When It's Perfect (32 page)

Every factor known to man would keep them from enjoying a happiness together. The bridge was simply too great to cross.

It had been twenty-four hours or so since she’d visited with Claudette in St. Austell, and since that time a world of emotions had passed through her, lingering to agonize her until she’d finally organized her feelings. She had to tell Marcus everything, though nothing had worried her so much in recent memory.

“You’ve been pensive today.”

She closed her eyes to the sound of his deep voice, always soothing.

He touched her then, just a gentle rub of his hand at her neck.

She turned to him, her back to the wind, her skirts billowing out in front of her to drape across his legs as he stood so close. He was magnificent of form, dressed casually in a light gray shirt and dark gray pants that matched the sky and illuminated his beautiful eyes. He watched her intently, a frown on his brow, his lips a hard determined line of concern.

She tried to smile, though the effort was weak. “I’ve been doing a great deal of thinking, I suppose.”

He lowered his hand to her shoulder, caressing her with strong fingers. It was all she could do not to sway into it.

“Thinking about us?” he asked, his voice a near whisper.

Mary reached for his hand and pulled it down so that she could clasp it with both of hers. “I’ll be leaving Cornwall soon,” she breathed, afraid he might not have heard it and she would be forced to repeat her words—words that filled her with acute sorrow.

“I think that’s something
we
need to discuss—”

She reached up and placed her hand gently on his mouth, silencing him. He grasped her fingers, kissing each of them one by one.

She did smile then. “You’re tickling me.”

He grinned, rubbing his lips against her skin. “Good. I intend to tickle you for a long, long time.”

Her stomach clenched at the thought of losing everything they shared, the moods and conversation, the nuances in their looks, their tones, their intimacy. Her smile faded and he noticed it.

“What is it?” he pressed, his voice edged with concern.

Drawing a deep breath, she pulled her hand back and crossed her arms over her breasts, defensively, she supposed, though not intentionally to cut him off. She just wasn’t ready to be held and caressed knowing all she had yet to say.

“I have a story to tell you, Marcus,” she began, turning her body to the east again, gazing off toward the open sea. “It’s not a good one.”

He waited silently, with the patience she’d always admired in him even as she knew instinctively that he wanted to charge at her with questions.

At last, gathering strength, she murmured, “It’s a story of a lady, well, not much more than a girl, really. How life changed for her while she didn’t even notice the important things around her.”

Again, he said nothing, though she did hear him inhale deeply.

A bird squawked overhead, swooping low then flying out over the choppy water, and she watched it, noting that he probably did not. She could feel his eyes boring into her, his curiosity building to the level of his concentration.

Mary rubbed her upper arms with her hands, shivering from the dampness in the air, from the roughness of cotton along her sensitive palms.

“This lady,” she continued solemnly, “had been enchanted by a young gentleman, a viscount, actually, who had been a very marriageable prize for several seasons. She had fallen easily in love with him, wanting so desperately to marry him. He’d said he’d loved her, too, and that they’d make a handsome couple, that all they had left to do was to plan for their marriage and their lives together. The wedding would be festive, and beautiful, and attended by the socially elite. Her thoughts of him were so sweet, so naïve, and so bathed in the illusion of contentment and trust. Always trust.”

Mary swallowed hard and closed her eyes, feeling the wind on her cheeks, in her hair, hearing it roar against the cliffs below. Marcus stood watching, waiting, no doubt confused, even troubled, but making no sound. It was time to tell him everything that should never again be

spoken.

She raised her face to the cloud-darkened sky and hugged herself, squelching the cry of grief that threatened. “He was always the perfect gentleman, charming to a fault, an impeccable example of gentility,” she whispered just loud enough for him to hear. “He saw to that. He wanted the lady as well, but in far more intimate terms. She was to be his, at his discretion. He was the lord, the viscount, and she so young…”

Marcus took a step toward her, his shoes crunching on the rocks at his feet. Mary stepped back from his approach, unwilling to let him touch her as she knew he’d attempt to do. Lifting her lashes, she faced him squarely again, gazing into eyes of intense and haunted blue.

