Unforgivable(28)

When finally she drew the mask away, he couldn’t quite suppress an intake of breath. At the sound of his gasp, her eyes snapped up to meet his gaze. Wide, clear, troubled eyes. She wore an expression of such vulnerable—what? Hope? Fear? He found he couldn’t put a name to it. And even as he wondered, his gaze was moving over the face she had bared to him, studying each detail in absorbed fascination.

She was…

…exquisite. As he gazed at her, his heart did an odd, aching thing in his chest and he suddenly wished he was still wearing his own mask. He wanted to hide his reaction to her. He wanted to gaze at her from shadows, unseen. He felt as though he’d been enchanted. No, more than that. As though she was the answer to something. His destiny, perhaps.

“You are so lovely,” he murmured, unable to help himself uttering such trite words. Not that she seemed to find them trite. Her eyes widened, and he saw astonishment in her gaze. She opened her mouth as though to speak, but then she closed it again, saying nothing. For long moments, she just stared at him with an oddly anguished expression.

“I expect people tell you that all the time,” he added. “Gentlemen, I mean.”

“No,” she said at last. “You are actually only the second gentleman who has ever commented on my looks.”

Perhaps that accounted for her astonishment. And now he was the one feeling surprised. Had she been living on the moon? Perhaps her husband kept her hidden away? Gil wasn’t sure he would entirely blame him if he did.

“Was your husband the first?”

She frowned at that. “No. My husband did not marry me for my looks.”

“He sounds like a fool,” Gil said, feeling aggrieved on her behalf.

“Yes. A great fool,” she agreed, with another of those twisty smiles that made her look strangely unamused. Gil lifted his hand to cup the side of her face, unable to resist the temptation to touch her. She did not withdraw, and after a moment, he stroked her petal-soft skin with his thumb, relishing her faint shiver, wanting his lips there.

One thing first.

“What’s your name, pretty lady?”



Rose knew she would remember this night forever. The night she unmasked herself to her husband—and he didn’t recognise her. She would remember every detail: the instant at which the knot had released in her shaking fingers, the way the ribbons sagged at the sides of her head, the way they kissed her cheeks as she drew the mask away. But most of all, she would remember Gilbert’s expression as he looked upon her for the first time in five long years.

She had prepared herself for the worst: horror, anger, disgust. But of course, she had hoped too. For interest, admiration, maybe even amusement. The one thing she had not prepared for was this.

Although his eyes had widened as she drew the mask away, they had not done so with any degree of recognition. Merely with wonder and pleasure. The sight of her pleased him, but not because of who she was. Because of how she looked. Because of a beauty she had lost and regained, and one day would lose again.

At first, she stared at him, not knowing what to say, how to tell him the truth. She had assumed he would recognise her. She opened her mouth to confess, but the words would not come.

And that was when he began to tell her how beautiful she was.

He thought her beautiful. The words were commonplace, but the way he looked at her was not. No one had ever looked at her like that before. As though she were the sun and moon and stars.

Her natural scepticism gave way to a slow, warming acceptance that began to spread right through her. He admired her. And not discreetly but boldly and without any attempt to hide or dissemble. His hazel eyes moved hungrily over her face, lingering on her mouth until she felt almost as though he’d kissed her.

The gazing was not a one-sided thing. The promising youth had transformed into a handsome man, and her eyes ate up the changes that five years had wrought. He wore his hair a little longer. It suited him. The dark-lashed hazel eyes were just as she remembered, but the creases at the corners when he smiled were new. And he’d filled out that big frame of his.

There was one difference between his perusal of her and hers of him. She remembered him very well, and he remembered her not at all.

“He won’t know you,” Lottie had said. How right she’d been.

He began to quiz her, and she answered almost automatically, still preoccupied. It was only when he touched her face with a whisper-light caress, only when he made her look at him and asked her, in a low, seductive voice, her name, that she returned to herself fully.

And in that long, endless moment, a dozen possible answers to his question crossed her mind.

For some reason, she found herself remembering the very last time she’d seen him before this night. Five years ago, in the hall of Weartham Manor. He’d been about to leave her. His face had been shuttered, polite, distant. Now he stared at her with eyes that glittered with desire. And God, but it was such a balm to that rejected girl she’d once been!