‘Why can’t I?’
‘Because I’m not pretty.’
‘I told you that I don’t care about that. And this morning, I thought you looked as though you believed it. To me, you are beautiful. And it has nothing to do with the way you look.’
‘But you can’t love me for anything else. For heaven’s sake, Tom, I’m such a ninny! I haven’t a sensible thought in my head. No mind for study, or books. Even the very few times I’ve tried to do a good deed,’ she said, remembering her attempt to befriend and encourage Mary Endacott to become her sister-in-law, ‘it turns into a disaster. You...’ She smoothed her hand over his bruised brow. ‘You seem to have got me mixed up in your head with some creature you’ve fashioned from your imagination. Your fevered dreams.’
‘No. I liked the look of you before you rescued me from the battlefield and brought me to your bed. I used to watch you, riding about the place with Gideon, or a group of your admirers, and wish I was the kind of man who had the right to form part of your court.’
‘Did you? Did you really? Oh, Tom.’
‘And since we’ve been shut up together like this...talking to you, watching you move about the room, making it feel like home, when I’ve never had a home in my whole life. I’ve never talked to another person, the way I’ve talked with you, this week. Never wanted to. Never had anyone show the slightest interest, if you must know. Never known this sense of connection before. You only have to raise one eyebrow, just a fraction, and I know exactly what you’re thinking.’
Yes, he did seem to understand her, without her going into lengthy explanations all the time. Even just now, when she’d said Gideon wasn’t in the Chapel, he hadn’t asked a lot of tiresome questions about where the coffin had gone, then, or if she’d gone to the wrong chapel, the way Gussie or Harriet would have done. Her sisters, with their very down-to-earth turns of mind, would have taken her literally.
But Tom just knew she meant she couldn’t sense Gideon.
They were in tune, in a way she hadn’t been with anyone.
Not even, if she was totally honest, with Gideon.
The world seemed to tilt crazily as she admitted it. Oh, she’d understood him, right enough. Had sensed what mood he’d been in when he’d written to her, even before she opened the letter and read its contents.
But had he ever really cared about her to the same
extent? While he’d enjoyed talking to her, hadn’t it always been about his adventures? His ambitions?
No! Her stomach cramped into a cold knot. He had listened to her. He had!
But she’d had to explain what she felt. What she thought. He’d never simply known.
Not the way Tom seemed to do, instinctively.
Now it was her heart that seemed to lurch.
‘I haven’t anything to give you, Tom,’ she whispered, guilt-stricken. ‘You know how I feel about marriage.’
‘I’m not asking you to marry me, Sarah,’ he said with that wry grin he always used, she suddenly realised, when he was pretending something didn’t hurt him. She recognised it easily, since she was in the habit of employing meaningless, vague smiles herself.
‘We’ve already established that I could never be acceptable to your family. I just wanted you to know, that’s all.’
‘Oh.’ She sat back and looked at him. Really looked at him. If she wasn’t so set against marriage, if she didn’t think it would feel like a sort of prison, she could make a very good case, with her family, for exactly why he would make her an ideal husband.
‘They aren’t as high in the instep as some families are, you know,’ she said. ‘I know Mama was thrilled when Gussie married a marquis, but she was almost as happy when Harriet chose her scholarly clergyman. And even Justin doesn’t care that much about popular opinion. Otherwise he wouldn’t be so involved in the artillery, would he?
‘It isn’t that,’ he said, gazing at her steadily. ‘You don’t have any idea of how cruel the world can be to people who have stepped outside the bounds of respectability. I’ve lived with the stigma of being the grandson of a traitor, and the son of a bankrupt who committed suicide, all my life. The village boys used to sing a song about me, you know. Tom, Tom, the traitor’s son, Stole a cake and away did run. The cake was eat, and Tom was beat, Like as not, he’ll end in the Fleet. Which pretty much summed up my childhood,’ he said with that lopsided smile. ‘I was so miserable in my aunt’s house I would rather go into the village and steal food than go back for meals. And I was beaten regularly, as I’ve already told you. And everyone always predicted I’d come to a bad end.’
‘Oh, Tom. How horrid for you.’ She hitched one hip on to the bed and took his hand. ‘Nobody should have treated you that way, just because of what your father had done. Or your grandfather.’
‘I’m not telling you this because I want you to feel sorry for me,’ he said fiercely. ‘I want you to understand what it would be like. I don’t want to inflict that kind of public mockery on any woman. Let alone one I truly care for.’ He gripped her hand so hard it made her wince.
Then, seeing it, he drew her fingers to his lips and kissed them fervently.
‘These days here with you, like this, I know they are all I can ever have. And I don’t mind. It’s more than I deserve.’
‘That’s utter rot!’ She drew her hand away sharply, and tucked it in her lap. ‘You hold the rank of major. You’ve fought bravely in battle. And apart from a bit of womanising—’
‘A lot of womanising,’ he corrected her, drily. ‘Let us be accurate.’