Marcus Longfellow, Earl of Renn, so large and powerful, so intelligent and caring, so perfect for her in every way but one.

She drew a shaky breath, still embracing herself against the onslaught of emotion she knew she was about to witness.

“It is so difficult for a man to understand a lady’s desires,” she murmured. “They range from hope to disenchantment, from love to loathing. This lady wanted love and hope and the promise of family from the viscount of her choosing, but he instead found a way to give her only disillusionment and anger and hate.”

Marcus swallowed harshly; his nostrils flared, but he didn’t interrupt.

She continued relentlessly as she began to express the pent-up bitterness within. “On a beautiful spring evening, not all that long ago, this proper and illustrious viscount invited the lady he said he wanted to marry inside his beautiful coach—just the two of them—and took her out for a ride in the country. It was a bold request, and a daring move for the lady to be alone with her intended, unchaperoned. But she wanted so badly to please. And of course she trusted him, as did everyone else in the lady’s family.”

Mary straightened, standing rigidly against the strong wind, ignoring it, and how it blew her hair and skirts out in front of her in wild freedom.

Pressing her lips together momentarily to keep from crying openly, she finally revealed, “On that dark evening, Marcus, the young and naïve lady was not given the choice that should have been hers. The lady succumbed to her greatest fear, the greatest revulsion.” She took a shaky breath, tears clouding her eyes. “It’s not clear if she struggled to the end, or simply gave in out of love and hope and trust. Over time memories are lost, or sometimes destroyed by the simple unwillingness to remember.”

Mary paused, loath to turn away from the shock and pain she witnessed on Marcus’s face. His eyes blinked in growing incredulity; his jaw hardened in outrage as he fisted his hands at his side. He understood, he just didn’t yet know the depth of her disclosure. But she would tell him everything. There was no turning back now.

“The gracious and charming viscount ruined the lady that night, Marcus,” she whispered, her tone husky and spilling over with utter desolation. “He took her innocence in mind, in spirit, and in flesh, and didn’t care in the slightest that his act of power and persuasion would leave so much damage. He wanted and he took, and there was no fighting because the lady loved him. She loved and trusted him. She accepted her fate—until the viscount turned away from her.”

Marcus’s body clenched in rage as he stood in front of her, still as cold stone. “Who is the lady, Mary?” he asked, voice raspy and low.

Tears began to flow down her face just as a sprinkling rain broke free of the clouds above. He knew. He understood everything, but he wanted her to say it. She centered on him, on the love she felt inside for the man before her. But as much as she wanted to go to him, to walk forward three feet and take him in her arms, she couldn’t. It would be too much for both of them, and Mary realized that if he pushed her away at this moment, the devastation would be unendurable.

A sob tore from her throat as she hugged herself tightly to whisper,

“The lady is me, Marcus.” She closed her eyes, rain patting her face, mixing with the wetness on her lashes. “And I learned yesterday, from Claudette Coswell, that nearly ten years later, it is also Christine.”

He said nothing for a moment, and never had a silence been so deafening, so chilling.

Still, she couldn’t look at him.

Don’t hate me, Marcus.

Suddenly he stepped forward and grabbed her upper arms. “What happened?” he whispered into the wind.

She couldn’t answer him.

“What
happened
!” he asked again with more force, shaking her once.

“To you, to Christine?”

She didn’t understand what he wanted. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry…”

And then, crushing every single fear she entertained within, he yanked her hard against his body, holding her tightly, his arms wrapped around her protectively, his face in her hair, whispering her name over and over.

The rainfall grew stronger, saturating their clothes that clung to their

bodies, their hair to their skin; the wind blew fiercely off the cliff, and still he refused to release her.

Mary absorbed his warmth and strength, relished his hard and protective form as it molded to her own, felt the steadfast beating of his heart where she rested her cheek.

“I should have seen it, Marcus,” she breathed, unsure if he even heard her. “I should have known what had happened to her.”

“Shhh…” He squeezed her tighter, his fingers in her hair as he pressed her head to his chest.

