“I’m trying to find a way to phrase my question,” she admitted. “Er, the morning James and Graham found us here, the morning everything…changed, I overheard you and my brother talking.”
Simon thought back to that morning that felt like a lifetime ago. “Go on.”
“He said that you…you and Roseford had…”
She trailed off, her cheeks going even darker, and Simon flinched as he recalled his conversation with James that morning. He cleared his throat. “You heard James say that Roseford and I had shared women in the past. And that I whored my way through London for years.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “In fact, I have sometimes wondered if that was part of your hesitation about…us. Although I have very much enjoyed the education you’ve given me since our engagement, I know I am an innocent when it comes to pleasures of the flesh. Perhaps I am not enough for you.”
His eyes went wide at that thought. “No!” he cried. “No, Meg, that isn’t it at all.” He pushed to his feet and paced away, running a hand through his hair. He had no idea how to explain what he’d done to her. How to make her understand. In the end, he settled on the truth. “I sowed my wild oats like many a young man,” he said. “Pleasure is…well, pleasure helps one forget pain, even if only for a moment.”
She nodded as if she understood that, and perhaps she did, considering their volatile relationship these last few weeks and the passions they had explored together. “And the sharing part?”
Simon swallowed. “After you were engaged to Graham, I was lost. Yes, I spiraled into debauchery for a while, hoping that a woman or five women or ten would make me forget the only one I truly wanted. Roseford and I shared a woman a few times, and I won’t deny that it was pleasurable. But it was empty. No one was you. And you were all I wanted. In truth, in the last few years I have hardly touched another woman. I had no stomach for it anymore.”
Her eyes were wide when he dared to look at her again. “So…wait, are you saying you were trying to…”
“Forget that it was you I wanted,” he answered with a nod. “Yes.”
Her expression softened. “And you don’t want that sort of thing now?”
He shook his head. “All I want is you and the thought of some other man touching you, even if I were in the room with you helping you find pleasure, makes me want to punch the wall.”
Relief flooded her features. “I’m so glad. The idea I wouldn’t be enough for you—”
“Meg, I want to make it clear,” he said. “Whether you accept me back into your life as your husband again or not. Whatever happens to us in the future, I willnevertouch another woman again as long as I live. You are and always have been, more than enough for me.”
She blinked. “You would not touch another woman, even I refused you?”
“I recognize it doesn’t seem like I’ve taken our vows very seriously, but I do.Youare my wife and my love and I will never betray you.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, her voice thick with tears and emotions. She rose and moved closer to him. “And now I think it’s your turn to ask me a question.”
He hesitated for a long moment, and then he said, “You wept the night you and Graham announced the date for your wedding. And you’ve told me many times that you didn’t want to marry him. We’ve discussed whyInever intervened, but why—” He cut himself off, not wanting to make an accusation toward her.
She leaned closer. “Why?” she encouraged.
He sucked in a deep breath and met her eyes. “Why didn’t you stop it? If you didn’t want to marry Graham, why didn’t you tell James no?”
Chapter Twenty-One
Meg caught her breath at the direct question. Simon didn’t ask it with malice or accusation in his tone, but he also didn’t move his gaze from hers. And she knew why. He had taken the blame all this time for the situation they found themselves in.
The moment had finally come for her to accept her own share.
“James went through so much at the hands of our father,” she began with a shake of her head.
“Youbothdid.”
She smiled at his gentle defense of her. “Yes, but I didn’t have the weight of inheritance on my shoulders like my brother did. The weight of what he thought would be failure. It was hard for him to carry.”
Simon nodded. “I remember those dark days.”
“When James announced that I would marry Graham, he was so happy. He thought he was doing the right thing, that he’d made his first act as duke the best one possible. I had no idea how to respond. My ears were ringing, my hands were shaking. I looked at you across the room, because I thought perhaps you liked me as much as I did you.”
His face fell. “And I offered no resistance, thanks to my own shock about what was happening.”
Pain flooded her at the memory, but she understood so much more now. About him. About herself. “I was very young, you know. I had no experience, I thought perhaps I had misread the situation. That you truly only did want to be a friend to me. If that were true, there would be no point in shattering James’s hopes. So I convinced myself that you didn’t want me and that I could get over wanting you.”
