“I am sorry,” she repeated, thinking she would be apologizing to him for the rest of her life.
William nodded, still walking around the room. “You thought him long dead?”
“Yes,” she said, nodding for emphasis.
“Now that you know he’s alive, what are your thoughts?” He stopped pacing to stand before her and gaze into her eyes.
She took a deep breath. She owed William the absolute truth.
“If he hadn’t vanished into the sea, I believe I would be with him still.”
“Yet he did vanish,” William reminded her and then fell into silence as he paced again.
At last, he halted and took her hands.
“Do you love me?”
“Yes,” she answered without any hesitation. “I love you. You must believe me. I never would have become engaged to you if I didn’t.”
“I believe you love me,” he said. He pulled her close, his gaze locked on hers until the last moment when his lips found her mouth.
Familiarity and warmth, Rose felt safe and relieved, reveling in the sweet pressure of his mouth against hers. He was stillher William.
The kiss went on until he raised his head, and she saw tears glistening in his eyes. Her stomach clenched.
Good God! Was that a kiss goodbye?
“Do you love Bennet?” he asked again, more directly this time.
Did she? “I loved him tremendously when I was eighteen.”
“That’s not what I asked,” William pointed out.
“I don’t know. It has been years since I had to examine my feelings for him.”
“You must have felt something since he returned. What are your feelings now, Rose?”
Turmoil swirled through her. What William wanted her to do was beyond difficult. It would tear her apart if she truly delved into her emotions. She had avoided scrutinizing her own heart and her depth of feeling for one man over the other, just as she’d avoided comparing the men themselves.
Finn was Finn — the man who had captured her every sense with her first glance of him, their first words, first touch, first kiss. Everything had been intense, charged, all encompassing, so different from her idle flirtations before him, and she’d had quite a few of those. She’d pledged herself to him forever and thought her life over when his ended. Rose had cared for both their hearts better than he himself had done.
Love Finn?Why, he was sewn so deeply into the soul of her being that as soon as she’d discovered he was alive, she had ached with wanting to see him, to touch him, to breathe alongside him. She had felt driven to be near him despite herself.
But William — standing before her — he was sweet love and laughter, as well as sensual desire. He gave her everything she wanted, and she had given him all that was left of her heart in return, trusting that this time, she would have a chance to experience the full joy of living with a man. With William, everything seemed possible in their future, and she had eagerly awaited the wedding day so they could begin their life together.
“I am torn,” she whispered, then cleared her throat. “I wasn’t sure what I felt when I first saw him again. Mostly disbelief and then anger. Honestly, though, and you deserve my honesty more than anyone alive, a part of me still has feelings for him.”
She realized she was wringing her hands and tried to stop by fisting them at her sides. “How can my heart belong to both of you? It’s not possible, is it? It’s certainly not moral. How can I love you so much and yet still feel a deep attachment for him? It is bewildering, yet you deserve the entire truth, so yes, I do feel love for him, too.”
There, she’d said it. It was a terrible thing to say to her fiancé, but she couldn’t pretend that she loved William solely or that Finn had no place in her heart and mind.
He closed his eyes a moment. When he reopened them, she saw in their depths that he’d made a decision, and a shiver of despair ran through her.
“As an only child, I never learned to share,” he began, and she found herself shaking her head, knowing where this was leading. “I never had to be second in my parents’ love. I can’t be second for you. Moreover, I won’t share even a tiny bit of your heart with Bennet.”
“William, please—”
“I can’t,” he said, his tone desperate though definite. “You were mine, but not wholly. I suppose I could have lived with that if he were dead.”
