"Yes."
"Even though it cost you your life-the life you should have had."
"Don't be melodramatic."
"Me?" He laughed harshly. "That's the pot calling the kettle black. But if the shoe fits…" He caught her eye. "And it fits you." He stood directly before her, his gaze locked on her face. "You knew what it would mean from the very first-eleven years ago. If you'd shut your ears to your family's plight and seen out your Season, it's more than likely you would have married well-not, I grant you, well enough to save the earldom, but well enough to save yourself. You would have had a home, a title, a position-a chance to have your own family. All the things you'd been raised to expect. Your own future was there for the taking. You knew that, yet you chose to return to the country and struggle to resurrect the family fortunes, even if it meant you'd become an old maid. After your aborted Season, your family couldn't afford to have you come up again-couldn't afford to let anyone even guess. They certainly couldn't afford a respectable dowry, a point in itself too revealing, but you knew how it would be. So it all fell to you. You sacrificed your life-all of it-for them."
He sounded angry. Alathea set her chin. "You're making too much of it."
He held her gaze mercilously. "Am I?"
She couldn't avoid his eyes, the understanding lighting the hazel depths. The sacrifice of the years swept over her, the loneliness, the pain borne alone in the depths of the country. The mourning for a life she'd never had a chance to live. Dragging in a too-shallow breath, she fought to keep her gaze steady. When she was sure she had her voice under control, she said, "Don't you dare pity me."
His brow quirked in that way that was quintessentially his. "It hadn't occurred to me. I'm sure you made the decision yourself-you set out to do precisely what you've done. I see nothing to pity in that."
The dry comment gave her sensitivity, her vulnerability, the shield she needed. After a moment, she looked away. "So now you know it all."
Gabriel studied her face and wished that were true. In the hours since he'd learned the truth, he'd been buffeted, shaken, rocked to his soul by a tempest of emotions. Anger, raw fury, a desperate hurt, quenched pride; those were easily identified. Other passions, darker, more turbulent, much harder to define, had swelled the tumult to an ungovernable tide that had scored and ripped its way through him.
Now, in the aftermath, he felt, not empty, but cleared, as if the inner temple he'd built to house his soul had been smashed by the torrent, swept from its foundations and the bricks left scattered by the subsiding flood. Now he faced the task of building his inner house again. He could choose a simpler structure, one without the posturing, the false glamor, the boredom of which he'd grown so tired in recent months. Which bricks he chose to fashion his future was up to him, but the fact that he had a choice to make was due to her.
Only she could have caused such an upheaval.
His life from now on depended on what he did next, what he chose next. He'd come here, his anger still raging, fully intending to ring a peal over her. Now that he'd learned the whole story and finally understood what she'd been doing all along, his anger had resolved into something quite different, something intensely protective.
"What's the current state of the earldom's finances?"
She shot him a glance, then grudgingly offered a figure. 'That's the underlying security. The income from the farms adds to that."
"What's that amount to per year?"
Bit by bit he drew the details from her, enough to confirm that not even his genius, not even Devil's touch with management, Vane and Richard's experience, not even Catriona's power could have done more to bail out the Morwellans.
I wish you had come to me earlier-all those years ago.
Thus spake his heart; he knew better than to utter the words.
&
nbsp; "So there's nothing more that can be done there. Your family's as secure as it can be in the circumstances." He ignored her offended stare. "What about this man of yours-Wiggs? Is he reliable?"
"I've always found him so." Stiffly, she added, "If it hadn't been for his intercession with the banks, we would have sunk long ago."
That had to be true. "What's he think of your masquerade-or haven't you told him?"
She didn't meet his eye. "He was very relieved when I told him I'd consulted you."
"So he doesn't know you've been consulting in disguise." He caught the look she threw him. "I need to know-I'm bound to meet the man sometime over this."
She blinked, arrested; at first, he didn't understand, then he did.
His jaw set. He felt like throttling her. "I am not going to walk away and leave you to deal with this alone."
Her relief was obvious, even though, sensing his reaction, she tried to hide it. The look in her eyes as they searched his made it clear she didn't understand his response.
Neither did he-not entirely. It was one of the long, vital list of things he didn't yet know, along with what he felt for her. Even now, standing no more than a foot from her, he had no idea what his feelings truly were. He had no intention of touching her-not yet. He couldn't yet contemplate dealing with the force that he knew would be unleashed when next he did, when next he took her in his arms. The time would come, but not yet, not until he'd realigned his mind and his senses to the new reality. The reality where he could stand so close to her and sense nothing beyond her warmth, a sensual, womanly, highly tempting warmth. No overtense, flickering nerves, no prickling uncomfortableness disturbed him. Their decades-old affliction had died last night when he'd hauled her into his arms and waltzed her down Lady Arbuthnot's ballroom.
While he hadn't yet got a firm hold on what he felt, he had even less idea of what she felt about it all.