She didn’t want to interrupt, so she waited for him to continue. In the meantime, she skimmed her fingertips across the varied slopes of his muscled chest.
“When I was twenty-five, I fell in love with Eliza. She was the daughter of a cobbler. Dark-haired and so full of vibrancy and laughter, she was everything I dreamed. Her father didn’t like me, but she believed he would come around. I wanted to earn his approval, and not just for her, but for me. I craved her family, that sense of belonging that had eluded me my entire life.”
His words curled around her heart and made her love for him expand. Emotion cinched her throat, and she flattened her palm against him. Perhaps the heat of his flesh would warm the chill inside her.
“I planned to leave Partridge’s employ. To do that, I reinvented myself as the Vicar, a moneylender in Blackfriars.”
At the mention of that name, a tremor passed through her. She wanted to ask how he’d become acquainted with Gilbert, but again, she wouldn’t interrupt.
“Partridge didn’t like that I left.” Rafe’s jaw clenched. “I was his best officer, you see. He gave me an ultimatum: return to his employment or he’d ruin my life. I thought he meant my new business endeavors. In addition to lending money, I also owned my own receiver shops—and the bookshop in Paternoster Row. And I was making other investments, looking to the future, because by then I had a wife, and soon I would have a child.” His voice cracked.
Anne cupped his neck, stroking her thumb along the underside of his jaw. “I’m so sorry.” She assumed he was going to tell her that Eliza had died in childbirth.
He took a deep breath and looked into her eyes. “This is where I may lose you—and I won’t blame you for it. Every time I told you I wasn’t worthy or that you could never know everything about me, this is what I was referring to. It isn’t just that I was married or my wife died. Or even that Partridge killed her—and our unborn child.”
Rafe’s body went completely rigid. Anne held her breath, desperate for him to continue and yet terrified by what he might say next.
“It’s that I killed him in retribution. I stole into one of his flash-houses where he was, and I cut his throat open, just as he’d done to Eliza.”
Anne clapped her hand over her mouth lest the sob gathering in her chest escape. After everything he’d endured, to suffer the loss of the family he was building was unimaginable. It was no wonder he held himself apart, that he’d tried to keep her at arm’s length.
When she trusted herself to speak, she lowered her hand. “You haven’t lost me. And you won’t. I still love you. I will always love you.”
“Truly?” He brought his hand to the side of her neck. “I can’t imagine you loving me when I can’t really love myself. When I lost Eliza, I lost myself. I didn’t think I could be found.”
“Well, I found you. And I’m not going to let you go.”
He dragged his thumb along her jaw. “Sometimes the depth of my emotion frightens me,” he said softly. “It’s why I tried so very hard to hold myself from you, despite being pulled quite strongly toward you from the moment we met. Losing Eliza, discovering how I lost my parents… If I lost you—”
She shook her head fiercely, thrilling at his admission of the way he felt about her from the very beginning. “You won’t.”
He smiled, but there was a sadness in his eyes that pressed on her heart. “I will always be afraid of losing those I love. That’s simply what happens to me.”
“You haven’t lost Selina.”
“No, but I nearly did. We were apart for almost twenty years, and that was my fault.”
She put her hands on his cheeks, holding him tenderly. “None of this is your fault. How can you even think that?”
“It’s amazing what you can get yourself to believe.”
“Then believe this: I love you, and you’re quite stuck with me.” She lifted her left hand from his face. “I have the betrothal ring to prove it.”
“I was certain you’d want to cry off,” he whispered.
“I was angry.” The edge of her mouth lifted in a wry smile. “But I really didn’t want to endure a second broken engagement because my betrothed was arrested.” She inhaled, the smile fading. “You aren’t going to be arrested, are you?”
“I don’t think so. At least not according to Harry.”
“He would know.” Anne caressed his jaw, his collarbones.
He put his hand on her thigh, the warmth of his palm heating her skin. “You had every right to be angry, particularly about Chamberlain. He’s a blackguard. I’ve had to talk myself out of having him thrashed in Newgate.”
“You could do that?”
“I know many people,” he said darkly.
“How did you meet Gilbert?”
“He came into a gaming hell I owned near Covent Garden.”
She gaped at him. “You also owned a gaming hell?”
“Two. I sold them last year.” His fingers skimmed along the rise of her hip.
“Is there anything you haven’t done?”
One side of his mouth ticked up. “I haven’t been an earl.”
“Not yet,” she said with determination. “You need a bandage. And some rest.”
“Are you inviting me to stay?”
She slipped from the bed and picked up her dressing gown from the bench at the foot. “For a while.”
“I’ll go before it’s light.”
Tying the gown closed, she went in search of
