And she loved the way she fit into his life, and the way he fit into hers.
It was comfortable. It was right.
And this, she finally realized, was where she belonged.
But he was standing there, staring at a portrait of his dead wife, and from the way he was so still and unmoving ... well, God only knew how long he’d been doing that. And if he still loved her ...
She choked back a wave of guilt. Who was she to feel anything but sorrow on behalf of Marina? She had died so young, so unexpectedly. And she’d lost what Eloise considered every mother’s God-given right—to watch her children grow up.
To feel jealous of a woman like that was unconscionable.
And yet ...
And yet Eloise must not be as good a person as she ought, because she couldn’t watch this scene, couldn’t watch Phillip staring at the portrait of his first wife without envy squeezing around her heart. She’d just realized she loved this man, and would, to the very last of her days.Sheneeded him, not a dead woman.
No, she thought fiercely. He didn’t still love Marina. Maybe he’d never loved Marina. He’d said the morning before that he hadn’t been with a woman for eight years.
Eightyears?
It sank in, finally.
Good God.
She’d spent the past two days in such a flurry of emotion that she hadn’t really stopped and thought—really thought—about what he’d said.
Eight years.
It was not what she would have expected. Not from a man such as Phillip, who clearly enjoyed—no, clearlyneeded—the physical aspects of married love.
Marina had only been dead for fifteen months. If Phillip had gone without a woman for eight years, that meant they hadn’t shared a bedroom since the twins had been conceived.
No ...
Eloise did some mental arithmetic. No, it would have been after the twins had been born. A little bit after.
Of course, Phillip could have been off in his dates, or perhaps exaggerating, but somehow Eloise didn’t think so. She rather thought he knew exactly when he and Marina had last slept together, and she feared, especially now that she had pinpointed the date of it, that it had been a terrible occasion indeed.
But he had not betrayed her. He had remained faithful to a woman from whose bed he’d been banned. Eloise wasn’t surprised, given his innate sense of honor and dignity, but she didn’t think she would have thought less of him if he had sought comfort elsewhere.
And the fact that he hadn’t—
It made her love him all the more.
But if his time with Marina had been so difficult and disturbing, why had he come here tonight? Why was he staring at her portrait, standing there as if he couldn’t move from the spot? Gazing upon her as if he were pleading with her, begging her for something.
Begging the favor of a dead woman.
Eloise couldn’t stand it any longer. She stepped forward and cleared her throat.
Phillip surprised her by turning instantly; she’d thought that he was so completely lost in his own world that he would not hear her. He didn’t say anything, not even her name, but then ...
He held out his hand.
She walked forward and took it, not knowing what else to do, not even knowing—as strange as it seemed—what to say. So she just stood beside him and stared up at Marina’s portrait.
“Did you love her?” she asked, even though she’d asked him before.
“No,” he said, and she realized that a small part of her must have still been very worried, because the rush of relief she felt at his denial was surprising in its force.
