“Go ahead. Tease me. You sound so confident teasing me. Someone needs to be confident.”
I was. The panic that I lived with wasn’t there, at least not now, but that wasn’t my doing or anything special.
It was Wycliff. He’d taken me out of the house so many times that this felt natural, sitting with him, being in his shadow. He’d helped me spread my wings. It was all him, his support and the strength of his love.
I wondered if his support would remain when he’d heard the truth. I knew pieces, but Madame knew it all. Wycliff and I needed it all.
His head bowed. His hands clasped together with a slap, his fingers forming a steeple. That should have been calming or reassuring, but everything about his form seemed stiff. “I don’t like things unplanned, Ruth. I never did.”
His raspy voice was rougher, like a washboard, or silk catching on nailhead trim.
“You act like something will happen.”
“Isn’t something always happening? I just wish to be more prepared.”
“You’re always confident, always in control. You don’t seem so now.”
He wrenched at his cravat. “And that is horrible and weak.”
“No, human. Makes me think you might actually need someone and not just an ornament to decorate your Blaren House.” I eased to his side. “I like you human.”
“And that is appealing to you? I’ve seen my mortality. I’ve witnessed you die. We have this second chance, and we’re taking this risk. You haven’t learned anything. I definitely have learned nothing.”
“None of this makes you weak.”
“Ruth, it makes me an expert in loss. I never planned to lose again.”
“Then why did you burn up my half of the registry? That was an unnecessary loss.”
“It gives you what you want. To be free of a marriage that has caused you nothing but pain.”
He sat up and did his checks again out each window. “If we make to it Talease’s and back, alive, you’ll have what you want.”
“Must everything be so cut-and-dried?”
“Ruth, this is my world. Then you come in and twist up everything.”
“It is a wonder why you loved me all these years.”
“Oh, it’s no wonder. You’re the one for me, Ruth. It’s always been that way. Then I let things get ruined.”
“Going to Madame Talease ruins things?”
“Ruth, every outing that I’ve taken you or Christopher on has been thoroughly surveyed by my grooms. I make sure that even the Croomes are protected, because they are associated with me.”
“Are you given to conspiracies?”
He looked at me and bit down on his lip. “How much suffering would we have been spared if I’d taken you to Scotland or if I had waited to marry until my affairs were in order?”
Oh, my goodness. He blamed himself as much as he blamed me. “If we had waited, things would be different?”
“Yes, except I’d still be miserable, Ruth. I wouldn’t have had you. The best fortnight of my life was eloping with you. The second best was six months of walking with you on the docks by the warehouses. Now you’ve given me more walks and garden parties. I’m happy.”
That was why Wycliff could always get to me. He knew the precise thing to say to make me fall into his arms. He was so sure of us. That had always been the way.
I wished I was as sure. I had been once. Then all the bad had happened. “I’m not going to tell you that you shouldn’t be careful.”
“Good, because that I will not change, no matter what you ask of me. As soon as this is done, I won’t bend again.”
