Mary Balogh: The constant heart

He covered her hand with his briefly. "I know that, love," he said. "But I did not even seem to have the freedom to offer you that much. I should have been hanged for all the promises I made you, especially at Cenross. I think I must have been trying to force my own hand, making it almost impossible for myself to give you up." He laughed harshly. "So I ended up doing everything wrong. I promised you the world and I left you."

"You could have told me," Rebecca cried. "I could have helped you, Christopher. I could have worked too as a teacher or a governess. Why did you not tell me?"

He gave her a grimace of a smile. "I chose not to," he said. "I went to London to find what prospects there were of employment. And I discovered a gold mine!" His voice had become harsh. "I met Angela and her father, and for some reason her father made it very obvious to me that she was available. He was a man with one ambition in life: to reach the top of the social ladder by any means possible. He did not need a wealthy man-he had enough money for an army. He wanted a man of genteel birth. So I married her.''

He looked down at Rebecca, but she kept her head lowered.

"I would not have done it for myself, Becky," he said. "Surely you will believe that. I do not think that I would even have done it for my parents. After all, it was Papa's compulsive gambling habits that had got them into the fix. But I looked at Julian and the girls, so young still, so oblivious to the ruin that was facing them, and I could not deny them the future when it was in my power to do something about it.

"Things have improved now. My actions jolted Papa back to a sense of his responsibilities, I believe. He has recovered well enough that he no longer needs my constant support. But at the time that marriage seemed absolutely necessary. I had to choose, Becky, between you and my family. And I chose my family, leaving you an abandoned woman. You see now why I cannot marry you? I would never be able to rid myself of the shame of my past. And you would not be able to forget, either."

"I would not want to forget," Rebecca said quietly but very firmly. "I want to remember always what you did, Christopher Sinclair. But why did you not tell me at the time? How could you have imagined that it would be worse for me to know the truth? Had I known, I would have urged you to do exactly what you did. You must know that. You do not imagine, do you, that I would have been selfish enough to keep you for myself when a whole family would have suffered as a result? I thought you knew me better."

Christopher jerked to a halt and pulled her roughly into his arms. "God, Becky," he said against her hair, "you cannot know how filled with self-loathing I was for those five years of my marriage. I had to forget you, force you from my thoughts and my heart. I could not have stayed sane else. And besides, it seemed only fair that I marry Angela with the intention of making a proper marriage of it. I wanted to be able to give her all of myself. I tried. And I was never unfaithful to her, even when I realized that I had married a fiend and a slut."

Rebecca shuddered within his arms.

"I was justly served," he said. "She had married me too merely for convenience. She wanted respectability and easy access to the most exclusive of bedrooms. I discovered so many of her affairs that I eventually lost count. After the first few months ours was a marriage only in name. She had no attachment to anyone except perhaps to that scoundrel Bartlett, who I think had had hopes of marrying her himself, but who hung around even afterward because she lavished money on him. She seemed to believe it was his child she died bearing."

"Oh, Christopher," Rebecca said, looking urgently up into his face, her arms clasped around his neck. "And I thought I had suffered! Oh, my love, I wish I had known. No, I do not mean that, of course. I would have died, I think, if I had known the whole truth. But if I had just known why you left me. The worst part of these years has been thinking that all my life I had been deceived in your character. But you are far more wonderful than I ever dreamed."

"Oh, no, Becky," he said with a shaky laugh, burying his face against her neck, "no, do not put me on a pedestal, love. I will never be able to forgive myself for encouraging you to trust my love in the full knowledge that I might have to give you up."

"Christopher, I love you," she whispered into his ear. "You will not leave me, will you? Please say you will not leave me. We can still have a life together. We are not so very old. I can still have a child or two."

He laughed and lifted his head to look down into her earnest face. "Becky," he said, "are you offering for me, love? Are you going to visit Papa and ask for my hand?"

She laughed uncertainly back at him. "If that is the only way to have you," she said, "then I shall do so. I shall even go down on my knees to you and ask formally, if you wish."

He chuckled and caught her to him in such a tight hug that she felt as if all the air had been squeezed from her lungs. "Becky," he said, his cheek against the top of her head, "is it really possible that you can love me enough to forgive me? Will you have regrets later, love? I do not think I could bear that. Are you willing to marry me?"

"You have to marry me," she said into his neckcloth. "You have been alone with me, without a chaperon, for all of fifteen minutes. My virtue is hopelessly compromised."

He turned her face up to him with one finger beneath her chin. His face was very serious. "I love you, Becky," he said, "and I could think of no more fitting sentence for my wrongs than to be allowed to spend the rest of my days trying to make you happy. Will you marry me, my love?"

"Yes Christopher," she said, "Oh, yes."

His mouth on hers prevented any further talk for several minutes. And Rebecca's heart sang. This was not a sad or desperate kiss like the others they had shared since his homecoming. This was a kiss of love and affection, of promise, and-of passion. They broke away from each other, breathless.

"Ah," he said, "that brings back memories. I suppose I shall have to wait for you a deuced long time?"

"Not a full year," she said quickly. "Not that long, Christopher. Uncle Humphrey was not my father or my husband. I won't have to wait a year for an uncle, will I?"

"I shall take you to London at Christmas time," he said, "and we will wed quietly. I don't believe that will be unseemly, Becky."

"Christmas time," she said and they smiled warmly into each other's eyes.

"That's an eternity!" they both said together, and they touched foreheads and laughed.

"A compromised woman you may be, my love," Christopher said, "but I will not have you a fallen woman. And you are in grave danger, believe me. Let us walk back to the house. Do you think the tea will still be warm in the pot?"

"We can find out," Rebecca said. "And I am just bursting to tell someone. The whole world, if possible."

He took her hand in a warm grip and turned her back in the direction of the house. "Let us go and tell the world," he said, smiling at her. But he did not immediately move. "But before the world is let in on the secret, love, one more kiss?"

Rebecca smiled and lifted her mouth to his.