Courtney Milan - Trial by Desire

She was also hurt. And looking at her, he could not help but feel as if … as if, perhaps, he’d forgotten something.

Not her; he’d never forgotten Kate. Not their vows; he’d struggled long and hard with how to both cherish Kate and keep her safe from the darkness he knew lurked inside him.

No. After what she’d said in the hall, he was certain he’d not done well by her, and he was not sure how to patch matters up. If he could even do so. She had said their marriage might blow away with one gust of wind; he had no idea how to bring it to life. He wasn’t sure if he could do so, without also resurrecting his own dark demons alongside. But what he did know was that if he kept silent now, if he did nothing to try to mend the hurt she’d just been given, he wouldn’t be able to look himself in the mirror any longer.

He stood and walked to her. Behind him, Harcroft was still nattering on. “These days,” he was growling, “nobody gives a fig about the husband’s rights. Too many newfangled notions interfering.”

Standing above his wife, Ned could see the fair lines of her eyelashes. She didn’t darken them, and as she gazed down into her teacup, those fine, delicate hairs fluttered. Without lifting her eyes to Ned—he wasn’t sure if she was even aware of how close he stood—Kate blew out her breath and added another spoonful of sugar to her tea, followed by another.

The time they had together had been damnably short. But those days spent breaking fast with Kate had been time enough for Ned to know that his wife never took sugar in her tea.

“In fact,” Harcroft was saying behind them, “the very notion of Britain is founded on the rights of a husband.”

“Husbands’ rights,” Kate muttered. “In a pig’s eye.”

“Kate?”

Kate jumped, her teacup clattering in its saucer. “That is the second time you’ve come up behind me in as many hours. Are you trying to do me an injury?”

From her private reaction, she didn’t think much of marriage—either Lady Harcroft’s or her own. Perhaps they had compared notes. He didn’t know what to do, except to try to make her smile.

“Am I interrupting a private conversation between you and your teacup?”

Kate stared down. Even Ned could see the liquid was practically viscous with dissolved sugar. How many spoonfuls had she dumped into it? But she said nothing.

“I must be,” Ned continued. “No doubt you and your tea have a great deal to converse about. Can I call it merely tea?” She looked up at him in surprise. “I’d hate to insult your efforts to transform it into a syrup, after all.”

A reluctant smile touched her lips, and she set down her worthless, oversweetened beverage. And oh, he didn’t know why, but he reached out and laid his hand atop the fingers she had freed. The delicate bones of her hand felt just right against his skin.

“Let me guess,” Ned said. “I’ve mucked up the forms of address. You’ll have to excuse me. I haven’t thought about etiquette and precedence in years. You’re a duke’s daughter, and furthermore, you are the tea’s only natural predator. According to Debrett, that means—”

“I am not!” she said. But she hadn’t lost that shine in her eyes. Maybe, if he made her laugh again, he could resume where they’d left off. Maybe he could bridge the gap between them with humor.

“You’re not a duke’s daughter?” He looked about the room in exaggerated confusion. “Does anyone else here know that? Because I shan’t tell if you won’t.”

Her hand shifted under his, and he won another reluctant smile from her. This, too, Ned remembered—his attempts, at breakfast, to make her choke on her toast and reprimand him for making her cough. It had seemed a dangerous endeavor then, even in the bright light of day.

“Don’t be foolish,” she admonished.

“Why not?” He reached out and tapped her chin.

She tilted her head. And then, he remembered why conversing with her had always seemed so dangerous. Because she looked up at him. The years washed away. And for one second, the look she gave him was as old and complicated as the look Delilah had once given to Samson. It was a look that said Kate had seen inside his skin, had seen through the veneer of his humor to the very unamusing truth of why he’d left. She might have seen how desperately he needed to retain a shred of control over himself … and how close she came to taking it all away.

His wife had been a threat when he’d married her. She’d been a confusing mix of directness and obfuscation, a mystery that had dangerously engrossed him. He’d found himself entertaining all sorts of lofty daydreams. He’d wanted to slay all her dragons—he’d have invented them, if she lacked sufficient reptilian foes. In short, he’d found himself slipping back into the youthful foolishness he had forsworn.

He’d run away. He’d left England, ostensibly to look into Blakely investments in the East. It had been a rational, hardheaded endeavor, and he’d proven that he, too, could be rational and hardheaded. He’d come home, certain that this time, he would leave off his youthful imaginings.

“Are you planning to play the fool for me?” And in her face, turned up to his, he saw every last threat writ large. He saw the sadness he’d left in her, and felt his own desperate desire to tamp it down. And he saw something more: something stronger and harder than the woman he’d left behind.

He had come back to England, planning to treat his wife with gentlemanly care. He would prove once and for all that he was deserving of their trust, that he was not some stupid, foolish boy, careening off on some impossible quest.

Kate made him want to take on the impossible.

When she smiled, the warmth of her expression traveled right through his spine like a heated shiver. It lodged somewhere in the vicinity of his breastbone, a hook planted in his ribs, pulling him forward.

For one desperate second, he wanted to be laid bare before her. He wanted her to see everything: his struggle for stability, the hard-fought battle he’d won. He wanted to find out why she sat as if she were not a part of this group.

And that was real foolishness. Because he’d worked too long to gain control over himself, and he wasn’t about to relinquish it at the first opportunity to a pretty smile. Not even one that belonged to his wife.

“No,” he said finally. “You’re quite right. I’m done playing the fool. Not even for you, Kate. Not even for you.”

THE SMELL OF HAY and manure wafted to Ned as soon as he stepped inside the stables. The aisle running down the stalls was clean and dry, though, and he walked carefully down the layer of fresh straw. The mare he had pulled from the mews in London for the journey here put her dark nose out over the stall, and Ned reached into his pocket for a small circle of orange carrot. He offered it, palm up; the horse snuffled it up.

“If you’re looking for that new devil of a horse, he’s not in here.”

Ned turned at the sound of this ancient voice. “You’re talking about Champion, then?”

Richard Plum scrubbed a callused hand against an old and wrinkled cheek. It was the only commentary Ned expected the old stable-master would make on the name he’d chosen. Ned could almost hear the man’s voice echo from his childhood. Animals don’t need fancy names. They don’t know what they mean. Names are nothing but lies for us two-legged types.

“I’ve seen a great many horses,” the man offered.

Ned waited. Plum spent so much time around animals—from the horses in the stables to Berkswift’s small kennel of dogs—that he sometimes forgot that ordinary human conversation had an ebb and flow to it, a certain natural order of statement and response. Plum seemed to think all conversations had only one side, which he provided. But if left unprompted, he usually recollected himself and continued.