Haunted by the Earl's Touch - By Ann Lethbridge Page 0,99
this close to her.
‘And if I wanted to stay?’
His heart stopped beating. He swallowed. ‘Stay?’ God, was that croak actually a word?
She stood up and, as always, he marvelled at how perfect was her stature, how elegant her neck, how feminine her figure. He had never seen her look more lovely, though her nose was red from weeping and her eyes still misty with tears.
To his surprise, she placed her hand against his cheek. Without thinking, he turned his face and kissed her palm before her hand fell away.
He felt its loss keenly.
‘I lied,’ she said so softly he had to lean closer to hear her words. ‘To you. To myself. I told myself I was trapped in this house by a man I didn’t trust with my life.’
‘You had every reason—’
She stopped his words with a finger to his lips. ‘My heart knew what my mind did not. It always knew to trust you. If not, I would have found a way to leave that very first day.’ A small smile curved her lovely mouth. ‘I think I fell in love with you the moment I saw you standing in the shadows like some dark avenging angel.’
Warmth trickled into all the remaining cold places in his heart. Her warmth. Her generous spirit. ‘You are saying you love me in return?’ he asked cautiously, fearing he had misunderstood.
Her smile broadened. ‘Yes, Bane. I am saying I love you.’
He felt his way forwards with care. ‘Then you mean to stay? To marry me?’
‘If you truly love me and want me.’
He crushed her against his chest, feeling the pounding of his heart against his ribs. But did she really know what she was getting into with him? ‘I almost got you killed. I wanted to keep you safe and I almost got you killed the way I did my mother. If I had done the same to you, I would have gone mad.’
She pushed back to look at him, a question in her eyes.
All the old guilt rushed back. ‘I don’t deserve your love. I don’t deserve anyone’s love.’
‘You don’t get to choose who loves you.’
‘You would not, if you knew the truth.’ Painful though it was, he forced himself to remember that dreadful day when his life changed for ever. ‘I was ten. We had an argument. I ran off in a temper to the mine with some of the local boys. She hated me going anywhere near it, but the other boys always taunted me about being a coward and it seemed like a good way to get my own back. It got late and she came looking for me.’
He inhaled a deep ragged breath. ‘We walked home in the dark, her trudging along behind me, because I was angry that she’d shamed me before my so-called friends. We were set upon by thieves. Big men. They held me down and they beat her. And there was nothing I could do. I could hear her crying out and the blows...’ The sickening sound rang in his ears. ‘I felt so helpless. She died of her injuries weeks later and not once did she berate me. But I knew. I knew it was all my doing. My temper that caused her death. I swore it would never happen again.’
‘So that is why you always seem so cold and controlled.’
Her understanding was extraordinary. He let go a sigh. ‘Always, until I met you.’
She smiled softly. But he hardened himself against his longing to kiss her. He wasn’t done.
‘I very nearly caused your death, too! What if you had died? I froze out the world after the death of my mother. Life would be unbearable if anything happened to you.’
‘What happened to your mother wasn’t your fault. Nor was what Gerald did.’
‘I know that. Yet in my heart I failed my mother and I failed you. How can you trust me to keep you safe?’
‘I don’t need you to keep me safe, I need your love.’
The truth of it was blinding. He almost fell to his knees at the revelation. Yet even as the fear was vanquished, more doubts surfaced.
‘I’ll never be fully accepted in society,’ he forced himself to warn her.
‘I don’t care about society. I only care about you.’
‘What about children?’
‘I want children.’ She tipped up her face to kiss his cheek. ‘Don’t you?’
‘Yes. I want your children. But...but I don’t know whose blood runs in my veins. I could be a Beresford, as my mother swore, or the son of