Chapter 42

‘You love me…' she said slowly. She had never expected this from him, had barely dared even to imagine it might be possible.

‘I do. I'm sorry, I never meant to tell you. Try to forget I have said it if you can. It is not your concern.'

‘Not my concern…?' she repeated incredulously.

‘You didn't ask me to love you. You said, if I recall, that you were determined not to fall in love with me because you were terrified that I would hurt you. That was wise of you, I think. Love is painful, I have discovered.'

She felt ridiculous now, kneeling at his feet in her provocative gown, but she could not seem to find the will or the strength to move away. Her mind was full of roiling thoughts and desperate hope. Her attempts at seduction really did seem to have gone awry in a most dramatic fashion, but perhaps it did not matter. ‘I thought you would be unfaithful to me. That was what I was afraid of, I told you so; that you would leave me while you pursued other women, or, worse, come and go as you pleased, and I would be so lost to all self-respect that I would take you back into my bed and my heart, over and over again, all the while knowing that it would just be for a short time, till you became bored or restless, and then you would leave me alone again and suffering.'

‘I won't do that. Not now. I might have thought that that was what my marriage would be like. Perhaps it would have been, with another woman. With Miss Debenham – my God, the thought is an obscenity, despite what I just said to you. But not with you, never with you. The idea of making love to another woman is repulsive to me. Not even that – I simply cannot think of it. It holds no interest for me. I do not believe it ever will.' He was absolute in his sincerity; the truth of what he was saying rang in his voice.

He loved her. Could he really love her? Or was he merely saying it because of the severe shock he had received, and his ever-present sense of guilt? How could she ever be sure? ‘You know what else I feared. That I would become the sort of woman who takes lovers, who is so addicted to sensual pleasure that she finds it wherever she can. Who does not feel love, only lust.'

‘I… The thought of you making love to another person is torture to me. Of someone else making love to you. Christ, I cannot bear to contemplate it. But… but if that is what it would take to make you happy, then I must accept it. Just as long as you do not allow anyone to hurt you, for I?—'

She would not endure any more of this. She must be brave now. ‘Did I describe such a life in a manner that made you think it would make me happy? Do you seriously imagine that that is what I want?'

He looked at her in confusion. Clearly he had gone so far into his own dark thoughts over the last few weeks that he had lost much of his grip on reality where she was concerned.

‘Ask me what I want, Gabriel,' she said.

‘What do you want, my love?' he replied, in little more than a whisper. ‘God knows if it is within my power to give it to you, you can be sure I will.'

‘Oh, I think it is within your power. I want your love, Gabriel, all of it and all of you. I want it because I love you too.' He looked at her in disbelief and dawning wonder and she said with a wry little smile, ‘I think even when I told you I feared falling in love with you and being hurt by you it was already too late. Far too late.'

She laughed as sudden realisation hit her. ‘I realise now that my family knew it – Louisa, Hal, all of them. That's why Hal told me I must marry you, that I had no choice. Not because it was true, but because he could see even then that we loved each other and should be together. I believe he thought we just needed a little push.'

Still he looked down at her in silence and she said with a curious little hiccup between tears and laughter, ‘Will you say nothing to me, when I have declared my love for you? Must I beg once more?'

‘Good God, Georgie, come here!' And as he spoke, he pulled her up onto his lap so that he could kiss her. He had almost always seemed at some essential level controlled to her before, even in the throes of passion, but he had no control at all now as he took her face between his hands and pressed frantic kisses to her mouth, her cheeks, her eyes. She clung to him, fiercely glad just to be in his arms again. At last he fell to kissing her properly, open mouth on open mouth, and she responded eagerly, fixing her hands in his hair and straddling his body assertively with hers.

‘I have just told you terrible things,' he whispered raggedly against her mouth a little while later. ‘Shocking things, emotions of which I am deeply ashamed. Something about the way I feel about you, the newness and the rawness of it, makes me reveal these things when they would be far better hidden. Again and again I will do it and curse myself even as I am speaking. And still you say you love me? You, so brave and good. Can it really be true?'

‘Everyone thinks terrible things. Everyone, I am sure of it. Most people don't say them. You say them. I say them too. And do them. I am not good. Maybe that's why I love you. If I were good…' she said, and as she spoke she tugged quite hard upon his hair, where she grasped it either side of his head, and pressed her body close to his, her breasts crushed against his chest, a delicious friction. ‘Are you listening to me, Gabriel? If I were good, I would not have told a parcel of lies and asked a complete stranger to put his mouth on me ten minutes after we had met. To say I love you desperately now is no excuse. I did not love you then.'

‘And I did not love you. And still we both did it.' He was holding her tightly now, his hands strong and hard about her waist. How she had missed the feel of him. It was both safe and deliciously dangerous to be held like this.

‘You did it at my urging. You thought I was a widow, because I told you so. I am very bad, you see. Much worse than you.'

‘I seriously doubt that. And I didn't need a great deal of urging, did I?'

