“But why didn’t you askmea year ago, Colin?” The anger made her voice higher, and she stood up and paced away. “Why did you judge me guilty without so much as a trial?”
“I saw—” he began, standing and holding out a hand like he wanted to touch her. She didn’t allow it, staying out of his reach.
“You sawnothing,” she snapped. “You know that now. And if you’d had any faith in me whatsoever, you would have asked me right then and there. I would have explained myself and we could have resolved this and moved on.”
He squeezed his eyes shut and grabbed the back of the closest chair, like he needed support to stand. “Perhaps I wasn’t capable of faith. Arthur told you about Cassandra.”
“A bit,” she said. “Who was she, exactly?”
“A woman I…well, I once thought I loved her. But she betrayed me with other men.”
She folded her arms and speared him with a glare. “Are you sure?”
He winced. “In her case,yes. I caught her with someone else. In my bed, of all places. I know now that Arthur orchestrated it, of course, but it doesn’t change that it…broke me, Jane. Just as he wanted it to. So when I saw you on the terrace—”
“When you saw what youthoughtyou saw, this Cassandra’s punishment became mine,” she whispered. “Without hesitation, you locked me away in a very pretty prison, Colin. You refused to respond to my pleas for amnesty, for a chance.”
He shook his head, his brow wrinkling. “Pleas?”
She huffed out a breath. Had he not even bothered to read her letters? It only made this worse. “That other woman betrayed you,” she said, fighting tears. “But you betrayedme.”
His face twisted. “Because of Arthur!” he cried.
“In part, perhaps that is true. But in the end, you made your own decisions.”
He moved toward her a step and her heart stuttered. He had never looked at her with such openness before. Such emotion. And the reason why he’d kept himself so guarded until now was exactly why she couldn’t trust him.
“I’m sorry,” he said, taking her hand.
She stared at their clasped fingers, his darker, larger ones intertwined with her pale, slender ones. Once she would have given anything to be bound to him in physical and emotional ways.
Now she was too hurt to let him in. To trust him.
“I’m certain you are,” she whispered, and then tugged her hand away. “But sorry isn’t enough.”
His face grew panicked. “Jane—”
“Oh, Colin,” she murmured. “We were an arranged marriage that quite possibly could have been so much more. But now, I just don’t know. Perhaps there comes a point when two people can hurt each other too much to overcome it. Either way, I’m going home.”
The color left his cheeks. “No, Jane. No.Thisis your home.”
“But it’s not,” she argued. “It’s not because you never allowed me to make a home here or in your heart.”
He caught his breath and his voice shook as he said, “You can’t leave.”
“I will leave. Please let me go.” She met his gaze and held steady there, even though it hurt so much. Even though it made her waver in her resolve to walk away. There was so much of her that wanted to accept his apology and just pretend the rest had never happened.
But she couldn’t. She needed to step back. To truly evaluate all that had occurred. To decide her future without being swayed by his past.
He stared at her for what felt like a lifetime. Then he bent his head and nodded. “As you wish, Jane. I have done enough to you—I know I don’t deserve your consideration or your affection. In some ways, I never did. If going is what you need to do, I shall not stand in your way.”
She was shocked by his acquiescence. Even more shocking was how much she wished he would fight for her instead of bend to her will, just as he had bent to Arthur’s a year before.
But she didn’t tell him that. She didn’t tell him anything. She just slipped past him into the hall to call for her maid and go back to her sister’s.
And away from the man she loved. Away from the promise of a life that had never been and could never be again.
Chapter Nine
