kissing her cheek. It was the closest he could come to a declaration. His emotions were too turbulent, too confused. He did not want to tell Jo he loved her out of gratitude.
He wanted to tell her unencumbered by grief and necessity.
Because he did love her. Decker realized it then as the carriage continued to sway over the road and his wife held him in her arms. He clung to her as if she were his last chance at surviving the lashing waves of a sea that threatened to drown him.
He was in love with Lady Josephine Decker.
His wife.
His heart.
“You do not need to thank me,” she told him, still tenderly stroking up and down his back.
She made him feel cherished. Made him feel as if there could be light in the darkest moments.
He buried his face in her fragrant hair. Even the clean scent of her shampoo was precious to him. “You are wrong. I have much to thank you for.”
Everything, in fact.
The words were there, stuck in his throat, mired in emotion.
To think he had despaired of Sin for finding himself besotted with his countess. Decker had come to understand just how quickly the love of a remarkable woman could change a man. Could make a man whole. Fill in all the pieces of himself he had never known were missing.
“Thank you for sharing these parts of yourself with me,” she said then, startling him when she kissed his cheek. Her golden-brown gaze met his, searching through the low light of the carriage lamp. “I did not know you had a sister. Will you tell me about her?”
It occurred to him then just how much he had shielded himself from her. How little of himself he had revealed to her. He had much to atone for, that was certain. And he would begin here and now.
He kissed the upturned tip of Jo’s nose. “Lila is a hellion like me. I think you will like her. If…my mother should die, I will become her legal guardian. She will have to live with us. Would you be amenable to that?”
Hell, that had not occurred to him until this moment. His mother’s family had disowned her, and the dowager Countess of Graham would not be welcoming a by-blow into her brood of seven daughters. Lila would be his responsibility.
“Of course I would be amenable,” Jo said. “If she is anything like you, I shall love her. We will make her as comfortable as possible and welcome her with open arms. You need not fear where she is concerned.”
Could she be any more perfect, this woman he had wed?
He kissed her lips softly, slowly, reverently, telling her with his mouth what he could not yet form into words.
The carriage rattled on, delivering them to their destination and whatever lay ahead.
Chapter Seventeen
His mother had aged in the seven years since he had seen her last. The ebony hair which had been her crowning glory had turned entirely silver. The healthy glow had fled her cheeks. She had lost weight, her high cheek bones shockingly angular, her hand in his light as a bird.
Her physician had informed him this was not his mother’s first stroke. Why she had never written him of her ailments, he did not know. Her letters had always been impersonal, containing accounts of Lila’s studies and the scrapes in which she found herself. There had been nothing of herself. No indication she had grown infirm.
Decker bowed his head, clutching her unresponsive fingers. Dr. Thompson had said she’d had moments of lucidity throughout the day, but the lucidity had waned. This attack had been worse than those which had come before. It had rendered the left half of her body incapable of movement. She had been given laudanum just prior to Decker and Jo’s late-night arrival, to ease her pain and unrest. But the situation was dire, the outcome clear.
His mother did not have long to live. He was at once grateful for this moment alone with her and terrified it would prove the last he would ever have.
“Mama,” he whispered. “I am sorry.”
Simple words. But true. He meant them with everything he had.
As he stared at her still form, the counterpane tucked around her as if she were merely asleep and not dying, he could not fathom why he had held on to his anger and pride for seven years. Had his self-righteous rage been worth the time he could have spent with his mother?
No.
Tears blurred his vision, but he