This silence wasn’t restful. It seethed. With every mile, the tension twisted tighter.
They hadn’t resolved their acrimonious argument. How could they? She wanted what he couldn’t in conscience give her. Tying a beautiful, vital girl like Charis to a physical and mental wreck like him was a sin against nature. He’d always recognized that. His pride wouldn’t countenance it. His heart couldn’t endure it. All the passion in the world didn’t change that one bleak reality.
How the devil was he going to live without her?
The memory of the last, radiant days should fill him with regret. His passion had misled Charis into believing they had a chance together. He’d glimpsed a bright heaven that only mocked him now.
But selfish bastard he was, he couldn’t repent what he’d done in Jersey. Not when desolate solitude beckoned ahead.
After their quarrel, they’d slept apart for the first time in over a week. Not that he’d slept. Instead, he’d sat in the parlor, watching night change to grim day. He’d felt like a mongrel cur tossed into the gutter to starve. He still did. Dear God, was this how the rest of his life was going to be?
He beat back the questions, the guilt, the anguish that plagued him. His gloved hands hardened on the reins, and he urged the ungainly pony to a faster pace. The gig bounced along the rocky track. He couldn’t risk slowing down. The clouds closed in, and they’d be soaked if rain caught them on this heath.
Charis’s gloved hand clenched on the edge of the lurching carriage. It had been the only vehicle available in the small fishing village where they’d found safe harbor this morning. They’d tried to land at Penrhyn Cove, but the seas made it too dangerous.
With every second, the weather worsened. A biting wind howled. The sky loured, black and menacing, and thunder rumbled in the distance. He needed to get his wife to warmth and safety. Where she could ignore him in comfort.
He slapped the reins against the pony’s fat rump. They were still several miles from the house. He made a frustrated sound and looked at Charis.
She studied hi
m, her eyes more brown than green, underlined with dark circles. She looked proud, distant, unhappy…beautiful.
In the strange gray light, her fine brows arched with what he read as disdainful curiosity. “Are you quite well, Gideon?”
“Yes, of course,” he said curtly.
Her lips lengthened with irritation. “You’re very restless, and you’re making bizarre noises.”
“I’m worried about the weather.”
She looked around the open plateau. High in the sky, birds streaked to escape the coming tempest. The wind competed with the gig’s rattle and the clop of the pony’s hooves.
Her hand shifted to touch the necklace he’d given her the morning they left Jersey. England’s greatest heiress must own bank vaults full of spectacular parures. But when he’d seen the amber-and-gold circlet in the jeweler’s window in St. Helier a week ago, he’d immediately thought of Charis. The unusual intensity of the yellow stones reminded him of the light in her eyes when she was happy.
A light noticeably absent today, damn it.
Although her thanks were subdued, she’d seemed to like the trifle. At least she wore it.
Not for the first time, Gideon felt all at sea with his wife. Marriage was a difficult and complicated endeavor. Perhaps it was a good thing that his would be so short-lived, at least in any meaningful sense.
And didn’t that cheer him up no end?
Dourly, he stared past the pony’s ears at the rutted path. It was difficult not to view the surrounding wasteland and threatening sky as omens of his future.
“We’re not far from home, are we?” she asked, without looking at him.
Home. Gideon supposed she must consider Penrhyn her home. Lord knows she’d been exiled from anywhere else she rightfully belonged. Now he prepared to exile her again. He knew he did the right thing in setting her free. But at this moment, it didn’t feel like it.
“Not far. Pray God we beat the rain.”
The road dipped into a tree-filled dell. Interlacing branches turned the gloomy afternoon into night. Away from the wind, the gig’s creak seemed unnaturally loud.
Then the ambush came.
When the tree crashed in front of them, at first, stupidly, Charis thought the wind caused the accident.
Then she realized there was no wind in this hidden hollow.