“There will be gossip,” he added. His mouth tightened. He was acquiring little marks by the edges of his mouth, likely from making that silent rebuke. Making it over and over.
“I expect that’s the case,” she said, realizing that the room had fallen silent again.
“I don’t care.”
Eleanor blinked. “You don’t?”
“I have cared too much what other people thought. You never really understood why I married Ada, did you?”
“Likely not.”
“But you must have suspected that I could have ignored or overturned my father’s will.”
Eleanor took a deep breath. It was absurd to think that she wasn’t interested in hearing his reasoning. Of course she was interested. She loved Gideon. He was her true passion. “I thought perhaps…” But she stopped. He wasn’t the sort of man with whom one could talk about lechery.
He was waiting, so she tried again. “We abandoned propriety…”
“It wasn’t that, though I acted like a rakeshame when I took your virginity,” he said, leaning forward. His eyes were the blue of the Aegean Sea. “And even worse, when I turned my back on you. I know you must have considered taking your own life, Eleanor.”
Eleanor coughed. “Well, I—”
“It took me a year, even longer, to realize that a love like ours comes once in a lifetime. Only once, and never again.”
“You didn’t seem to feel as passionately as I did,” Eleanor said bluntly. “If I felt we shared the love of a lifetime, you did not agree.”
“That’s because I was a fool.” He captured her hand and wove his fingers through hers. “I had no idea what it meant—how much it meant—to have a woman’s desire. To know that I mattered to you.”
He stopped, so Eleanor said, almost reluctantly, “You were everything to me, Gideon.” And he had been. That fact didn’t explain why her heart didn’t catch now with that familiar agony, the joy of seeing him. She thought love like hers would last forever.
Of course it would. Shakespeare said that love didn’t alter with days or weeks. And she truly loved Gideon. Then.
He didn’t seem to catch the silent but that followed her You were everything to me. His grip tightened on her hand and he leaned forward again. “That’s why I breached every rule of society in order to come to your side, if only for a night. I can’t see you again for a year, of course. I must honor Ada and mourn her properly. But I can’t let you marry Villiers. Not with the way you feel about me!”
“What about the way you feel about me?” Eleanor asked, pulling her fingers free. She was conscious of a strangely bleak feeling around her heart.
“I feel just the same way,” he said without hesitation. “I survived my marriage, after the first year or so, by remembering how you—how you trembled when I kissed you, Eleanor. How you used to ask me for another kiss, and another. How you…how you invited me to…”
“I understand.” She folded her hands in her lap.
“I shouldn’t even voice such emotions,” he said, looking at her earnestly. “Not a word shall pass my lips until my mourning period is over. Servants may gossip, but there will be no consequences.”
He rose to his feet and held out his hand for her.
Her fingers didn’t burn at his touch. Her heart didn’t flutter in her chest.
She felt as if a shadow Eleanor were in the room with them, the Eleanor of old, who would have been laughing, and crying, and throwing herself onto Gideon’s chest. Who would have been unable to stop kissing him, her hands flying about his shoulders, touching him as he so clearly longed for her to do.
“Do you understand now why I left you for Ada?” he said, scooping up her hands and putting the palms against his mouth.
“No,” Eleanor said. “No.”
The shadow Eleanor would have kissed his palm. She might even have done something mad, like pull off his neck scarf, laughing at his protests, her fingers trailing over the strong column of his throat.
The real Eleanor just closed her lips tightly.
“I didn’t understand that you were like food and drink. I never imagined that the attentions I—I silently chided you for would become the only thing I longed for. That without your desire I would shrivel into a man I scarcely recognize, a man without blood.”
“You never revealed anything to me,” she whispered. “Nothing. I saw you so many times after you married.”
“Ada knew.”
“I thought—I feared—”
“She understood. I used to talk of you sometimes.”
“You didn’t!”
“She had no interest in marital relations,” he said. “None. If I was trapped by my father’s will, she was equally trapped.”
“You never made love?”
“A few times, in the first year. It made her cough. It made her uncomfortable and unhappy. She didn’t enjoy it in the least.” His hands tightened convulsively on hers. “After a while all I could think about was you, and the way you welcomed me, desired me. Of you, and what I threw away.”
Eleanor took a deep breath. “I’m honored by your feelings—”
“There aren’t many women like you,” he interrupted. “Do you know that, Eleanor? Do you understand how life-giving, how important, you are to a man? I would kiss you now,” he said, his eyes fierce, intent. “I would sweep you into my arms and carry you to that bed, if it were honorable, Eleanor. You know that, don’t you?”
“Well—” she said, startled.
“In fact, the more I look at you, the more I feel my grip on honor slipping from my grasp,” he said hoarsely. “Ada knew, after all. What’s a scandal between you and me? We—”
“No,” she said firmly. “Gideon, you have to leave at dawn and continue your journey to Ada’s great-aunt.”
“But I’ll return to you,” he said, his voice full of longing. “You can’t stay here, with Villiers.”
“I’m visiting Lisette, not the duke.”
“I saw the way he looked at you.”
“Villiers is marrying Lisette.”
Gideon snorted.
Eleanor blinked. “Did you say something?”
“The Duke of Villiers has finally found the one woman he can’t have.” There was something bold and prideful in his voice that froze the words in her mouth. “He will have to live without you.”
“As I said, he plans to marry Lisette,” she said, moving toward the door. “Now I really must go to sleep, Gideon. It’s been a long day.”
“I would kiss you,” he said, moving after her. “But I wouldn’t be able to stop. And I know you couldn’t. So I’m being good for both of us.”
Eleanor swallowed. “I’m glad,” she said faintly, opening the door.
It was all she’d dreamed of for years. He leaned toward her, his beautifully-shaped mouth hovering near hers. “Ask me, Eleanor,” he whispered. “Beg me to stay. I can’t say no to you. I never could say no to you.”
The shadow Eleanor would have pleaded with him to stay. She would be a flame by now, intent on driving him to the same luxurious agony.