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MARIANNE AWOKE WHEN the lamp guttered out, her eyes snapping open in the darkness. Without lamplight, it was always dark in this windowless room, but she’d a good internal clock, and she knew it wasn’t yet time to awake for the day.
Who was she fooling? Not only the sudden fall of darkness had awoken her. The press of Jack’s warm, lean body against hers—almost nudging her off the edge of the bed—had unsettled her sleep too. The sensitive space between her legs, the tingle of her skin where he’d touched it—these things had pervaded her dreams and made her wakeful, wistful.
“Marianne,” he said quietly, and his arm came around her to settle beneath her bare breasts.
“The lamp went out,” she whispered. “It woke me, but I’ll drift off again.”
“I want to tell you some things,” he replied, “and it’ll be easier in the dark.”
She wiggled under his arm, apprehensive. “Bad things?”
“No. Just...old things. Honest things.”
“All right. I can listen to old and honest things.” She rolled toward him on the bed. Though she couldn’t see his face, she knew it to be close. His arm cradled her, tugged her against his body so her nipples brushed his chest.
“When I was twenty-one, twenty-two...before you went away,” he began, “I had nothing to offer but the circumstances of my birth. My maleness. Connected to that were the responsibilities of my father’s land, the tenants my grandfather and his father had placed there, and all the generations of tradition before that.”
“I always thought you had more to offer than that.” She rocked her torso, liking the feeling of his chest hair against her breasts.
He didn’t seem to notice; he must have been deep in thought indeed. “My father arranged the marriage with Helena Wilcox so I could safeguard them all. I felt cheap for doing it, yet it helped so many. Two of my sisters have married well, and all three of them found love. I have nieces and nephews. The tenants’ cottages are in good repair, the land is healthy, and the crops have been more than fair.”
If he’d sounded proud, she would have thought him boasting. But he didn’t sound happy at all. “Why are you telling me all this?” she asked. “I don’t care. That is—I do. I’m glad for those people. But it’s no part of my life, and I never thought it would be.”
“Exactly.” His breath tickled her ear, making a wisp of hair dance. “You agreed to marry me without thinking of what it would mean in the years ahead. You agreed only because you liked me.”
“I loved you,” she said faintly. Not knowing whether she ought to speak the phrase in the past tense, or the present.
“My father didn’t understand that. He didn’t marry for love. Not that he was a bad man; he was a responsible landowner and respectful husband and dutiful father. But—it didn’t matter to him that I loved you. Not compared to making a marriage that would help our family in the present and future.”
“This might be too honest for me.” Marianne pushed against his chest, putting space between them. “I don’t want to hear that I weighed too little against your father’s wishes. I already know that. I lived it.”
He trailed his fingers lightly over her shoulder, her ribs, letting his hand rest at her waist. “Then I haven’t explained it well. I could have turned my back on him for you, and had it only been a matter of his will, I would have. But it was tenants. Livelihoods. The future. Hungry bellies and hopeful eyes.
“If it were only up to me,” he added, “the scale would never balance against you. Not then, not now, not ever.”
His hand on her waist was a weight, making it hard for her to draw breath. “But it’s not only up to you.”
“Not then, not now, not ever.” His tone was quiet. “But the hope’s now in my eyes, and the scale is yours to balance, Marianne. I’ve seen everyone else taken care of but you. And me.”
“I don’t expect or want you to take care of me.” After his low tone, she sounded harsh.
He hesitated. “I know you don’t need it.” Then his hand stroked Marianne’s side again. Quick trailing fingertips, halting movements. “My marriage wasn’t really anything of the sort. Helena—she loved my sister Viola. Not me. And Viola loved her in return.”
This was unexpected news. “Your wife...loved your sister?” Marianne had always assumed Helena Wilcox, pretty and rich and kind, had given her heart to Jack. Who wouldn’t? And of course, living as man and wife, he would have come to love her in return.
“Her love for Viola is why Helena agreed to marry me.” His hand went still, the palm flat and heated on her side. “I thought you might suspect, when after Helena’s death, you addressed letters of condolence to my mother and sister.”
“I did that to show how proper I was. That as a spinster, I wouldn’t write to a man.” Her thoughts were in a jumble, as if she were trying to sort out parts of two different recipes and combine them into one. But how did this fit—? And did that mean—?
