‘You really are the stupidest, most self-absorbed man I have ever met,’ she said rather shakily.
‘Yes,’ he admitted bleakly. ‘I have done everything wrong where you are concerned.’
‘I, too, have been remiss,’ she said thoughtfully. She should have told him she loved him right from the start. And then shown him, day by day, that she meant it. It would have saved them both so much pain. ‘In not telling you that I love you.’
‘You cannot!’
‘That is what I have been trying to tell myself, but, sadly, it is the truth.’
He made an angry, slashing gesture at himself. ‘No woman could look at this and love this!’
‘Do you know,’ she said, placing her bonnet carefully on the table, ‘the first time I saw you, at Mrs Moulton’s card party, you never even noticed me? You walked in through the door, and immediately, all the other people there seemed to me like actors upon a stage. You were the only real person in the room. You were so vibrant, so alive, in your uniform, standing there, scanning the room like a man on a mission. I think I lost my heart to you in that moment.’
‘Mrs Moulton’s card party?’ He looked bewildered.
She began to draw off her gloves, noting with feminine satisfaction that his eyes were riveted upon her actions, ‘Your eyes slid straight over me as though I did not exist, but they snagged on Susannah, and stayed there. You looked at her the way all men do. Up and down her body, and then up to her face again, and then you sort of half-smiled.’ She reached up to caress his face. ‘Just a half-smile, the way you do. And that was when I noticed you had a few scars.’
‘A few scars!’ He flinched away from her hand. ‘My face is a ruin!’
She nodded. ‘A ruin of what it once was, perhaps. You must have been excessively handsome before you got burned. Probably too handsome for your own good.’
He stared at her as though she was out of her mind.
‘I saw you on three more occasions before you spoke to me. At the theatre, at the Farringdons’, and once, riding in the park, one morning, very early. It was not until you began to pursue Susannah, and got right up close, that I realised just how badly injured you were. And by then, all I could do was marvel at how well you concealed the fact.’ She tilted her head to one side, running her eyes over his whole frame. ‘When you wear your uniform, with those boots, it is almost impossible to tell that you have lost your left foot. You know, you are far more aware of your injuries than other people are. Certainly all I saw, in those days, whenever you came up to ask Susannah to dance, was the most attractive man I had ever met.’
‘You…found me attractive?’ He was leaning back against the arm of the sofa now, his breathing laboured. ‘You lost your heart to me?’ he said, as though her earlier declaration had finally sunk in.
‘Why are you saying this?’ His face flushed an angry red. He shook his head. ‘You cannot have done. It is impossible.’
She shrugged. ‘That was what I kept trying to tell myself. I knew a man as experienced, as sophisticated, as you would never look twice at a drab little provincial girl, scarcely out of the schoolroom, and that I must not let the infatuation grow any deeper. But I could not stop myself. And when you proposed…’ her eyes were shining as she thought back to that day ‘…it was as though all my dreams had come true.’
‘I am no woman’s dream,’ he persisted. ‘More like a nightmare. Deborah, I do not understand why you persist in saying these things—?’
‘Because it is the truth, you idiot,’ she said rather sharply. ‘Though heaven alone knows why I still love you. When you have been at such pains, right from the very first, to let me know how very little you think of me.’
‘That is not true! At least, I may have led you to believe it, with the abominable way I have treated you, but it is not because I have no regard for you. I hold you in the very highest esteem. I have always known you are much too good for me, Deborah. You always looked so wholesome, so untouched, when my life has been tainted from the very start.’
‘So you fought any tender feelings you began to have, and went out of your way to demonstrate you could do very well without me.’
‘Yes,’ he confessed, looking rather stunned. ‘That is exactly what I did.’
‘When did you…?’ She cleared her throat, turned red, and looked down at her hands, which she clasped at her waist. ‘When did you realise you loved me, Robert?’
Her voice was barely more than a whisper.
He pushed himself off the sofa, and gently took a lock of her hair in his fingers. ‘When Linney opened that package Hincksey sent me, and your bloodstained glove tumbled out. I knew that then if I could not get you back, my life would no longer be worth living. I would gladly have given my entire fortune to ensure your release.’
