where he hid it. I intend to ask Paisley the same thing. Apparently I might very well be with child.”
He shook his head. “A miracle.”
“Indeed.” Her smile faded a fraction. “But on the whole, our ruse seems to have worked. The hostility about the scandal seems to have been at least partly replaced with some acceptance of our impending union. So we won’t hurt Ophelia’s chances, it seems. We might have even raised Pippa and Rhys’s standing a bit.”
He nodded. “At the very least we’ve distracted the worst of the gossips.”
She shifted a little, as if she were uncomfortable. “Well, I’ve dispatched with your prize, so I suppose it’s time for me to go.”
She pivoted as if she would lead the way out of the room, but he caught her arm and held her steady. “Wait, Abigail.”
She stared up at him, her bottom lip trembling just the slightest bit. He felt her tension, her worry, her uncertainty in a way he’d never felt it before. And he wanted, so desperately, to fix it.
“Let’s talk about the future,” he said softly. “We’ve avoided that topic, perhaps because we were both shocked by the way we were pushed down this hill by scandal. But we need to face it, don’t we?”
“So say all our friends,” she said. “But I hardly know where to begin.”
He drew in a long breath. “You were trapped once in a marriage that turned unhappy. I don’t want that to be your life with me. What do you want the future to look like?”
Her eyes widened a bit, as if shocked that he would care about her needs. He supposed she must be. Not only had few people in her life given her that consideration, but the two of them had been enemies of a sort for a long time. She could lean into him all she liked, but that didn’t mean she fully trusted him. Would she ever?
She sighed and pulled away from him. “You are not as horrible as I once believed you to be,” she began.
He smiled. “Thank you. I think.”
“You ought to thank me—it’s quite a capitulation on my part to admit it,” she teased, though her face retained some of its concern, its fear. “Do you know why I stopped loving Erasmus Montgomery?”
He blinked. “Because he turned out to be a bigamist with two other wives, faked his own death and then tried to frame you for it? Also, he held you hostage briefly before he was shot and actually died.”
She winced at the quick recitation of everything she’d endured a year ago. “That wasn’t it. The marriage failed a long time before all of that. Erasmus lied. Little lies, bigger ones. Things meant to embarrass me. Sometimes they weren’t about me at all, but it was like he had a compulsion to tell untruths. That’s what broke our trust and our love and our bond. By the time we got to the end, to all the biggest lies, I was already numb to it.”
She looked small standing there by the window, the moonlight from outside framing her. She looked pained, not just on the surface as she sometimes allowed him to see, but deep down to her bones. For the first time, he truly understood how she had been worn down by years as Montgomery’s bride. How deeply each moment had hurt and changed her.
He understood why trust did not come easy. Why she had so many walls up. And he also saw that it wouldn’t be easy, perhaps it would even be impossible, to dismantle those walls.
“You and I are not in love,” she continued. “No matter what Society believes. So you can’t break my heart like he once did. But if I were to look into the future and see exactly what I’d wish, I would ask that you not lie to me.”
“That is a simple request,” he said softly.
“Is it?”
He bent his head and thought of all the tiny ways people hurt each other in the world. “I suppose it isn’t.”
She sighed. “What about you? What do you need to be happy with this arrangement?”
“I want you, Abigail.” He moved to her now as he said those words, and was pleased that she straightened up, tracking him with interest in those dark eyes. “I want you far more than is rational or prudent. I burn to touch you, and all this waiting only makes it more powerful. I want to be lovers. Enthusiastic lovers. I want to learn everything