The Widow Wager (27 page)

“She hadn’t known that before?” Gemma asked softly. “A forced union like ours?”

“No,” he admitted. “She had known about the marriage for months. He was a marquis. Woodley. With all the advantages of the title and the money to go along with it. Even more money than I had at the time.”

She tilted her head. “Woodley. Why do I know that name?”

“Just wait,” he managed to rasp past his suddenly dry lips. Damn, but he wanted that fucking bottle he had started. He wanted that one and another and another until the past went away. It was the only way he knew how to make that oblivion come.

But Gemma wouldn’t let him. He wasn’t certain whether to love or hate her for it.

“Alice told me that while she had once been pleased to marry, she now loved me and she couldn’t go through with it. I told her I would speak to her father, I would try to make him see reason. But something always kept me from him. I went to Alice’s room the night before the wedding. I asked her to run away with me. We would go to Gretna Green, we would marry. But she refused.”

Both Gemma’s eyebrows lifted. “Why? If she loved you, why would she refuse such an offer?”

“She said she owed it to Woodley to keep her promise. She had far more integrity than I. She said that we could be lovers. That we could meet in secret after her marriage.”

“So you did.”

“No,” he said. “No, I didn’t want that. I told her if she loved me as I loved her, she couldn’t accept that either. I asked her again to run away and she refused. So I left. And she married him. She wrote to me several times, but I didn’t answer her letters.”

Gemma moved a step closer. “You said she died. What happened?” His breath shook as he exhaled, and to his surprise, Gemma reached out and took his hand. She lifted it to her chest, holding tight. “I’m here.”

“She threw herself down the stairs,” he said, his voice strangled. “At their London home. She left a note that mentioned me, though I never was allowed to see it. It was my fault.”

He expected her to pull back, to recoil from the fact that he had all but murdered someone he had loved and who loved him. But instead, her expression softened. Her fingers lifted and splayed across his cheek, and she whispered, “It is not your fault.”

“Yes, it is.” He tried to pull away, but she held fast.

“Have you ever spoken about this to anyone before?” she asked.

“No,” he choked out. “No one. About the time she married, my brother was elevated to duke and everything started happening with Serafina. After she died, I wrapped in around myself.”

She filled in the space his story left. “You drank to punish yourself. To forget.”

He nodded. “And I told no one. I suppose I was a coward not to want more censure than I heaped on myself, than her family and husband heaped on me.”

“And they didn’t tell anyone either,” she said.

“To protect her reputation, of course not.”

Her lips pursed and she hesitated a moment before she spoke. “Would you like an outsider opinion about this?”

“I would scarcely call you an outsider,” he whispered.

“The opinion of someone who wasn’t there, then,” she offered.

He shrugged. “If you have one.”

“Of course she must have wanted you, I don’t know how any woman could look at you and not want you. But she knew she was meant to marry when she met you, but she withheld that information. When you offered to sweep her away and marry her, she refused. Crispin, it sounds to me as if she was playing a game that perhaps went far out of hand.”

His lips parted in shock at that assessment. “You don’t know her.”

He pulled away, and she let him go. “Of course I don’t. And I’m certain there were nuances there that I cannot see. But you must at least acknowledge that she was duplicitous in some way.”

He turned his back on her. She was saying words that made Alice seem like a villain in some way. And they were words he had occasionally thought himself, but never allowed to stay in his mind. Words he had punished himself for.

“Gemma, you don’t know what you’re talking about,” he whispered. “Alice was…it was complicated. But I cared for her. And she loved me. She deserved better than her end.”

“An end that was her choice,” Gemma insisted. “One that was not your fault, not her husband’s fault. I am sad that she had troubles that led to her choices, but they
were
her choices.”

“They were her choices that I didn’t stop. If I had done as she asked, become her lover, perhaps it wouldn’t have become too much for her. Perhaps she would have survived.”

“And the two of you would have been tangled in a prison together forever,” Gemma said. “It was unfair to ask it of someone she claimed to love.”

He wanted to deny that, but her words were certainly reasonable.

She edged even closer. “Crispin, whatever you believe about the past and her motives, Alice’s death is not your fault. You cannot punish yourself forever because of it. Not by drinking. Not by locking yourself away from the people in your life who love you. Not by…” She took a deep breath. “Not by pushing me away.”

He froze. Her face was unturned, filled with hope, hope for him, hope for them. She was so utterly beautiful and yet when he felt this draw toward her that went beyond physical desire it sparked such guilt in him.

“Gemma,” he said, his voice breaking. “I
must
push you away. When I look at you and see you as the most beautiful woman I have ever known, I betray her. When I ache not just for your touch but for your very presence, I betray her. When I think of you and forget her, I betray her. And I cannot do that. I’m sorry.”

Pain flared on her face as if the words were written there. Pain he caused and hated himself even more for. Pain he couldn’t face.

So he turned and left the room without another word or explanation. Because he knew that if he ran, if he hid, if he drank, the pain might be avoidable for just a little while longer.

Although she had done nothing more that evening than dance and smile and pretend everything was all right, as Gemma exited the carriage with Mary at her heels, her entire body hurt as if she had been in a physical altercation.

