former bright yellow. Bric-a-brac was scattered about: frames and flowers and small sculptures and books. Her writing desk was overrun with papers, the journal she perpetually kept sitting atop it all.
“Let us speak about Sidmouth first,” he suggested, running a finger over a small ceramic container with a curious little lid. “You must put an end to your…relationship with him at once.”
He hated to even think of what she shared with Sidmouth, let alone speak of it. Somehow, he had foolishly imagined she would have remained celibate, as he had. But whilst he had thrown himself into travel and penning accounts of his trips abroad, she had been throwing herself into the arms of another man.
That ended today, by God.
“I will not put an end to my association with Tom,” Nell clipped coolly. “He is the man I intend to marry when I am free of this unwanted union.”
He stopped wondering at the purpose of the ceramic vessel and turned back to her. “I meant what I said yesterday. There will be no divorce. You have no grounds on which to petition the courts, and whilst I presumably do thanks to your affair with Sidmouth, I have no wish to put an end to our union.”
There. This was all truth. The divorce laws were in his favor as a man, not hers as a woman. He needed only to prove she had committed adultery in order to bring a case against her and a lover. She, however, would need to prove far more.
Which meant she had no case against him.
“You committed adultery,” she countered. “And you deserted me.”
“I have already told you I never bedded Lady Billingsley.” He attempted to remain calm and measured in his response. In truth, the ease with which she had believed the worst of him still rankled. “And neither did I desert you. I left because you asked me to go.”
She had begged him, in fact.
He still recalled that horrible altercation.
The tears on her pale cheeks, the sound of her sobs. The anguish. They had fought. She had told him she had never loved him. He had broken nearly every stick of furniture in the drawing room. And then he had gotten soused. By the time he was sober enough to recall what had happened, he had known leaving was best.
For both their sakes.
“You did not have to go so far or for so long,” she told him quietly now, surprising him.
They had both wounded each other badly. Their marriage had always been fraught with passion. But their love had been a tinderbox.
He moved toward her, drawn to her as ever. “You would have welcomed me back?”
Her expression shuttered. “That is not what I said, Needham. You twist my words.”
Her braid still hung, fat and golden over her shoulder. Tendrils had worked their way free to surround her face. In her cream-colored dressing gown, she was temptation incarnate: soft silk, feminine perfection. He itched to touch her again. To haul her against him. To kiss the frown from her pout.
Instead, he settled for stopping before her. “I have written you letters for three years, Nell. You have never answered any of them save one. What else was I to think? You bid me go, and I had already caused you enough pain. I had no wish to be the source of any more.”
That, too, was truth.
He had done penance as best as he knew how.
But there had never come a day when he had not thought of her. When he had not longed for her. When he had not dreamed of returning. The anger and hurt he had carried with him for so long had faded in the wake of her announcement that she wanted to marry Viscount Sidmouth.
That letter had changed everything.
Nell’s chin tipped up, her expression guarded. “Why would I want more lies from you? I have already endured a lifetime’s worth. And now, the very least you can do is to set me free. Surely you owe me that courtesy, after everything that has happened.”
He searched her gaze. “What would you have me do, Nell? Sue you and Sidmouth? Drag you through the gutters? Ruin us all? Is that what you truly wish?”
Jack did not know why he had posed such a question. Even should her answer be yes, he did not have it in him to grant her what she wanted. He could not bear to cut her from his life. The last three years had only been made bearable by