‘While you have nobody?’ Lord Stratford said so gently she had to let his words sink in and do their damage.
‘Yes,’ she said and a terrible sob ripped out of her like a rusty saw. ‘Now look what you have done,’ she told him unsteadily and clenched her fists against the fury and heartache and beat them on the air as if it might help, but of course it did not; nothing did when she let the full force of what she had lost on that terrible night at Badajoz overwhelm her.
‘Come here, you stubborn woman,’ Alaric said softly and pulled her into his arms so she could beat him instead, or cry if that worked better. Brave of him and she was wrong; there was comfort to be had in the world after all. Who would have thought a viscount would have a shoulder just the right height and breadth for a tall lady to weep into and feel safe as she let the storm rage at long last?
‘I will damage your fine coat,’ she gasped between sobs. She did not want him to let her go, but he was sure to when he felt her tears soaking into his neat but superbly cut country gentleman’s clothes.
‘Serve me right,’ he murmured and thank goodness her stupid mob cap must have fallen off so she could feel him whisper it against her unruly hair.
And Alaric just went on holding her when she could not halt the storm of tears she had probably made worse by denying it an outlet for so long. It was such a relief to let out all the hurt and loneliness she had kept to herself in her parents’ little house in Bath and even when she had come here with a brother still raw from the war. Alaric whispered the occasional word of comfort as he bent over her like a protector and she felt safe. She dare not even think the word, lover, but there it was in the back of her mind like a siren voice. She could almost feel her eyes going red and swollen as she tried to grab back enough self-control to remember who they were and where they were before someone came in and caught him with a weeping widow in his arms.
‘I must stop this nonsense,’ she murmured and tried to draw back from him.
‘It is not nonsense and you have at least two years’ worth of Bath gossip to get out of your system,’ he told her with a wry smile when most men would hastily mumble an excuse and back away.
‘They were awful and I suppose seeing Mama and Papa again has reminded me of that time and how miserable I was there,’ she told him with a grimace.
‘Jealousy,’ he told her as if it was so obvious it needed no more explanation.
‘I am all but penniless and have lost the husband I eloped with—how can anyone be jealous of me?’
‘You are a beautiful woman and that is a black mark against you for the likes of them. And you have had what they never can and never will have themselves because you dared everything for love. Can you imagine a single one of them giving up their comforts and position for a man even if they loved him to distraction?’
Marianne disregarded his flattering notion she was beautiful, but she did think hard about some of her mother’s cronies and the little lives they led. She almost laughed at the very idea of a single one following in the tail of an army to be with the man they loved. ‘No,’ she said as all the petty limits they put on their own lives suddenly struck her as pitiful and so very unimportant she wondered she had ever let them make her feel less than they were.
‘Neither can I, nor a sensible man asking them to. They would make his life a misery and I suspect they bullied and belittled you because you made their lives look so small and dull in comparison.’
Tears had made her eyes sore and the occasional sob still shook her, but he had not pulled away in disgust. Alaric’s strength and humanity seemed to have melted something icy and painful inside her and she was glad. She felt as if she could breathe more freely without it, even if every breath she took drew in his warmth and the pure temptation of being alone with him in a musty old room. Reminding herself she must look terrible, she scrubbed at her eyes with her handkerchief. ‘How did you know all that?’ she asked him huskily.
‘Perhaps I know you and all I need to do is imagine the small lives they lead and contrast them with you and there you are—jealousy and guilt. It is obvious. No wonder they disliked you, Marianne. How dare you be twice the woman they are?’
‘A few were men,’ she qualified with a shudder.
He frowned. ‘Damn them for being spiteful when you rebuffed them, then.’
‘How did you know they tried to seduce me first?’
‘I have eyes and a heart and feelings, Marianne,’ he told her as if he thought she might not have noticed.
‘I know,’ she said soothingly, but it seemed to make him even more gruff and grumpy.
She made the mistake of patting his shoulder to soothe whatever ailed him and felt the fine tension in his body. Intent on what she wanted for once she stood on tiptoe and kissed him, quick and hard, on the lips. She would have swiftly backed away if he had not taken over as if he was starving for her, then deepened it into something more intense. Their kiss in the garden had felt warm and wonderful, but this was far more passionate, much more demanding.
She felt little pulses of
