Autumn's Wild Heart (Seasons #4) - Laura Landon Page 0,17
said as she sat and arranged her skirts. For the second time since he’d met his wife he wondered why she chose such uninteresting colors. He was discovering delightful shades to her personality, but her clothing did not match it at all.
“Thank me for what?”
“For making our marriage bearable.”
“Only bearable?”
She flushed again. “What I mean is, I wouldn’t blame you if you had taken your anger and frustration out on me for placing us in a compromising position.”
“What good would that do, Nella? It would only make us both miserable. And a lifetime is a long time to live with anger and hatred.”
“Yes,” she whispered, “but I regret that you are the one who experienced the greatest loss.”
He was quiet for a short while, then asked the question that had been nagging at him since they’d been found together. “If I ask you a question, will you answer me honestly?”
“Yes,” she responded after thinking a moment.
“If I hadn’t been found with you, would I have been found with someone else?”
She kept her gaze locked on her clenched hands in her lap. “Yes.”
“Was that person someone you thought was not desirable?”
“It doesn’t matter who it was, James. Don’t you see? The deception alone was unforgivable. I just couldn’t…couldn’t bear to see you caught in a trap.”
“If I insisted, would you reveal what really happened?”
She thought for several long minutes. “If you insisted I would have no recourse but to tell you what happened.”
“Then I would like to know. I don’t want there to be any secrets between us and I think keeping this information from me could cause a rift between us.”
He watched her wrestle with the dilemma. But at last she spoke.
“Then I will tell you. I had escaped to the retiring room and while I was hiding in there, three women entered. They didn’t know I was there, and I stayed behind a screen while they began to talk. One of them was to give you a message arranging the time and place for an assignation. The other was to drug the brandy in your room. The woman who was set on entrapping you was going to wait until you’d had time to drink some of the brandy and the sleeping draught began to work before she entered.”
Nella stood and walked to the edge of the pathway. “I’ve always known that she was probably the person you would end up at the altar with, but I wanted it to be your choice. I didn’t want you to be tricked into marrying.”
“Yet, that’s what happened.” He tried hard to keep recrimination from his voice, but sensed he didn’t quite succeed.
“Yes,” she whispered as she turned toward him. “Please believe me when I tell you that isn’t how I intended it to happen. I wanted to reach the room before you drank the drugged brandy and stop you, but by the time I got there, you were well inebriated.
“I tried to wake you but couldn’t. Then, I tried to lift you, but couldn’t. That’s when you fell on top of me. I couldn’t move you off of me before the door opened and we were found.”
“I see,” James said on a sigh. “Thank you for telling me. And, thank you for trying to save me.”
“But I didn’t save you! I failed in that attempt and forced you to do something far worse.”
James rose from the bench and walked to where Nella stood. “Then it will be our duty to make our marriage something that is not far worse.”
“How can you be so understanding, James?”
“What good would it do if I were not?”
“None, but…”
“Before I came to see your father, I visited my aunt. She’s the one who convinced me I should make the best of our situation. I decided to take her advice.”
“I’m glad you did.”
Of course, he didn’t tell her his aunt had issued a threat along with her advice, but that was something his wife never needed to know.
A long while later, after Nella had gone to her bed and his brandy decanter was empty, he climbed the stairs and undressed. When he was ready, he stumbled to his wife’s room and climbed beneath the covers.
Their lovemaking was much as it had been the night before and when he finished, he rose from her bed and went to his own room. The minute his head hit the pillow he was sound asleep.
Perhaps his marriage wouldn’t be so bad after all. Perhaps he would learn to adjust to married life