“Nay. I mean, I didn’t think you would, but—” she stumbled over her words, feeling awkward and stupid. Finally she clamped her lips shut and looked away. By the Rood, what had possessed her to come here and intrude on him like this? She was a fool. Gray owed her nothing. She was naught but an imposter in his eyes. A cheat. Once her children’s safety was resolved, he would probably send her packing, with good riddance.
“I—I’m sorry to have disturbed you,” she managed to say around the lump in her throat. “I’ll leave now.” Her eyes burned and her stomach felt sick as she turned to go.
“Wait, lady.”
She stiffened but didn’t look back.
“Please, Catherine. Don’t go.”
The sound of her name uttered in his husky plea made her stop. She faced him again. His mocking look had vanished, leaving in its place the fullness of his emotions, raw pain and need, burning clear in the emerald depths of his eyes.
She took two steps toward him, uncertainty assaulting her anew. “Gray, I—”
“Why did you really come here?” he said quietly.
She stared back at him, realizing that she risked everything if she told him, but knowing that if she didn’t, she’d spend the rest of her miserable life alone, wishing she had.
She swallowed hard again, her heart pounding.
“I—I came to find you because there is something else I’ve kept from you. One more truth that you deserve to know.”
“Another truth, lady?” His gaze remained leveled on her, so cautious, so unsure, that her heart wrenched again.
She blinked, his face blurring in the flood of heat that swelled and stung in her eyes. Somehow, she managed to nod, and then the words flowed from her in a torrent. “Gray, I know that our marriage is false because of my deceit, and that it is your honor alone that has compelled you to offer your help in rescuing my children. For that I am forever grateful. But once their safety is achieved, I also know that I will—” her voice wavered under a fresh assault of pain, “I know that I will have to leave you and Ravenslock forever, and—”
Her composure was beginning to slip, but she struggled to stay strong through the rest of what she had to say. Choking back her tears, she finished, “The truth is that I love you. Through all this time, it is what has helped to keep me going, what has kept me strong.” She fisted her hands, willing them to stop trembling. “I love you, Gray, and I couldn’t leave until I’d told you.”
While she spoke, Gray closed his eyes, sitting back as if she’d struck him a mortal blow. He remained still and quiet for a few moments. Then, without opening his eyes, he said raggedly, “Nay, Catherine. I do not accept it.”
The grief that had been balled up inside of her unfurled into agony at his response. She felt it rising, suffocating her. She’d told him how she felt, exposed her innermost feelings to him, and he was rejecting her out of hand. ’Twas no less than she deserved, she knew, and yet she’d been foolish enough to hope…
She turned away from him, holding herself still and trying to remember to breathe as she squeezed her eyes shut and let the hot flow course unhindered now down her cheeks. She had to go, had to leave this chamber. It hurt too much to look on this man she loved and know that he could never—would never—return what she felt for him.
“I do not accept what you’ve said, Catherine, because if you leave me forever, I think that I will die from the pain of it.”
Gray added this last statement hoarsely, quietly, but Catherine felt the words clear through her soul.
“What did you say?” she whispered, still facing away from him lest he dissolve before her eyes like the traces of a dream.
“I said that if you leave me, I’ll die.”
His voice was very gentle, very close to her now. In the next instant she felt his hands slide around her waist from behind, splaying warm across her stomach as he pulled her against him and rested his cheek against hers. “God, Catherine, don’t ever leave me.”
A great dam seemed to break in her then, flooding her with almost painful sweetness. She closed her eyes and leaned back, releasing a deep, shuddering breath; when his mouth brushed her neck, it sent shivers of longing through her.
“By all that is holy, Gray,” she breathed, “I never want to leave you. But I thought that I’d have to. That you wouldn’t want me anymore.”
At that he turned her around to face him, cupping her face in his palms, and the intensity—the love—in his eyes seared her to the depths of her being.
“Don’t you know, Catherine? I want you with every breath I take.You.I don’t care if your name is Elise, Margery, Ann, or Jane. It matters not, because ’tisyouthat I love. Only you.”
“But I thought—”
“Hush,” he murmured, brushing his thumb over her lips. “I was angry when I learned that you’d deceived me, I’ll not deny it. And it hurt to know that you didn’t trust me enough to tell me about Montford’s plotting.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said, gazing at him, aching again for the pain she’d caused him. “I wanted to tell you, but I feared Eduard’s spies, and—”
He shook his head. “I only felt so because I wanted to help you fight him, not because I thought you were going to do his bidding. I understand. You did what you believed you had to in order to protect your children from an animal who would have harmed them if he learned that you’d acted against him.”