“Poor Crispin and his headache,” Mary said as they entered the house. “I hope he is well.”

Gemma flinched. That was the excuse she had given as to why Crispin had disappeared from the party. The excuse her sweet sister believed, but Crispin’s family did not. All of them had taken their turns trying to find out the truth, but she had repeated her lie over and over.

What was she to say? That Crispin loved a dead woman who had possibly been using him and he had all but told her he would never care for her out of respect? That he had left her standing in the parlor like a fool? That truth was too awful and humiliating.

Fletcher came to them in the foyer, smiling as he took their wraps. “I hope the evening was a success,” he said, looking first to Gemma and then to Mary.

“Very much so,” Mary all but bubbled. “Though we did worry over Mr. Flynn. Is he abed? Has his headache subsided at all?”

Fletcher blinked and Gemma’s heart sank. “Mr. Flynn isn’t…” He stopped, met Gemma’s eyes for a moment, then he nodded. “Miss Quinn, I believe he is a little better. I wouldn’t disturb him, though.”

Mary smiled and then turned to squeeze Gemma’s hand. “Thank you again, for everything you did tonight. It was the first time since my original coming out that I could breathe. But I’m exhausted and I think I will turn in.”

Gemma nodded. “Of course, love. Good night.”

Her sister pressed a quick kiss to her cheek then flitted up the stairs as if the music from the ball still played in her head. When she was out of earshot, Gemma turned to the servant.

“He did not come home?” she asked.

The butler’s gaze fluttered away. “No, ma’am. I thought perhaps it was better not to say that to Miss Quinn.”

“A good instinct,” Gemma said with a sigh. “I did not truly think he would be here.” Fletcher shifted in discomfort and Gemma shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’m thinking out loud. I will retire, as well, Fletcher. Thank you.”

The butler let her take a step before he called out, “Mrs. Flynn?”

She faced him. “Yes?”

His kind expression softened further. “Is there—is there anything I can do?”

She shook her head. “No. I’m afraid there is nothing to be done. Except wait. Thank you, truly, for your kindnesses. They have not been overlooked since my arrival.”

“The household is very pleased to have you,” he reassured her. “And…and I have known Mr. Flynn a good many years, and I can tell you that he has not been so happy in all that time as he has been these few weeks with you.”

Gemma clenched her fist at her side. Did those words make her feel better or worse? She wasn’t certain in this moment.

“Thank you. Good night.”

She moved up the stairs at what felt like a snail’s pace. When she entered the chamber she shared with Crispin, though, all the emotion she had been fighting to keep in check burst free.

The room looked of him, with his book on his end table, the towel he had used to dry his face draped on the basin. It smelled of him. That rich, spicy maleness that made her thighs clench and her heart beat faster.

She loved him.

The words flitted through her, but they were not a surprise even though she had never allowed herself to form her burgeoning feelings into words. It had happened little by little since that first morning he woke and told her he did not recall making her his wife. Every moment since then had been a surrender, a slow fall into something he had already told her he would not ever share.

Tonight he had
shown
her how serious he was.

She was a fool to love him and she knew it. But her heart didn’t allow her to deny it. It didn’t allow her to pretend. So what could she do now?

She sighed as she sank down on the edge of their bed, remaining fully clothed as she turned on her side and grasped Crispin’s pillow. She hugged it against her chest, breathing in his scent.

He cared for her, that much she knew. His parting words had told her, and couldn’t that give her hope?

“When I think of you and forget her…” she mused out loud, saying those words he had said, letting them roll on her tongue.

Was it possible she could make him forget
her
, Alice, more and more? That she could slowly heal his wounds not by demanding he forget them, but by simply spreading the balm of her feelings across them?

“You would have to risk yourself,” she said as she rolled onto her back and stared at the ornate ceiling. “You would give without ever being certain that he would return your affection. He might not ever let himself.”

Those words stung as she said them. But they also gave her strength. They gave her a plan. They gave her a tiny thread of hope.

She rose to her feet and pulled the bell for Kate. When her maid arrived, she said, “Was the other item I ordered from Madame Clout delivered today?”

Kate nodded and slipped into the dressing room only to return with a large white box, tied with a scarlet ribbon. The seamstress’s insignia was embossed on the top. “Shall I open it?”

Gemma blushed, but steeled herself. She had to remember she was in a war. With a dead woman, of all people, someone it would be hard to compete with. So she could not be missish now.

“Yes,” she said. “Open it.”

Kate untied the ribbon and opened the box lid. She pushed aside the filmy tissue paper within and revealed a frothy pile of black lace and red ribbon. Her maid blushed as she lifted the item.

It was small, it was nearly see-through and it was scandalous.

“It’s perfect,” Gemma breathed. “Help me undress and then draw me a bath. Afterward, I’ll be putting it on. I will also want extra candles and scent the pillows. Be sure the fire is high and that we have extra kindling so I can keep it so.”

Kate’s eyes went wide at the swift directions Gemma threw out, one after the other.

“Of course.” Her maid smiled. “You seem to have plans for quite a night.”

But as Kate went to ring for the bathwater, Gemma shook her head. “No,” she whispered, only to herself. “Not a night. A battle. The first of many to come. The first of many I intend to win.”