spent with him were the first of my life knowing without a doubt that I would wake up and lay my head down on the same pillow each morning and night. I never questioned if I would eat or if I would have to fight. Or run. Why”—I turned to him now and spoke to his stone-graven profile—“why would I give that up? Never mind that he held my heart’s affection. Why would an animal turn on its master?”
His head snapped toward me at this. “Don’t call yourself that.”
“It’s true. It fits. You wouldn’t recognize me if you knew me then.”
“I know you now, Hedda.” In a single, swift movement, he grasped me by my upper arms and pulled me close, to where I was pressed up against him and had to tilt my head back to fully see the moss green of his eyes. “I can give you everything he did. Maybe not a mansion, yet. Or jewels, all those things you walked away from. But I give you my love. And I’ll keep you safe.”
“Safe from the boys?”
“Safe from the world.”
He bent his head to kiss me, and slowly his grip softened, his fingers spreading across my back and gently laying me down upon the bed. His body covered mine and I thought—why, yes. He will cover me. If one of the boys came through the door at that moment, I would have been completely hidden beneath the breadth of this man. I could go through life with him as my shield. My protector.
His kisses grew more ardent. I sensed a defiance in his affections, as if he were overcoming his own doubts, ready to take me before I had a chance to become something monstrous. He knew I could claim no innocence with my body—in that we were equal. But he was a good man who saw the world divided and measured by the rule of law. And this, I feared, would always be a fission between us.
Carmichael sensed my cooling passion and disengaged our kiss, rolling off and propping himself up on one arm beside me. “I’m sorry, my darling. I shouldn’t have intruded on you like this. And I didn’t mean—” He sat up and inched over to the side, leaving a wide berth for me to straighten my dress and move myself to the safety beside my desk.
“Does this mean that you believe me?”
“This means that I love you.”
“But when I tell you that I had nothing to do with my husband’s death, other than to be his nurse until the end—”
“Meaning you gave him his medication?”
“Of course I did.”
“According to the doctor’s instructions? Precisely?”
I closed my eyes, remembering, and said, “He was in so much pain.” There was nothing to be done, and from the moment I’d met him, he’d given me everything I ever wanted. Everything I asked for. How could I not do the same? I said none of this to Carmichael, though. I kept every drop to myself, to my thoughts. I opened my eyes again and poured forth truth. “I bathed him and fed him and”—I brought the back of my wrist to my mouth to stanch the memory—“cleaned him when he was too ashamed to allow anyone else. Those ungrateful buffoons wouldn’t come near him.” I pointed, as if they were lurking outside the door. “That was me, knowing full well I’d be turned out of the house he was dying in. Knowing my name wasn’t in the will. So when you say that you love me, are you saying too that you believe me?”
While I was speaking, he took a cigarette from his pocket and rolled it nervously between his fingers. Now he stood and crossed the room in a single step to deposit it in the waste bin. He went to his knee, just like he had that night by the dying fire in the lobby, and took my hands in his. “What I’m saying, is that it doesn’t matter. Who you were, and what you might have done before the night I laid eyes on you—I don’t care. We can put it behind us. Come with me. Marry me tomorrow. Heck, it’s after midnight. Marry me today. There’s no impediment. We don’t ever have to think about any of this again.”
“You could marry me thinking I might be a murderess?”
“There’s no evidence to say you are.”
Nothing but the suspicions of two ungrateful, spoiled men. But Carmichael hadn’t gone on a quest to investigate the peaceful,