Unforgivable(33)

The faithless, philandering husband who had entirely failed to recognise her, even when she removed her mask. Even when she lay naked in his bed.

It was mortifying but also horribly seductive. Because he didn’t know who she was, she came to him new. With none of their history weighing her down. And he’d found her beautiful, had wanted her.

Even more miraculously, she’d wanted him too. When he took his mask off, she’d felt the same breathless admiration that had overcome her that day, years ago, when she’d watched him effortlessly mount his horse in the inn courtyard. In the face of that unexpectedly girlish response, she’d given in to the temptation to stay silent.

Now she hated herself.

All the way here in the carriage, she’d been steeling herself to confess. As he took her cloak and they walked upstairs, as he brought her wine and kissed her, she was thinking, I’ll tell him in a minute. The trouble was, she knew as soon as he learned who she was, everything would change. So she’d been bargaining with herself all evening. Just another minute, then I’ll tell him.

She would not allow the lie to continue any longer. As soon as he woke, she would tell him everything. But she would let herself have these last few minutes first. Just to lie here and watch him, like a real wife. It was a harmless enough thing, wasn’t it?

Gil’s long eyelashes brushed his cheekbones, quivering as he dreamed. His lips were faintly parted, and she could hear each soft breath he inhaled and released. She resisted the urge to touch his surprisingly soft dark hair.

He had grown into his looks, she thought. She had thought him handsome at twenty-two, but now she saw that he had been too young to carry off that piratical look of his. Now he looked rather magnificent. Big and fierce—when he wasn’t smiling, anyway. His civilised clothing seemed to barely contain him. It was impossible to be unaware of the masculine body beneath all the expensive tailoring.

And he was not the cold, silent man she remembered from the last days of their honeymoon. His eyes glinted with humour, and he smiled often, a crooked, irrepressible sort of smile. A little self-conscious. Uniquely charming, especially when that surprising dimple showed. It was a smile that invited you in; that seemed to say, You know what I mean, don’t you?

This was the man she had encountered at their first meeting in Stanhope House. Years ago, she had decided that she must have imagined him. But here he was! The very same. Charming and likeable and warm. And now devastating too.

She had to remember that this was only one side of Gil. He could be cold. Distant and cruel. He could change in a heartbeat. It was absurd that she had to remind herself of that, but it seemed she was something of a fool for him. She hadn’t expected to be attracted to him when she saw him again. Not when five years of resentment had left her so bitter and angry that she bridled at the very mention of his name.

She had come to London not because she wanted to reconcile with him, but because she wanted her life—the life she was supposed to get when she stood up in church with Gil and promised to love, honour and obey him—and she’d known that to get that life, she was going to have to put her dislike of her husband to one side. It was something she had come to feel philosophical about. It wasn’t as though she was the first wife in the world to have to disguise her loathing of her spouse.

She hadn’t expected to be charmed by him; to take pleasure from him.

Gil made a small noise in his sleep, drawing her attention back to him. Her gaze travelled over his face, absorbing every detail; his well-shaped mouth, smiling even in sleep, his strong, slightly crooked nose; his thick, dark hair.

If he had been a stranger to her, would she have been fathoms in love with him by now? It would be very easy for a woman of her limited experience to mistake the sort of physical passion she had experienced tonight for something much more profound. After all, the only other man of marriageable age she knew was Will Anderson, the steward at Weartham Manor.

Thank God she knew what Gil was really like. Ruthlessly, Rose reminded herself that Gil had not troubled himself to exert his considerable charm upon the plain young girl he had married solely for her dowry. But it was difficult to reconcile this man, whose face lay inches from her own, with the man she had married; the man who had painfully taken her virginity and who only made love to her on their honeymoon with the most extreme reluctance. Tonight she had felt herself passionately desired. Tonight she had experienced intense pleasure. Five years ago, she had known only pain and humiliation. All at the same man’s hands.

The pinnacle of her ambition tonight had been to warm him up to accepting her presence in his life. She’d had no hopes left of the sort of marriage she’d naively dreamed of at seventeen. But now, and for the first time, it occurred to her that maybe she could have more than a husband who merely tolerated her presence. It was a new and exciting thought, but it made her feel apprehensive too. She had learned the hard way how cruel hope could be.