Falling for the Marquess - Julianne MacLean Page 0,104
bring an end to your marriage.”
“But it didn’t,” he said.
“No, it didn’t. And then I...I started reading the letters that Clara wrote to Adele, and I realized that she was not what Quintina said she was, and when Clara wrote about Gillian, my heart actually went out to her. I remember Gillian, you see. She was only a young girl then, but she was hateful toward me, too.”
Seger nodded. Everything was becoming very clear.
Daphne approached him. “But those letters made me remember how it felt to be with you. I’ve never stopped loving you, Seger, and I have never married. My only excuse for doing what I did is that I was too young to understand how lucky I was to have the love of a man like you. I thought I would meet someone else one day, but no one ever compared to you. If only I had known that then.”
She stood a mere six inches away, her eyes wide and searching. His Daphne. Her face, her lips, they were so achingly familiar. How many nights had he dreamed of kissing those lips again and holding this woman in his arms?
Something wrenched his attention away, however. He looked back at the coach again.
“Seger.” Daphne reached up and laid a gloved hand on his cheek to turn his face back to her. “What we had was rare and extraordinary, and if you wanted me back today, I would come. I would marry you if it could be so, but even if it couldn’t, I would be yours regardless. There are ways.”
A tremor moved down his spine. “You are offering to be my mistress.”
“Yes. Some things are more important than the rules of the world we live in. You taught me that, or at least you tried to, eight years ago. It’s taken me this long to realize that you were right. I do love you, Seger.”
Seger gently removed her hand from his cheek. He held it in his for a few seconds, then raised it to his lips and kissed it. “I’m sorry, Daphne. I can’t be with you.”
“Why?” she asked. “Are you afraid I’d leave you again? Because I wouldn’t. I’m wiser now, Seger. I know what’s important.”
He stared into the depths of that statement and felt a great wave of wisdom himself. “As do I.”
Daphne slowly pulled her gloved hand from his. “Your marriage to Clara.”
“Yes.”
She glanced back at the coach and nodded. “Then, I’m too late.”
“Yes.”
Daphne continued to stare at the coach as if she wanted to see the woman who had, after all these years, reached and redirected Seger’s heart, but the curtain was drawn. “She must be very special.”
“She is. And she is the reason why you and I must say goodbye to each other.”
Daphne shuddered visibly. Then she nodded. “I understand, but first, I...I want to give you something.” She reached into her reticule and pulled out a stack of letters tied together with a ribbon. “Take these.”
“What are they?”
Was this an outpouring of love? he wondered uncomfortably. Were these letters meant to make him change his mind?
She managed a smile. “You probably think they’re from me, but they’re not. They’re Clara’s letters to Adele. I took them. You should read them.”
He accepted the small stack and stared down at his wife’s elegant penmanship on the top envelope. “They’re not my letters to read.”
“Ask her permission first, then, because you need to understand some things about your wife.”
His eyes lifted. Trepidation rippled through him. “Such as?”
“Such as how much she loves you.”
Seger stared at Daphne, speechless.
She forced a smile that did not seem to come easily. “I knew,” she said, “that it would go one of two ways today. You would either take me back, or you would be faithful to your wife. I came prepared for the latter.”
He continued to stare at Daphne’s troubled face in the morning light. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because when I read those letters, I wept. I realized that she loved you more than I ever did, because I had selfishly allowed you to idealize my memory for eight years, when I should have proven to you that I was not the perfect woman you thought I was. On top of all that, I was ashamed of myself because I was willing to leave you, Seger. For money.”
He felt his heart throb with what he realized was an unprecedented sense of freedom. He had thought he was free before, never committing to anyone or anything, but he had