“But—”
He silenced her with a kiss, taking her soft lips with his own, turning her words into a quiet moan. Her head dropped back as he inched the kiss from her mouth to her neck, stopping to nibble on her shoulder before he continued to bare his soul.
“I was the one left with no choice. I refused to marry you to save you from this exact sorrow. With war on the horizon, I’d no way to know what would happen. I loved you too much to leave you a grieving widow.”
She gasped as he pushed the shift from her shoulders to trail his tongue over her heated skin. The old, familiar need washed over him, hardening his body and driving his actions.
He wanted her. As if the past year and half had never happened, his need for her was as all-consuming as it had ever been.
He kissed her again, lowering her to her back and taking his place on top of her.
She made no effort to refuse him, but he felt reluctance in her response.
“Did you no understand that I would have grieved yer loss whether we were married or no? Though yer intentions were honorable, by yer refusal to take me to wife, you left me in a far worse position than if I had been widowed.”
“I canna see how that’s possible,” he murmured, his mind too occupied with the woman in his arms to concentrate on her words.
“Since you want my honesty, I’ll tell you how.” Her fingers tightened on his arms, gripping him as a drowning woman might. “It was no Eymer’s son who died in my arms, Eric. It was yers.”
• • •
Eric’s muscles stiffened under her grasp, and the hands that had lovingly stroked her deserted her as he pulled away.
“My son?” He shook his head as if to deny her statement. “This is true? Was I never to know? Did you give no thought to telling me of my own child?”
She sat up and reached for her blanket, then pulled it around her shoulders like an armor against the memories.
“There was no reason to tell you.”
“No reason? It was my son!” His voice echoed off the rock of the small cave. “And if he’d lived, you would have kept that from me as well?”
She didn’t answer. She’d made her decision over a year ago, and now there was nothing left but to live with it. At least she didn’t need to live with the secret any longer. She’d told him, so the worst was over. She could survive Eric’s rejection of her again. She’d already survived it once before.
His back to her, he stood at the entrance of the cave for several minutes. When he returned to the fire to lay out his bedding, he placed it as far away from her as he could.
Jeanne lay down again, willing a sleep that wouldn’t come. She should have known better than to have allowed herself to believe even for a moment he would be hers again. Happiness was not her destiny.
After a long time, Eric spoke once more. “There is no chance the babe belonged to Eymer?” His voice sounded hollow in the dark.
“None at all,” she answered truthfully.
“And he was aware of that as well?”
“He was.”
Eric asked no more questions and she offered no more information. All that had happened, like Eric’s love for her, was in the past. She needed to let go of the past and focus on her future.
Chapter Eight
Forgetting the past was easier said than done when you were forced to spend your day with your arms fastened around the broad chest that had been the best part of that past.
Jeanne straightened her back, trying to put even an inch of distance between herself and Eric, a difficult task when sharing the back of a horse.