Lady Thief - By Rizzo Rosko Page 0,88
believe that I hold no love for you?”
The question dried her eyes. “Don’t you?”
He clasped her shoulders and gave her one hard shake. “Of course I do! I have told you as much with my actions as well as my words!”
Marianne lashed back, anger raging inside of her at his blatant lie. “Said as much? You have said how much you love Alice! Never me!”
William’s face dropped. “You can find it within yourself to be bitter over my love for my first wife?”
“No!” She turned away from him, out of his arms, circled and tried to regain what she had meant to say to him. “No.” She said again, wishing she had chosen to her words more carefully. “I am not bitter. I am glad.”
William’s arms were the ones to fold now. “Glad?”
Marianne nodded, picking at her nails for there was no other occupation for her hands, or place for her eyes to look. “Aye, glad that such a thing could be the cause for all your years of kindness, that your love for her has shaped you into the man that I love now.”
Both brows shot up. “Love?”
She nodded again, dropped her hands and looked at him, hardly able to keep herself from looking away now that her eyes were on him. “Aye.”
A lazy smile radiated his face, he stepped closer. “You love me?”
Marianne frowned. She could not tell if he was playing at her expense, but it had quickened her breath and sharpened the beating of her heart with a new hope. “Aye.”
His hands found her shoulders and rested there comfortably, as though he felt no need to shake her again. “Why have you never told me? For how long?”
An unbelievable smile lifted her cheeks. “Since the day you brought home Hawisa and Molly, but I think ‘twas sometime before that and I simply had yet to notice.”
She did notice that despite how she could see her own breath in the chilled air, she could only feel the warmth wafting from his chest that was so close to hers, and the comforting touch of his hands as they rubbed up and down her arms, traveling upward once more before resting on her shoulders and pulling tingling sensations with them, his thumbs lifting to caress her cheeks.
His voice was gentle, the smile never wavering as he sought her secrets. “But why have you never told me of this, my dear?”
The familiar endearment strengthened her courage, though she still swallowed roughly. “I had thought, at first, that ‘twould be impossible to expect you to feel the same, because of the circumstances in which you married me,”
He chuckled as though she had spoken a fond old joke.
She did not understand this but pressed on quickly. “And, I would not have you believe that I am bitter of Alice, I am not. ‘Tis just that you spoke so sweetly of her, and then told me of the acts you performed because of her,” Now she had to look away. “I…simply thought myself unable to compare.”
His eyes sparkled with the same amusement as when she reminded him of their wedding. “And how do you explain away on the night of our lovemaking, in your old home, when I confessed my love to you?”
Marianne’s bulging eyes whipped back to his, her mouth dropped. Half formed words sputtered from her mouth and died on her lips as she desperately tried to determine whether he was being truthful, or simply was the cruelest man in the land.
Finally, the heated words came. “‘Tis untrue! I would have remembered if you had said such a thing!”
“Well, remember when I say it now. I love you.”
The tirade he knew was coming immediately stopped. Marianne blinked wide disbelieving eyes at him. “What?”
He leaned closer, ensuring that his voice was clear and, this time, heard. “I said that I love you.”
She shook her head.
He cocked his head. “You do not believe me? And here I thought we had grown to trust one another.”
“But, how can you—”
“While ‘tis not the most easy of occupations, I can love you because you have brought my servants, my castle, my son, and myself to life like we have not been in so long. This place, our home, would never have known the happiness it knows now had you not been so rash and kidnapped a husband for yourself.”
She blushed at the reminder, but his words lifted her heart out of her chest. Marianne thought that it might sprout wings and fly away.
Because she enjoyed hearing