“You were so proper that I completely misunderstood,” Jack said dryly.
“That’s half the purpose of manners.”
“Maybe so.” Jack chuckled. “We had separate chambers, Helena and I, from the moment of the wedding. Her chamber was...much closer to my sister’s than it was to mine. Both women were happier that way.”
“Oh,” was all Marianne could say. There had been a great deal to balance against the possibility of her marriage to Jack. Even more than she’d realized.
“When Helena died,” Jack said, “Viola grieved her as a spouse. I grieved the loss of a friend who had done me a great kindness.”
“Bringing all that money to your marriage,” Marianne said. Money, money, money. She usually wanted to punch down dough when she thought of it. Now she didn’t know what she wanted.
“Yes,” he said simply. “And along with her, I grieved the end of my marriage. Though it was in name only, I’d changed my whole life for it. What was I to do now?”
She rested a hand on his face, wanting to feel each nuance of movement, of expression. “You’d money enough to do whatever you wanted.”
“So I did.” He smiled, cheek and lips moving under her touch. “So I did.”
She half expected him to say he’d come tearing after her at once, though she knew it wasn’t true. He’d been widowed for a proper two years now. “What did you do with all the time since?” she finally asked.
“Amidst the conventions of mourning, I made myself the sort of man I’d always wanted to be. I learned languages. I studied drainage to improve my land. I made my body strong with fencing and running. I read history and mathematics. I visited the ailing and needy. I went to church every week. It was only then I realized that, worthy though my pursuits were, I was only filling time. I wasn’t happy myself. I felt nothing but duty and the savorless pleasure of obligations fulfilled. I missed feeling more.”
“Oh.” Should she say more? She didn’t know what it should be, yet there was clearly more to say.
“That’s when I came here to see you.”
“Oh,” she said again, softened. She traced the shape of his features, his jaw, the line of his ear. There was much she needed to learn about him, and to relearn.
“I can speak to you in Italian or French or German, or even Latin,” he said dryly. “I can check the drainage around the house or convert your recipes into large quantities and take beef tea to a sick student.”
She laughed. “You forgot to say anything about church or fencing.” She laced her fingers into the short silk of his hair. “It’s all still things, Jack. And,” she couldn’t resist adding, “what I most need now is a man who can chop four dozen cabbages without nicking his thumb.”
“Ah, well. You can’t blame me for trying to impress you, can you? Though I studied all the wrong things for that. Should have practiced with a knife and a basket of vegetables every once in a while.”
“You impress me more when you don’t try.” She was glad now for the darkness, not wanting him to see the blush that heated her cheeks.
He turned his head, pressing his face into her palm, then rested on the pillow again. “You impress me. The end. When I saw you, you looked different, but I knew you at once.”
“How am I different?”
“You are...” He trailed off, evidently thinking over his response. Wise man. “More. More grown-up, more beautiful, more strong and determined.”
Within, she melted. She was all syrups and honeys and glazes, sweet and pliant. She couldn’t bring a bit of sauce to her tongue as she asked quietly, “And did you feel something?”
“Yes. I felt,” he said simply.
They lay together in silence for a half-dozen heartbeats. A dozen, then another. It would never be enough heartbeats, and anything she said would not be enough either.
“I don’t worry about money anymore.” Jack’s hand slid from her side, trailed up, covered her heart. “What I worry about now is never being as happy as Helena was with my sister.”
“Do you expect me to make you happy?”
“I rather hoped we could make each other happy. We did once.”
They had, when they’d thought they had forever. But what did they have now? Another hour? A night? A fortnight, or however long he chose to stay in London?
She didn’t want to ask; she didn’t want the answer. So she asked something else instead. “Then you were never...you know. With Helena? Like this?”
“I never was,” Jack confirmed. “Since you.”
She drew his hand from her heart to cover her breast. “Then we’d better do it again,” she said. Before morning came and washed away the intimacy of the night.
The first time he’d come into her, she’d given him her body. This second time, she let herself fall in love again. He was everywhere: her body, her mind, her heart. And though he moved atop her, with her, she felt lighter.
In the morning he was still there. He’d kept her in his arms throughout the night.
He had chosen her; he had stayed with her.
And so she forgave him at last.