She shrugged. “It’s hard to think that isn’t true based on what I’ve experienced.”
He moved toward her a long step, his hands shaking at his sides, his eyes flashing with emotion. “You know nothing, Elise. Not a damn thing.”
“Then explain it to me,” she barked, sliding to the edge of the bed, the covers wrapped around her. “Explain it. God, just sayanythingthat means something.”
“I don’t leave here and forget you,” he growled. “I have tried so very hard to do just that over the years, but it never works. For three years, I have woken up with one thought in my head. Do you know what that thought is?”
She shook her head wordlessly, for she was honestly afraid to say anything for fear her voice would make him truncate his confession.
“Elise is gone,” he said softly, almost tenderly. “I wake up every morning with that thought in my head. I go to bed each night with the same fucking thought echoing so loudly that it almost blocks out every other thing. I eat my breakfast, Elise is gone. I go to my club, Elise is gone. I try so bloody hard to move on, butElise is gone.”
She sucked in a hard, harsh breath not just at his words, but at the crumpled pain on his face when he said them. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“I’ve triedeverythingI could think of to dismiss you from my mind, Elise. I even tried to seek out a marriage.”
She flinched. “Yes, I know.”
God, how that had burned her to the ground when she heard Stenfax was engaged to be married again. She’d even gone so far as to find out where the lady in question—Celia Fitzgilbert—lived, just to see her. And she’d hated her, briefly, for being so pretty.
But then the engagement had ended, right around the time Elise’s own husband had died and it was like all the lights in the world had been lit at once.
“Do you want to know why my engagement to Celia ended?” he asked.
“I-I heard it was because Gray fell in love with her sister. That you two stepped aside so that they could wed.”
He sighed, a sound of pure exhaustion with it all. “Graydidfall in love with Rosalinde. But that’s not why. Celia and I ended our engagement because there was no feeling between us. She wasn’t willing to sacrifice a future with love and I wasn’t going to make her. She recently married someone she does love, so I am happy I let her go.”
“And you?” she whispered.
He laughed, but it was empty. “Me? Well, I took a great deal of time to analyze that subject after the end of the engagement. And I’ve come to realize that there is no feeling left in me, Elise. You took it all when you left.”
She pushed to her feet, now dragging just the sheet behind her. “No, you can’t mean that.”
He nodded. “But I do. I havenolove left. I have no capacity for the kind that a wife desires and requires. I have nothing left becauseElise is gone.”
A sound cracked through the air and she realized with a start that it was her own moan of anguish at his words. The depth of his pain was so deep and so dark, and she had caused it. She had ripped his heart out and hadn’t even known she’d been carrying it with her all this time. How she hated herself for that.
But it also gave her a tiny sense of…hope. If Lucien had been so broken by her, did it mean she could repair him as well? Repairthem?After all, he kept coming to her despite these hard and harsh feelings. He kept wanting her despite his better judgment.
Didn’t that count for something?
She reached for him. He didn’t back away as she gently placed a hand on his heart.
“Couldn’t we…” She drew a long breath. It took so much to say this, to ask it. “Couldn’t we start over?”
He went almost impossibly still for what felt like forever. He stared at her, his dark gaze filled with such heartbreak that it was physically painful. Then he reached up and took the hand that rested on his chest. He threaded his fingers through hers and held it, gently.
“Elise,” he whispered. “You are temptation embodied and not just because of what we share in bed. But I can’t trust you. I don’t know that Ievercould again, no matter what you said or did to try to prove to me that I could.”
She bit back a cry. There it was. The final nail in her hopes and in her heart. If this man didn’t trust her,couldn’ttrust her, then none of the rest mattered.
And yes, she could explain herself. But what she had said to Vivien earlier in the night now felt truer than ever. Her words would be meaningless. She couldn’t change what had happened, nor take away the pain this man had experienced in the interim because of her.
If she told him the truth, it would be as some kind of absolution for herself. It wouldn’t make him trust her, it would only hurt him and others even more.
To confess would be a selfish act.
“I understand,” she whispered when she could find her voice, find her words, find a way not to break down when she spoke.