Marcus didn’t know how long he stood there, allowing the cold, pouring rain to pound down atop them from the heavens. The moment of her confession would forever be engraved in his mind, but not the time spent holding her now, feeling nothing but numbness fused with fury, and an unyielding and passionate love for the woman in his arms.

If he’d not understood his feelings for Mary Marsh before, he understood them now.

Mary and Christine. Two lives crossing paths in so many ways. Oh, God, he wanted to kill someone. To rip limbs, to slice a throat, to torture slowly and without mercy until the aggressor became the victim.

Instead, he soothed and held softness and beauty against him, smelled rainwater and flowers, and sensed an inner courage that he’d never imagined in a woman. He had so many questions—questions that would only bring grief, and yet he needed to know.

She didn’t move, aside from a shiver or two. For minutes he held her in the wind and rain, oblivious, but she didn’t push him away. She needed his strength and warmth, and that simple understanding calmed him inside, kept his mind focused and steady.

At last he whispered, “Christine told me so much about you in her letters, Mary. She had me wanting you before I ever met you.”

She buried her face in his wet shirt. Softly, she replied, “She told me so very much about you as well, Marcus.”

“More than I probably ever want you to know,” he returned wryly.

She let out a quiet, pained laugh and leaned her head back, eyes closed. “I wish she’d never told me anything.”

That hurt him, at least a little. Then he decided he didn’t understand her. “Why?”

Her lashes fluttered open and she gazed into his eyes, hers brimming with tears that spilled onto her wet cheeks. “If I didn’t get to know you from her persistent and unconventional attempt at matchmaking, I would never have admired you from afar, would never have wanted to

be touched by you, could have left here and never looked back.” Her lips trembled as she started to cry openly. “As it is,” she breathed, “I’m going to leave St. Austell with wonderful memories that will haunt me and a heart that will never heal.”

Marcus released her, pulled back from the embrace, and took her hands in both of his, engulfing them, and holding them tightly against his chest. He waited until she met his gaze before he spoke. “Did you think for even a second,” he demanded harshly, “that I would let you go so simply and easily after everything we’ve shared? That your future would exist without me?”

She blinked, unconcerned with the rain and wind that swirled around her, her features going slack with nothing short of astonishment.

“What are you talking about?” she asked, dazed.

He wanted to shake her again—or kiss her passionately until she allowed herself to comprehend the inevitable. And Marcus believed wholeheartedly that she simply didn’t understand what he wanted because she had never allowed herself to consider it.

“I didn’t just want you as I got to know you from my sister’s letters, Mary,” he said intensely, gripping her hands. “I started loving you.”

Wide-eyed and incredulous, she simply stared at him.

He brought one of her hands to his lips, kissing her knuckles then rubbing them against his mouth, his gaze never straying from hers.

“Meeting you, and getting to know you at last, proved to me that
you
are the journey’s end, Mary Marsh. There is no richer treasure worth discovering on earth.”

“Marcus—”

He cut her off with a kiss to her mouth, so full of fire and hope, of desperation and longing.

She succumbed as she pulled her hands from his and slid her arms around his neck, clinging to him, holding him tightly as she explored him with a marvelous passion.

He threaded his fingers through her wet hair, giving her what he knew she needed, what she’d always wanted.

“I told you not to be afraid,” he said fervently against her mouth. “As you’ve never trusted another, trust in me. Trust in me…”

She started trembling again in his arms, and this time Marcus was certain it had nothing to do with the damp air and wind. He tightened his grip, but just as quickly, she pulled away from him, forcefully breaking the kiss as she shook her head.

“This is not my life, Marcus,” she whispered, voice pained.

He stilled within from her steadfast denial of all they felt for each other. A cold dread washed over him as he gazed down into her haunted eyes. “This is
our
life, Mary.”

For a brief moment, she placed her face in her palms, shaking her head. Then she took a step back and hugged herself again, her arms crossed over her breasts. “What we have between us isn’t a reality we’ve made together, it’s a dream, a fantasy. Don’t you understand? It’s not real. We come from two different worlds, you and I, and they have no business combining. I learned that years ago.”