She heaved a tremulous sigh of relief. It had been a gamble to try to goad him into confessing to a love she had still not been entirely convinced he felt. But he had confirmed it.
‘So, why did you come and rescue me instead,’ she asked, gazing up at him shyly, ‘and make Lampton marry Susannah so he could pay himself?’
‘Damn Lampton. It has nothing to do with Lampton. I just could not bear to think of you alone, afraid and possibly injured. I could not sit back and wait to receive a ransom note. I had to find you and bring you home. Deborah,’ he breathed, pulling her into his arms at last, ‘Deborah, do you really think you love me? Even after all I have done?’
She nodded, flinging her arms about his waist and hugging him back for all she was worth.
‘I still do not understand how you can. It is not just the way I look. The man I am inside is as scarred and crippled as what the world can see of me.’ He put her from him so that he could look down into her upraised face. ‘I was weaned on hatred. I have drawn strength from bitterness for so long that it has made me cruel….’
‘But you will not be cruel to me, ever again, will you? Not now you have finally let love into your heart.’
‘You think my loving you will somehow make me a better man?’ He smiled sadly. ‘Deborah, you are so naïve, so innocent….’
‘Not so innocent as when I first met you,’ she declared. ‘Loving you has changed me. And if love can change me, it can change you too.’ She took his face between her hands and, looking deeply into his eyes, said, ‘Robert, I am never going to back down again, or let your foolish pride stand between us. I am going to love you with every fibre of my being, until you believe you are worthy of being loved. And you are going to stop being afraid loving me will somehow make you weak. You will love me back, and the combined force of our love will wash clean all the bitterness that has eaten away at your soul—’
‘Deborah,’ he groaned, stopping her mouth with a kiss. ‘If any woman could work such a miracle, that woman would be you. But what have I to give you, in return for all your self-sacrifice?’
‘Children,’ she replied without a moment’s hesitation, deciding to ignore his reference to self-sacrifice. It would take time to rid his mind of such nonsensical notions, not arguments. With a determined expression on her face, she unbuttoned his jacket.
‘I want your children,’ she said, going to work on his waistcoat buttons. ‘At least two boys and two girls.’
‘I was thinking more in terms of jewels or carriages,’ he riposted faintly, as she ruthlessly dealt with his neckcloth.
She shook her head. ‘I want a tree house and a swing.’
‘Tree house it is,’ he gulped, as her hands descended to the fall of his breeches. ‘For those sons you want so badly,’ he groaned, a sheen of perspiration breaking out on his brow.
‘For our daughters!’ she protested, tipping him back on to the sofa. As he fell, he just managed to summon the presence of mind to pull her down with him.
‘Ah, yes, for a minute I forgot.’ And for another minute, no more was said, as they found another, and entirely more pleasurable, way of occupying their mouths.
‘Their education,’ he gasped
, as Deborah reached down to tug her skirts out of the way, ‘is to be of an exceedingly liberal nature, as I recall.’
‘Equality,’ she stated firmly, as he, too, reached down between their bodies. ‘It is very important between the sexes. Females have as much right to…education and…tree houses…and… Oh…and…’
‘Pleasure?’ he groaned, as he finally slid into her.
‘Oh, yes,’ she agreed. ‘Yes!’ Though she had completely forgotten what they had been talking about. ‘Oh, Robert, I do love you so,’ she cried, exulting in the freedom to be able to say it aloud at last. ‘I love you!’
‘I love you too,’ he admitted, looking up into her gloriously flushed face. And discovered that surrendering was not an admission of weakness. Not in this case. This merging of two bodies, two hearts, two lives, was forging something stronger.
He was not alone any more, fighting for his place in the world.
As a couple, they would be strong enough to take on the whole world, should it prove necessary.
He had someone, at last, to whom he belonged as completely as she belonged to him.
His woman.
* * * * *
ISBN-13: 9781460349441
CAPTAIN FAWLEY’S INNOCENT BRIDE
© Annie Burrows 2008
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