She sat very still as he let silence fall. His words were heartfelt. They sounded a death knell in her heart.
God above. Her bad taste in men was endless.
Finally, she managed a smile. “But how good you are to your family, despite it. The twins adore you. You’ve never denied them anything, Alex.”
“It’s easier not to deny them,” he said with blunt precision. “They ask only small things because they are afraid, I think, to ask for more. Which speaks well of their perception but not so well of me. And perhaps it also speaks ill of me that I humor them because I am afraid that if I did not deliver on their requests—holidays, and gifts, and the occasional appearance at their dinners—they might grow angry enough to demand the larger things. My company. A presence in their children’s lives. Commitment.”
He spelled a vision that exactly matched her fantasies. “Would that be so awful?” she whispered. “Do you not . . . lose something by holding yourself so apart? Will you not come to regret it, ever?”
“Ah.” He gave the barest ghost of a smile. “And there is the question I have never allowed myself to ask. I tell myself I want nothing more than what I have. But”—his smile sharpened into something distinctly unpleasant—“it comes to me now that this is exactly the philosophy I railed against as a boy. I accused them of entombing me to keep me from the tomb. Trapping me in that sad little house on the coast because it was safer than the risk of sending me to school, of letting me actually live.”
He looked directly at her. “Avoiding a risk because it might cost,” he said. His eyes searched hers, intent. “It’s a sad calculation to make for love’s sake, isn’t it? It means putting love in service to fear. That is what I always objected to. And yet here I am, doing the same. I think it’s high time I stopped.”
Slowly, she nodded. “And this . . . is why you’re helping Gerard?”
He laughed, a short, startled sound, and then tipped his head, studying her with those beautiful eyes of his. “I wasn’t speaking of Gerard,” he said. “Far from it.”
She frowned. And then a frisson went through her, and she slowly sat back from him. If he was no longer discussing Gerard . . .
“At any rate,” he said, “it’s a hard habit to break. I developed a policy, once my lungs righted themselves. You will have noticed it, throughout the years: I vowed not to depend on anyone. To take great pains, in fact, to avoid any situation in which that might be required of me. Richard . . .” He smiled a little, a painful smile. “Richard was an exception. And it did not encourage me to try again.”
“Yes,” she said. “I know.”
“You do more than know,” he said gently. “You do the same.”
The comment startled her. She tried out a puzzled smile. And then, because his regard remained on her, unblinking, she said, “No, Alex. You’re wrong. I’ve depended on so many people in my life. Goodness—I thought to wed, twice! I have never turned away from anyone.”
“Of course you do. You’re doing so right now. You’re lying even to yourself.” Lightly, so lightly, he pressed his knuckles to the space between her breasts. “Who are you in the dark, Gwen?”
That touch, so light it was barely a breath of sensation, seemed to pierce her like an anchor. She stared at him, this wicked man, traveler of the world, her brother’s hero and her brother’s downfall—and her own downfall, so she’d hoped. “I don’t understand what you mean,” she said, although the strange lick of fear that moved through her betrayed it for a lie.
“Gwendolyn Elizabeth Maudsley,” he said softly, rolling the syllables in his low, smooth voice. “She is your secret, I think. She is the person you keep hidden from the world. I wonder, do you even know her yourself? Not when you walked to the altar, but in the night—some night when you’re all alone—will you look into the mirror with honesty?”
Her heartbeat was quickening. He was right. A month ago, this question would have made no sense, because she would not have let it make sense. And certainly she would not have been able to answer it as she did now:
“Yes,” she said.
A smile touched the edge of his mouth. “And who will you see?” he murmured. “Would Elma know her? Would Belinda? Would Richard have done?”
No. They would not. But . . .
You would know her, she thought. You, Alex.
The revelation flashed through her, bright and hot and transformative as fire. Perhaps he saw its effect, for his knuckles skated up to brush her collarbone, light as a feather, warm as a breath. His eyes followed the motion, an arrested expression on his face, which her fevered brain interpreted as tenderness, awe, the look of a man who felt amazed by the privilege to touch her.