Page 61 of The New Earl’s Convenient Wife

Chapter Eighteeen

Juliana lay in bed the following morning, staring sightlessly across the bedchamber.

Though Rafe had made love to her last night with no diminution of his usual passion, he’d crept away again this morning without waking her.

Just as last night, when she’d given him an opportunity to acknowledge the pain she’d seen on his face and tell her frankly how he felt, rather than answer, he’d deflected her with passion.

Which was an answer…wasn’t it? If he couldn’t bear to discuss how he felt about Lady Altorn?

When she’d offered that meeting Thalia again was ‘difficult’, he’d allowed only that it was ‘uncomfortable.’ He’d sidestepped answering how he truly felt about her now by saying it had happened ‘many years ago’, and he’d made a better ‘choice.’

Choice. Recalling the word stung just as much as it had when he’d uttered it. As if he were commenting on taking coffee instead of tea.

On the one hand, she’d sensed no hidden excitement or guilty stirring in his description of their meeting. Which seemed to indicate that whatever he still felt, he was not contemplating beginning an affair with her.

Shouldn’t that be reassurance enough?

When one was just the superior ‘choice’?

After growing so hopeful that he might finally decide he loved her after all, backsliding to becoming the preferable commodity somehow magnified the hurt and the dismay. Which, for a lady who’d married a man knowing he regarded her only as a friend, one for whom she was determined to feel only friendship in return, wasn’t rational.

For the magnitude of the pain and the depth of the hurt was now revealing the truth she’d been trying to hide from herself, probably from practically the first days of their marriage. Much as she’d convinced herself that she’d locked away her feelings, they had been lurking far closer to the surface than she’d dared admit. And had risen nearer and nearer to fully emerging the closer she came to believing that Rafe was growing to love her after all.

The moment he affirmed that his former love was definitely in the past had given him a perfect opportunity to vow that Juliana wasn’t just his practical choice; she was the right one, because he now knew he loved, as well as valued and respected her.

He’d made no such declaration. And if he had not come to love her by now, with all the events of daily living and the passion they’d shared, he wasn’t likely to.

Ah, passion. She’d thought to distract herself with it, but in truth, intimacy had only broadened and deepened the love she now acknowledged she felt for him.

Once she’d been convinced she could control her emotions. But her anguish now showed her she’d been deceiving herself to imagine she’d be able to live with a man who was just as compelling and even more exceptional than the young man she’d fallen in love with, and keep her feelings forever suppressed.

Now, her emotions a roiling mess of hurt, grief, and despair tinged with anger, that great, overpowering love had come roaring out, her turmoil having weakened the bonds restraining it.

Unlike the naiad in the fable, she couldn’t blind her husband to the beauty of the woman he’d loved. A part of her raged beneath the surface, wanting to seek out the beautiful Lady Altorn and pull out her hair. A surprising reaction for her, who’d never imagined violence against anyone, not even her always-carping mother.

She must be with child, she thought bleakly. Claire had warned that when a lady was enceinte, her emotions became volatile and sometimes overpowering.

She could initiate another discussion and try to coerce him into stating exactly how he felt about Lady Altorn and about her.

But love wasn’t love if an avowal of it was coerced. Only if he made the statement freely, with no prompting from her.

These last two days had shown her that was unlikely to happen.

So, what to do now?

How could she remain in London, sharing his bed, pining for his love, knowing the woman he had loved, maybe still loved, was right there in the city? How could she act unconcerned, recapture the calm and ease they’d shared before, when she ached with need for him and her heart was breaking all over again?

This, she told herself furiously, was exactly why she should never have married Rafe in the first place. Pain, deeper, more agonizing than she’d felt years ago when she’d first learned of his love for Thalia, scoured her.

But she had married him freely, and there was no one else to blame. Certainly not Rafe.

Now she must deal with the consequences.

How was she to deal with them?

Springing up from the bed, she began pacing the chamber.

Much as her heart ached for his anguish over losing Thalia, she could not find it in her to step aside and let him go back to his former love. Neither could she tolerate the idea of sharing him with her.