She smiled, and some of the tension bled from her expression. “Somehow I doubt that, Robert. You are too witty not to beverygood at writing letters.”
He tried not to read too much into her use of his given name rather than his title and forced himself to remain calm. “This isn’t a letter where my wit will serve me, though. It has to be something genuine, heartfelt, and I am not very experienced in being those things.”
“More than you think,” she said softly.
For a moment, her hand stirred, and he thought she might touch him. He ached for it, leaned toward it. Then she shook her head and backed away.
“My father called on me today,” she said.
He flinched and all his need to reunite with her was pushed to the back of his mind. That could wait in the face of this news. “From our conversations in Abernathe, I thought he had cut you off.”
“Our conversations in your bed,” she said, her tone clipped. “In my bed. Where we shared all those things we had never said to anyone else.”
“Yes.”
She swallowed and seemed to gather herself. “Yes, well, it seems his disinheriting me before I left London didn’t stick. It will now. When he started his usual abuse, I told him he was no longer welcome in my home.Icut him off this time. And I meant it.”
His lips parted. He knew how painful and complicated Katherine’s relationship with her father had been over the years. How much he had stolen from her and how much she had longed for connection with him regardless.
“I so admire your strength,” he said. “That must have been difficult.”
“Impossible,” she said, and her voice broke, revealing the pain she’d been caused. “And yet I did it. Do you want to know how?”
He nodded. “If I’ve earned any right to hear it.”
“The strength came to me when I needed it.” Her breath shook. “The form it took wasyourvoice, telling me that I was worthy of so much more than he has ever given. Your words in my head, telling me that my nature is not something to be ashamed of.”
Warmth rose up in him. “If something I said was in any way helpful to you, I am forever grateful for that. But your strength has been and always will be yours and yours alone, Katherine. It runs through you like a deep river. I wish I could be like you.”
She held his gaze a long moment and he saw all those things he loved about her. And yet there was still hesitation, despite the good sign that she was here, talking to him. Bringing this painful experience she’d just had to him to share.
“Something brought him to me,” she whispered. “A whisper on the wind. Someone told him that you said you would marry me.”
He froze. When he’d confronted his friends the previous day, he had intended only to halt the gossip surrounding Katherine. And to protect her from advances she didn’t want. But his admission that he loved her, that he intended to wed her, must have been even more shocking to them than he thought if the word was already spreading.
“Did you say that, Robert?” she asked.
He slowly walked toward her. “I have made a vow to myself that I will never lie to you again, Katherine. Yes, I did tell some of my friends that I intended to marry you.”
Her lips parted. “You said that even after what happened between us in Abernathe?”
“My intention is one thing. Your answer is another. Perhaps you will never agree to be mine.” He cleared his throat to push away the pain that thought brought him. “I would not blame you after what I did to you in the past few weeks, what I did to you long before that. But I still want to marry you, Katherine.”
She staggered to a chair and sat down hard in it. “Why?”
He drew a few breaths. All he had wanted since their last meeting was a chance to talk to her. To tell her the truth,allthe truth. And the chance was here and now he was gripped by terror that he would answer all wrong. That he would make things worse. That he would lose her.
He supposed that was why they said risk your heart. The risk was losing everything. The prize was winning it all.
“I have never let myself love,” he said. “Not because it was inconvenient or foolish, though that was what I said to the world. I didn’t let myself because it was terrifying.”
Her gaze softened. “Your past does not make that a surprise.”
“To love another, to open yourself to receiving their love, that is the ultimate power,” he continued. “Another person’s happiness at your fingertips. Your happiness at theirs. One wrong move, purposeful or accidental, and your life can be destroyed. I watched that with my mother. I saw the damage it could do. And yet…”
“Yet?” she asked, her tone suddenly breathless.
He reached out and took her hand. She let him, and it was the most beautiful and brilliant moment of his entire life.
