She supposed it was this she could never forgive.
She closed the lid on that little silver box.
And she put the box back in his coat, like she was tucking her own heart away forever.
Chapter Six
If he had instead arrived during the gray light of dawn.
Or in the full dark of evening.
If his exquisitely tailored civilian clothes hadn’t felt foreign against his skin after years lived in a scarlet uniform, as though he was an ill-rehearsed actor wearing a costume.
If he hadn’t felt awkward and uncertain without a sword at his hip or a rifle in his hand, as though he had just lost a limb.
If he hadn’t spent most of his life superbly negotiating that razor-thin line dividing the tedium and terror of warfare and had yet to discover who he was in a world that now required little more of him other than to let it fête him and put him on a pedestal.
If all of these things hadn’t caused the usual chain mail of his defenses to slip.
But he’d arrived at the Bellamy house at noon that fateful day.
And if the white marble foyer hadn’t been gleaming like the halls of heaven in the noonday sun, perhaps she wouldn’t have looked to him like an angel gliding toward him. Perhaps thesun wouldn’t have gilded the crown of her coppery hair, and her sheer muslin dress wouldn’t have floated tantalizingly about her lovely body with her every light, quick step. Perhaps he wouldn’t have noticed the little russet and gold flecks floating in her clear hazel eyes like leaves on the surface of a clear pond when she looked up at him for the first time. Perhaps he wouldn’t have seen the flicker of shy uncertainty in them—he’d seen that expression many a time in the faces of women, sometimes tinged with pity, or wary solemnity, even fear—give way to warmth and a sort of dancing light.
He knew what she saw: a cool, fearsome edifice of a man.
But it seemed at once to him that her essence—crackling yet gentle, brave and singular—shone from her eyes.
Once when he lay bleeding on a battlefield, a hail of moments from his life had pelted his consciousness, each distinct as a portrait. The first time he saw The Honorable Alexandra Bellamy was a bit like that: a few thousand simultaneous convictions and desires assailed him.
He would kill for her.
Or die for her.
Whatever she required of him, he would do it.
He could very clearly imagine murmuring filthy endearments in her ear as he took her up against a wall, her eyes hazed with bliss as he moved in her body.
He wanted to curl an arm around her, draw hergently into his chest, fold himself around her to protect her for the rest of his born days.
He wanted to give her things: Money. Jewelry. Flowers. His name. Babies.
He wanted to know what made her eyes dance.
He wanted to be the reason her eyes danced.
He felt simultaneously ancient, as primitive as the first man, brand-new, blank of mind and absolutely surging with base needs, and like the shy, homely hulk of a boy who’d always known he wasn’t wanted, that he was, in fact, alive on sufferance, so he’d made bloody certain he was needed.
He knew in his bones there was no way a woman like her would want a man like him.
She was the sort who would marry a duke. He wasn’t the kind of man who would haunt the dreams of a woman like Miss Bellamy, unless he took the form of a creature lurking in a maze, like a Minotaur. Which, coincidentally, was just one of the things the newspapers had called him over the years. He’d needed to look the word up. He’d been darkly amused but not dissatisfied to be compared to a mythical monster. He remembered vividly how it had felt to be at the mercy of others’ charity. To have no defenses at all.
When he was a boy, he had silently wept the first time he’d been called a beast. He had long since recognized the power in the word. He had claimed it for his own.
He wasn’t erudite, like General Blackmore, who was now the Duke of Valkirk. He hadn’t aclassical education, like so many army officers who had bought their commissions and subsequent promotions. The kind that aristocratic gents had, where one would say something about, oh, Aristotle, and they would all laugh and nod sagely. It was their shared language, a sort of password into their society.
But he was confident of his own unique brilliance.
And if “charming” was seldom the first word people used to describe him, perhaps it was just because there were so many better choices. All the “F”s, for instance: Fierce. Formidable. Forbidding. Frightening. “Bastard” was trotted out with relative frequency, used both literally and figuratively. All of this was true, so none of it bothered him. But he hadn’t soared through the ranks of the army on skill alone. Those who mattered liked him for other reasons. He could be insightful, even sensitive, in a way that never compromised a man’s dignity. He was frank. His sense of humor trended toward dry and black and his integrity was impregnable. The men under his command would walk through the fires of hell for him, because they knew he would do the same for them.
