preferable to the wrath I’d rain down upon their heads if they spoke out.”
“What about Honoria’s husband, William?” she whispered. “He loved George and he was…was so angry with me. So certain I’d done it.” A band reached around her chest and tugged, forcing a rather forceful exhale. The same pressure cinched at her head in a vise-like grip at her throbbing temples. “If William thinks I got away with murder, he might be using popular opinion to force your hand. To make me pay.” She could say no more, her lungs had compressed the ability of breath completely away from her.
“Your bloody family,” he gritted out, looking as if he might hurl the table in a fit of temper.
The dam she’d built to stem the current of her emotion crumbled, overwhelming her entire being with a desolate flood of emotion. As a last stopgap, she pressed both of her hands over her mouth to contain the cries, but she still couldn’t seem to manage. They erupted from her as hot tears spilled in veritable rivers down her cheeks.
He was at her side in a moment. Gathering her to him in a bundle of bereft limbs and hiccupping sobs. His chest was hard and steady as the rock of Gibraltar as the tides of her pain broke upon it.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he crooned, his hands doing a tender dance of comfort up and down her spine as he tucked her head beneath his chin. “There now. All will be well. You’re not in any more danger than you were before. Not with me to protect you.”
She clung to him, listening to his words as they rumbled in his chest, grasping onto them like a life preserver thrown to her before she drowned beneath her despair.
“There, darling.” He pressed his mouth to her brow. “You weep as you like. I have you.”
Yes. He had her. She was utterly his.
Could she claim the same tenure?
“I-I’m not weeping,” she declared, as an order to herself to cease more than anything.
“Of course not, dear,” he said solicitously.
“I mean. I d-don’t ever,” she said around hitches of breath. “I’m-I’m not a hysterical p-person. But I can’t seem to s-stop. I—I—” She hiccupped loudly and could feel his smile against her hair.
“Sweetheart,” he rumbled. “Not only are you going through what is likely the most difficult trial of your life, you’re also with child.” He pulled her back so he could look down at her with infinite tenderness, before brushing at her sodden cheeks with his thumb. “I should not have said that about your family,” he repeated. “I was…aggravated by your distress, that’s all.”
“You’ve every right to curse them. I’m disenchanted with them as well. Here I thought them almost too righteous, and it turns out the entire lot could be crooked but for the twins.” Her chin wobbled as a new wave of gloom assaulted her enough to push away from him. “God, how you must regret me. I’ve brought such chaos to your orderly life. Surely you wish we’d never—”
He caught her, pulling her back into the protective circle of his arms, this time having produced a handkerchief. “Stop it,” he ordered against her temple as he pressed little kisses of consolation there. “Don’t think like that.”
“How can I not when—”
He distracted her by looping the handkerchief over his finger and tracing the corners of her mouth where the tears had run, then along her jaw, beside her nose, and gently across her cheeks. He feathered cool, wine-scented kisses across her swollen eyelids and against her heated forehead.
“Would it make you feel better to know my family would put yours to shame?” he asked, injecting a bit of levity into his voice.
She gave a delicate sniff, and then a heartier one. “A little,” she admitted as he surrendered the handkerchief to her so she could blow her nose. “You’ve never spoken of your family,” she realized, with no little amount of chagrin. She’d never inquired about them. “Where do they live?”
“They don’t,” he answered in an even, nonchalant tone that asked for no pity. “My mother died not long after our births, and my father drank himself to death a handful of years thereafter, but not before making life miserable for my sister and me.”
She lifted her chin to look at him, finding his expression distorted by her watery confusion. “You have a sister?”
“I do. I…did. A twin. Caroline.”
“A twin,” she breathed, her heart softened by the way he’d said her name, and