The Problem with Seduction - By Emma Locke Page 0,131

against the curve of his ear, “if you can hear me, I beg you, forgive me. I never should have…” Her body shuddered. A heartbeat passed. “I treated you abominably. I am a wretched, wretched person. I don’t deserve you. But please, please don’t die. I love you. Oh, how I love you.” Her words broke as she said them. She swallowed thickly. Her fingertips grazed his face, leaving the feel of her in a cool path drawn on his skin. “I would have come sooner, but I didn’t know. I swear it. I didn’t hear about your release until yesterday, when I read it in the papers. My father didn’t tell me.”

The last came out bitterly but to him, they were the sweetest words he’d ever heard. She hadn’t forsaken him. She hadn’t known, and his family had assumed she’d known, and no one had told her because they’d thought she didn’t care. He could have kissed her.

He settled for blinking rapidly at her. She sat up sharply, nearly digging her elbow into his chest, and leaned over him. “You can hear me!” She laughed, maniacally happy at first, and then her small shoulders shook as she broke into sobs.

Her heartache and her fear overwhelmed him as if it were his own. He blinked slowly three times. I. Love. You. He tried with everything in him to move his hand toward her, or just turn his head, but it was as if his body was no longer connected to his soul. He could demand his limbs to move all he wanted to, but they had already died.

Waiting for his mind to die passed in a slower, more transcendental way. He could do nothing except think. One bit of knowledge that haunted him—and scared him witless—was remembering the long years when his father had been imprisoned, before he’d succumbed to gaol fever. Con had been considered too young to visit him, even after Tony had scraped together enough to buy him Liberty of the Rules and let a small hovel beside the prison. Did Tony blame himself for their father’s death? He shouldn’t. The marquis would as likely died within the prison walls as without.

But he must ask Tony later, after he managed to live through this.

And it seemed he would. More days went by. Interminable days made bearable only by Elizabeth’s presence beside him. Every hour, he tried lifting his head. It remained immovable. But she’d left him with little choice. He had to survive this. He couldn’t die, no more than he could walk away from his wife and live with the knowledge that she’d been right to mistrust his promises of keeping their family together. He must live so he could kiss her, and hold her to him, and make a new promise to try again.

He was reminded of his duty, every moment, it seemed, for she talked about Oliver in the present tense. How’d he’d grown, and what babble-nonsense he’d come to associate with what item. Con ate up every word, even as he didn’t understand how she knew so much about their son’s progress.

Her communication with Nicholas would have seemed absurd two months ago, but after her quasi-reconciliation with her father, it could just as well be that Elizabeth had turned over a new leaf, one more inclined toward compromise than the old Elizabeth. He didn’t ask her how she knew the things she knew, but then of course, he wasn’t able to. The answer could just as well be that it was one of those things he’d missed when he’d dozed off. He couldn’t ever seem to stay away for an entire visit.

But she’d been to see him. She’d come. Every day since the day after he’d fallen ill. Surely those were the actions of a wife who did care.

He had to live. For her.

Chapter Twenty-Six

AT LONG LAST Con was well enough to arise from his bed, don his clothing and make her a proper apology. The more he thought about it, the more resolved he became that she deserved a full accounting of his change of heart. Not just the certainty that he’d forgiven her, for they’d had days during which she must have realized his resentment had ebbed, but she deserved to hear a complete apology, full of groveling and begging for forgiveness and all the things women adored.

Yes, she had acted ignobly and selfishly. He didn’t pretend she hadn’t. The fact that she’d had so little trust in him at the