentle warmth and affection she offered him.
Sorting slowly through the jumble in his mind, he realized that the core of his distress was the fear that he would become dependent on Diana, needing her warmth as desperately as he now craved her body. Then, when he was at her mercy, she could betray him. Yet the fear was not a reasonable one. Diana was not a helpless innocent like his wife, and could never induce the lethal guilt he still felt about that incident.
Nor would she ever be able to wound him as severely as his mother had. Lady St. Aubyn’s worst crime had been her betrayal of her son’s trust. Diana didn’t occupy a comparable position of trust in his life, so she could never inflict the same kind of damage. Moreover, he could not imagine Diana deliberately hurting any living creature. He’d never heard her say an unkind word about anyone. Though she plied the courtesan trade, she was warmer and more honest than any woman he’d ever known.
He had been creating problems where none existed. There was no real cause to fear Diana, no reason to forgo her enchanting company. Hurting her with his misgivings had been childish nonsense.
She could never be his wife and they both knew it, and that simple fact established boundaries that safely defined their relationship. In time the extraordinary passion he felt for Diana would fade to a more comfortable level, though he could not imagine that he would ever stop desiring her. Meanwhile, there was no reason not to enjoy what gave them both such pleasure. Not just the passion, but also the affection.
That simple realization made him feel so light and free that he could almost have flown back to the house. Instead he plunged down the hill through the woods, reaching the house within ten minutes, his body warmed by his energetic passage.
Gervase was not surprised to learn that his guests, tired by their journey, had declined a formal dinner. His butler informed him that Mrs. Lindsay was taking a simple supper with her son and his nurse in the nursery and Miss Gainford had decided to join them. He was glad of it; he preferred not to act the host with his other guests until he had seen Diana alone.
By the time he’d finished eating, it was past nine o’clock and he entered Diana’s room through the secret door again. She was sitting in front of her vanity table, wearing a high-necked green velvet robe and brushing the thick hair that fell to the middle of her back. She glanced up, her eyes meeting his in the mirror, but she said nothing.
He moved behind her, taking the silver-backed brush and gently pulling it through her hair. The heavy tresses crackled like a living being under the brush and he caught up a handful, savoring the silky feel of it.
Musingly he said, “I’ve never seen hair the color of yours before, yet I can’t imagine you with anything else. Blond would be too frivolous, red too flamboyant, black too harsh, brown too common. Instead you have hair the color of a ripe chestnut or polished mahogany. By candlelight it’s very dark, yet it glows both red and gold.”
A faint smile acknowledged the compliment, but her voice was very grave. “I wasn’t sure that you would come back.”
As he resumed brushing he hit a snarl and concentrated on untangling it as he replied, “I’m sorry for what I said earlier. I shouldn’t have spoken.”
Her head made a slight impatient movement. “You meant what you said, didn’t you, about not wanting to need anyone?”
Gervase hesitated, then said, “Yes.”
Her night-deep eyes were stark in the mirror, but her soft voice was steady. “Then don’t apologize for your words. I would rather have your honesty than your silence.”
“Even when honesty is painful?”
She held his gaze without flinching as she answered, “Pain is inevitable, but it isn’t all there is to life. I would rather suffer sometimes than feel nothing. If one tries to eliminate the hard times, the good times are lost, too.”
He moved his hand to her throat and caressed it through the fine-spun chestnut strands, stroking the edge of her jaw with his thumb. “You seem so fragile, yet you are stronger than I am.”
Her smile was wry. “There are many kinds of strength. Mine is the woman’s strength of emotions, of yielding and enduring. I am not so strong in other ways.”
“You are strong enough to teach me through your example.” Gervase set the brush down and laid his hands on her shoulders, wanting to feel her reactions through her body as well as to watch them in the mirror.
Choosing his words slowly, he said, “I am tired of living in fear. I do care about you and it is foolish to try to deny that.” Even with his new resolution, it was difficult to add, “I’ll try not to run away from you again.”
He felt the faint tensing of Diana’s body as she absorbed his statement. Then she raised one hand to cover his where it lay on her shoulder, saying simply, “I am so glad.”
Her face shone with happiness, and the warmth of her smile began to melt the defenses he had so carefully built around his heart. Gervase was not yet ready to speak of that, nor to give a name to what he felt, but he knew that things had changed between them. He bent over to kiss the slender fingers that still covered his. “So am I.”
Diana raised her face to his and they shared a kiss of great sweetness. He was very different from the man who had first attracted and frightened her, and she was awed by his bravery. She lived in her emotions and understood their highs and lows, but for a man whose soul had been scarred in ways she could only guess at, it was an act of supreme courage to let himself be vulnerable.
It was a very short step from sweetness to passion. They made love slowly, knowing they had all night. There was a new kind of intimacy between them, and at the height of ecstasy Diana felt that their souls briefly joined, that she felt the fierce splendor of his spirit within hers, and that neither of them was alone anymore. It was a transcendent moment, and in its aftermath Diana wept, both for the beauty of their sharing and for the fact that it was too soon over.