‘Not enormous amounts,' she admitted. ‘Not then. But now, all the urging in the world seems to do no good. I kneel barely clothed at your feet and offer myself to you, and you do not want me. Indeed, you say explicitly that you don't want to make love to me any more. Though you say you love me. Gabriel, I am confused.'

He took her face between his hands and looked into her eyes. ‘It's not true that I don't want to make love to you. I don't think I said that or could ever say that. You must know I have never wanted anything so much in my life. I thought I wanted you before when I had not admitted to myself that I loved you, when I was only obsessed with you, but my feelings then were nothing to what they are now. Love deepens desire more than I could possibly have imagined.'

‘And yet…'

He groaned. ‘I have told you why! The thought of hurting you, of possibly causing your death, paralyses me. I have always been selfish – I have lived a thoroughly selfish life for thirty-one years – but things are entirely different now.'

She said, ‘Not really, Gabriel. I know you are trying, and I understand your fears, God knows, but you have not thought to ask me what I feel about all this, have you? It is not your decision to make, whether I bear a child. Certainly it is not only your decision to make. Do my views count for nothing?'

‘Of course they do! But I don't want you sacrificing yourself for me. You tried to do that once already and I nearly lost you.'

‘It was the impulse of the moment. Perhaps it was foolish – perhaps she would never have hit you in any case, her hands were shaking so. I believe now that she didn't even really intend to kill you, only to frighten us. I did not stop to think or to calculate. But this is different, you must see. This is a conscious choice that I am free to make. It is not like throwing myself in front of a bullet.'

‘Not exactly like that. But the risks…'

‘My mother had six children, including a set of twins. She delivered every one of us safely. It was influenza that killed her – heartbreak, in truth, because she had lost my father, whom she loved more than life. He died on the hunting field – a stupid, pointless accident that need not have happened. People die every day for ridiculous reasons or none, Gabriel. We cannot keep each other safe. No one can, however strong their love is. Life is not like that.'

He pulled her closer and buried his face in her neck, whispering against her skin, ‘That sounds like painful wisdom, Georgie. When did you grow so wise?'

‘I am not wise. I am anything but wise; my family would laugh to hear you say so. I too have been selfish, and foolish, and spoilt. Perhaps people like us need to fall in love to make us look outside ourselves and think of others for the first time. But that's not true, really, is it? Or at least not of you, even if it is true of me. Because you never wanted to marry, and yet you knew you must for the sake of all the people who depended on you, and you were prepared to do it. That doesn't sound very much like selfishness to me, my love.'

He laughed against her throat and ran his hands down her body possessively, her flesh catching fire anew at his touch after having been starved of it for so long. ‘It is like your generosity to say so, but I do not think that you will persuade many people of your point of view. Most people would laugh to think that my agreeing to take my choice among the most beautiful debutantes society has to offer, agreeing to make love incessantly to the woman I chose until she conceived a child, then reserving the right to go back to my careless bachelor ways if I so desired, was any great sign of selflessness. I dare say most of the men in England would be very happy to be in my shoes!'

‘I do not care about most of the men in England, only you.'

‘I cannot tell you how glad I am of it. But I am still selfish. And now I would rather let all those people who depend on me down than lose you. You know I would. And damn the consequences.'

‘I don't think that's true. Not really. I know you better than that. I think as the months and then the years passed with no heir for Northriding, you would look at the anxious faces of the people around you, people you've known all your life, and that too would begin to torment you. I know it would torment me; not even to try to have a child. I think it would be bound to cause a rift between us, a little crack that slowly opened up into something bigger. If we try and cannot, of course, that is a different matter, or so everyone keeps telling me.'

‘You're sure about this, my dearest love?'

‘I am not sure about anything except the fact that I love you.' She smiled and stroked his silvered head; when he heard her words, he had pressed his lips to her throat with passionate intensity, and tightened his grip on her body. ‘But I am beginning to realise that I do want a child, for myself as well as for you. I felt a sharp, unexpected pang of dismay when I realised that I had not conceived, and that made me reflect. And I think too that I could come to love this place and its people, and want to be a part of it. Something about it speaks to me, you know.'

‘I do know. I realised that when I first saw you walking on the beach. I can't wait to show it all to you properly, my queen.'

‘And also,' she said, slipping her hand under his jacket and beginning to unbutton his waistcoat, ‘I grew up in a house full of children, you must realise. It is what I am accustomed to. We may say terrible things about each other, and to each other, but we all love each other dearly, and would take on all the world and fight it if one of us needed it. I would be very happy to create a family of my own – of our own – in that image. Or at least to make the attempt.'

‘Am I to understand, my love, that you would like to begin on the project this very instant?' His waistcoat was undone, and Georgie was now tugging impatiently on his shirt to free it from his breeches, so that she could slide her hands up under it and touch his skin at last.

‘I think it only sensible!' she said, and as she spoke he rose to his feet, still holding her, and carried her from the room, past the liveried footmen in the hall, who stood up straighter and hastily banished grins, up the grand staircase to her bedchamber.