The feeling of being lost, so very lost, assailed him. It was different from the cloying darkness, but as confusing. He didn’t understand how to process what she’d told him. And damn his injury that wouldn’t let him feel anything carnally, for with her tear-luminous eyes and her obvious distress at the confession, he could have taken advantage if he hadn’t been such a bloody gentleman.
“Do you wish to know of my injury?” The whispered question was yanked from him with all the ease she’d pulled all his secrets from him.
“Yes.” She took possession of one of his hands.
“Very well.” Finn nodded. “I took a ball to my spine. The field doctor said the bones could have been shattered, but I wouldn’t know until I arrived in England.” He rubbed his free hand along his jaw. “Once at the hospital in Bath, I was examined again and properly stitched up. My spine is intact, but the nerves twisted around it have been compromised if not cut. It all has resulted in paralysis.”
Jane gave him a small, intimate smile. “Go on.”
“All of that means I have no control over my bowels, resulting in the need to wear a cloth diaper like I’m a damned baby.” He tried to pull his hand from hers, but she held on. “My valet must exercise my legs every day to keep the muscles limber, so they don’t waste away. He must help me bathe myself morning and night. Beyond that, my prick doesn’t work, so I can no longer… perform with a woman.” He looked away, loath to let her see the failure and embarrassment that was no doubt reflected in his eyes.
“There’s nothing to be ashamed of.” She put a palm against his cheek and forced him to look at her. “You are alive, have been given a second chance. That’s all.”
“Oh, this is a second chance?” He scoffed. “This being reliant on everyone for nearly everything, even the basest of things?”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Don’t you understand?” His voice rose along with his ire. “Even if I put all of that aside, I cannot sexually pleasure a woman, so even if I found someone, fell in love with a woman, what is the damned point?” Did she not understand the enormity of that fate?
A tear fell to her cheek. “There are other ways to show a woman love, Finn.”
“Bah.” He wrenched from her touch that he both craved and feared. “No woman is that self-sacrificing nor patient.”
“So you assume, but to the right woman, none of it will matter.” She looked down the path, her gaze far away. “Love, true love, accepts someone for who they are, not who they used to be or who they can become.”
What a poor deluded, naïve girl she was. “Pardon me if I choose not to believe you.” Especially her, a woman who’d already given herself to two men. Perhaps had she been a virgin it wouldn’t have made a difference, but now? No doubt she’d found him lacking. And why the bloody hell was he even thinking along those lines? There was nothing between them except friendship, and that was becoming quite trying at the moment.
“There you go, retreating beneath your bridge again, too afraid to stare the future in the face and see what might be possible because you can only see what you’ve lost.” Jane shrugged. She tossed her reticule to the bench between them. “My brothers think you are a project that needs fixing.”
“Why?” The change of subject rocked his mind. Or perhaps it was being in her company that set him at sixes and sevens. It was terrifying to like having her about when she’d all but admitted her path wouldn’t run parallel to his.
Not in those words, of course.
Color blazed on her cheeks. Her freckles stood out in stark relief. “When I work at the clinic and find men who strike a chord with me, my brothers call them projects, for I give them the tools to fix their outlooks.”
Something inside him broke. Too many emotions crashed into each other within his chest, threatened to break him apart from the onslaught. “I do not need fixing!”
“I never said you did.” One of her red eyebrows rose. “You’re the one who can’t seem to grasp the concept.” Compassion clouded her eyes. “There’s nothing wrong with you that keeps you from being a kind, decent, productive man except your own damned stubbornness.”
His chest tightened, for that was true also. He’d put barriers in his own way out of resentment and bitterness, and to keep from being hurt. “Then why do you want to know about my injury?”
“Are you so daft that you can’t see what’s right in front of you?” Her eyes widened. “I like you as you are, Major Storme. I’m curious, all right? I want to know what makes you… you.” Then a frown tugged those lush lips downward. Confusion lay stamped over her face. “Why is this a bad thing?”
“Because I’ve never had a woman take such an interest in me, the broken me, before.” He waved a hand as his heart beat wildly behind his ribcage. Might as well drive a wedge between them now, so when she finally left him for the duke it wouldn’t hurt more than it already did. “Besides, you’re too sunny and too deuced perpetually happy. I doubt you’ve ever known sadness or grief or trauma.” As soon as the words fell from his mouth, he knew they weren’t true. She’d told him so, and once again, he hadn’t truly listened.
Selfish bastard.
“You’re quite insane, you know.” She turned toward him, eyes flashing green fire, anger lining her expression, and she fairly quivered with ire. “Have you suddenly forgotten my two engagements?” Her eyes reflected exasperation. “Shall I further inform you of my credentials in ill fortune so that I might reach your lofty level of wretchedness?”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Oh, yes you did. Words wound as deeply as a knife or a ball from a rifle, and frankly, I’m weary of being on the receiving end of your bad moods.”
“That wasn’t what I—”
She shook her head when he once more attempted to interrupt. “I lost my grandmother at a time when I needed her most. My brother came back from war missing an arm, and that devastated me to my core, for I had to watch him pick up the shattered pieces of his life and begin anew. My other brother is a brilliant surgeon who adores his profession, but my father won’t allow him to keep working the calling because he’ll have to be an earl someday. It breaks my heart.” She paused briefly for breath, her chest heaving.
“Jane, I—”