“I don’t know what I believe. That is why I am here. So, Diana, what is the truth?”
She buried her face in her hands. “What is the point of saying anything? If I could deliberately betray you, my protests of honesty are worthless. If I did not, you have only my word on it, and you appear to value that very little.”
“Actually, I would rather give you the benefit of the doubt.”
“How generous of you, my lord,” she said without raising her head. She wished he would go, but even worse than the pain of his presence and his accusations was the fear that if he left, he would never come back.
She did not hear his soft footsteps, and it was a surprise to feel his warm hands take her shivering ones as he knelt before her. “Diana, I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “It has not been my intent to hurt you, simply to learn the truth. Whether or not you have had other lovers in the past, the way the French learned of my journey—those things are less important to me than whether you will promise not to see other men in the future.”
She raised her head and looked at him wearily. His face was a scant foot away, the sculpted lines and planes more familiar than her own features. In some ways she knew him better than she knew herself; in others, he was alien and incomprehensible. “Why does it matter so? Is it because you are so possessive that you can’t bear to think of another man playing with your toys?”
His hands tightened on hers, but he didn’t look away. “It matters because . . .” He drew a steadying breath, his gaze locked to hers. “Because I love you.”
She had wanted desperately to hear those words, and now she was so drained that she wasn’t sure what they meant. Trying to suppress her tears, she whispered, “How can you love me if you don’t trust me?”
She was so close that the anguish in his eyes was unmistakable. After a long pause he said, “I didn’t know that love and trust had anything to do with each other.”
“They do to me.” Gently disengaging her hands, she sat up straight. “Do you really mean what you said, or are you just saying that you love me so I’ll do what you want me to?”
His dark skin drew sharply taut over his high cheekbones. Sitting back on his heels, he said, “I suppose I deserved that.”
She had no more intended to hurt Gervase than he had intended to hurt her. The fact that neither of them wished to wound did not make it any less devastating.
“I spoke the truth, Diana. I love you as I have never loved any other woman.” His sincerity was too raw to be feigned. “If it were possible, I would marry you. Since it is not, I hope love is enough to hold you, because it is the most I can give.”
The room was utterly silent. Diana felt faint as the blood drained from her face. He had come the entire distance that she had wanted, and now that he had, she was terrifyingly uncertain how to proceed. Finally she said unevenly, “It is a compliment that you contemplated marriage, but of course a man of your position and consequence could not possibly take a courtesan to wife.”
His detachment shattered and he stood, looming over her as he gripped her chin with one hand and forced her to look at him. All the passion she knew he was capable of burned in his eyes as he swore, “Consequence be damned! Make no mistake, Diana. If I could, I would marry you tomorrow.”
As Madeline had said, passion was dangerous, a double-edged sword, unpredictable in its consequences. Diana had wanted to break through Gervase’s hard shell of control. Now, terrifyingly, she had. He had always been gentle, careful with his formidable strength, but now he was frightening in his intensity. His clear gray eyes were no longer like ice, but were windows to the fierceness of the emotions burning inside him.
“I would most certainly marry you”—his grip tightened convulsively, and a dozen heartbeats passed before he could continue—“because that would give me the right to kill any other man who touched you.”
Chapter Nineteen
His fingers tight around Diana’s jaw after those too-revealing violent words, Gervase felt the pulse in her throat. She closed her eyes for a moment, the thick dark lashes shadowing her delicate skin, then opened them again. She had been bewildered and defensive, but now she challenged: “If you feel that strongly, then whywon’tyou marry me? A wife swears fidelity, and I would honor my vows.”
He let go of her and spun away. Nine years ago he had known that someday he must pay the penalty for his unforgivable crime against an innocent, and now the price was being exacted from his very marrow. He kept his back turned to Diana to conceal how difficult it was to answer. Taking a deep, deep breath, he replied, “I can’t marry you because I have a wife.”
The silence stretched, unbearably empty, until finally he turned to Diana. She was curled tightly in the chair, her knees drawn under her, her face unreadable but her body tense and rejecting. “So the rumors of the mad wife in Scotland are true?”
Except for the barest explanation to his lawyer, he had never once spoken of that black night in the Hebrides, but he owed Diana the truth of why he could not make her his wife. Besides, he felt obscurely that having to confess his crime to the person he cared most about was part of his punishment. “She is in Scotland, but she’s not mad. She’s . . . simple.”
Diana’s beautiful eyes widened in astonishment. “You mean . . . you married a girl who is mentally deficient?” At his nod, she continued. “Why on earth did you do that?”
His fingers raked his dark hair in agitation; then he sat opposite Diana, knowing he must tell her the full damning story. “I married her at the point of a gun, or close enough.”
As she sat in waiting silence, he leaned forward and braced his elbows on his knees, his head bowed over his linked fingers. “It happened nine years ago. I was touring the Hebrides and stopped at an inn on the Isle of Mull. One of the barmaids was easily persuaded to visit me after she finished work.”
His fingers tightened. “I’d had too much to drink, and when I went to my room I didn’t realize that the woman in my bed was not the barmaid. The girl who was there started screaming and her father burst in. He was certainly mad, a crazed, sex-obsessed vicar named Hamilton who insisted that Ihadcompromised his daughter and must marry her.”
“I suppose this is where the gun comes in,” Diana said in a voice of studied neutrality.
“Yes, although I was drunk enough and angry enough that I took the pistol away from him.” The viscount stared down at his interwoven hands, remembering the hoarse voice and compelling eyes of the mad vicar, who believed his witless daughter was an irresistible temptress luring men to sin. The mad vicar, who had been his father-in-law for all these years.
“Why do you say the girl was simple?” Diana asked, curiosity overcoming her detachment.
“She could hardly speak. The few words she said were almost incomprehensible. And her eyes and face were . . . wrong. Empty. As if there was no one there.”
