Her hand flew to her chest, pressing against her racing heart, hearing only one thing just then. “You sent Adara away?”
His face tightened with a scowl. “You didn’t expect me to let her remain after her little stunt.”
She touched his face, delighting in the rasp of his cheek against her palm. “This is your home, Spencer. I want it to be mine, too. I want it to be where we raise Nicholas and our children.”
She’d clung to The Harbour out of fear and desperation. For so long she had viewed the outside world in the same way she’d perceived the darkness. Something to be feared. Avoided. A place where only bad things happened. Like in Barbados.
“You mean that?”
The Murdochs were long overdue a rest, a reprieve from hard work and the overhanging cloud of poverty. Because of Spencer, she could give them the security and peace to enjoy their last years. Nicholas would adore Ashton Grange and the grand adventure it presented. Amy, too. It would provide them hours of exploration. Her aunt, on the other hand, would likely choose to remain at The Harbour. She’d not wish to leave her home of so many years.
Evie nodded, smiling. Again. “I do.”
He smiled back, a deep, contented curve on his lips. He lowered her back down on the bed, his arms twin bands of muscle on either side of her, caging her in. Her belly tightened. His eyes gleamed pale green down at her, devouring. “Then let’s fetch Nicholas and bring him home.”
Home. Their home. For the first time, she believed it. Believed she could have that with him.
Perhaps she could have everything.
He kissed her then, and her heart thrilled at the taste of him on her lips. She gasped when he entered her, exulted in the hard fullness of him fitting inside her so perfectly. Nothing had ever felt as sublime, as right as his body merging with hers.
He slid his hands under her to cup her bottom and lift her for his every thrust, driving her deeply into the bed. She turned her face, crying out into the pillow beneath her head and hiding her tears.
Tears of joy. Tears of grief that her courage had failed her and the man she had fallen in love with did not yet truly know her. That when he did, she risked losing him forever.
Much later she woke to a darkened room. Her sore and well-used body stiffened for a moment at the swirling black surrounding her until she felt Spencer’s chest beneath her cheek.
She sighed. The dark didn’t frighten her anymore. Not with Spencer near her. “Hmm.” She stretched. “What time is it?”
His hand caressed her arm, the rasp of his callused palms already familiar. “Late.”
He slid from the bed, and she shivered, bereft without his warm body against hers. “Spencer?”
“Just a moment.”
She heard him add logs to the fire. Sparks popped and a dull glow grew, swelling on the air. Smiling, she settled back on the bed and waited, wondering if she had ever felt so contented, so safe.
In moments, he joined her again. Shivering, he pulled her close to his n**ed body. A body that had lost some of its decided warmth in his brief visit to the hearth. She squealed at his icy toes on her calves. “Stop!”
He laughed and hugged her tight.
Sobering, she murmured against his skin, “You don’t have to do that, you know.”
“Do what?”
“Stoke the embers.”
“You’re not afraid of the dark anymore?”
She didn’t bother questioning him on how he knew about her irrational fear: she’d failed to hide it well from him that night at the inn.
Rolling her fingers against his chest, she planted a kiss on his supple flesh, then answered, “I guess it was never the dark that frightened me.”
“No? What then?” His hand drew circles over her arm.
“The demons of my past, I suppose. They always seemed to find me in the dark.”
“What demons?”
She took a deep, bracing breath. “One night, long ago, a man broke into my bedroom and attacked me.”
His hand stilled on her arm; he went rigid as stone against her. She didn’t move, didn’t dare look at him, too afraid at what she might see in his face.
“He didn’t”—she broke off, moistening her dry lips—”succeed at his foul purpose, but I’ve never shaken the memory.”
“When did this happen? Where?”
Alarm trickled down her spine at his biting voice. She was afraid to give away too much, and rightly so. She had no idea what Ian had told him. He could easily start connecting pieces in her patchwork of lies if she mentioned an employer, if she mentioned Barbados.
She should have said nothing, should keep herself apart from him, but she couldn’t. She wanted him too much. Needed intimacy beyond the physical.
Tossing caution aside, she murmured, “This was before Nicholas, before Ian.” That much was true, at least.
“I’ll have this man’s name.” His voice rumbled dark and forbidding beneath her ear.
A shiver chased down her arms. She propped up on an elbow to look down at him, apprehension rushing through her blood. “Why?”
A muscle feathered his jaw as his mouth pressed into a hard line. His hand on her arm tightened. “I want his name, Evie.”
She shook her head. “Don’t bring this back for me. Please. Let it go.”
Something in his eyes flickered then. His hand on her arm loosened. “Have you?”
“It’s over. Done, Spencer.” She moistened her lips and slowly shook her head. “Something changed yesterday in the cellar. I stopped hiding from the dark. I finally faced it. And you came for me.” Her voice gained speed, conviction. “Then, I realized good things can happen in the dark, too.” Wonderful, splendid things. She spread her hand, splaying her fingers outward over his chest. The strong, steady thump of his heart pulsed against her palm.
Those bad memories didn’t plague her anymore. It was as though Spencer had exorcised her ghosts, buried them firmly in the past . . . given her something else, something better on which to focus.
“I still want the man’s name, so that I could pay him a visit. You’re my wife now. He needs to be held accountable.”
Sighing, she settled back against him. “Well, he’s far from here. You would have to cross an ocean to mete out your justice, and I’m not keen on you leaving me.”
He grunted and wrapped his arms around her. “I never want you hurt again. The thought of something happening to you . . .” He tugged at the ends of her hair draped across his chest.
An unfamiliar pang clenched her heart. She’d never thought a man would care for her this way, that she could find what Fallon had found with her husband. Spencer hadn’t declared his love for her, but she knew that he liked her, wanted her. They had affection. Wasn’t that enough?
Would it be enough if he learned her secret? If he learned that he hadn’t married Linnie? That she wasn’t the woman he had developed a tendre for through the battlefields of the Crimea? Would it matter to him? Was she brave enough to find out?
How long could she keep a lie from the man she loved? Her chest tightened at the idea of breaking free of the lies, confessing all to him. Could she bear to do it if it meant losing their newfound closeness? Losing him? Wild desperation burned through her at the prospect.
With her throat tightening, thickening with dread, she knew she had to risk it. She must. Because they could never have anything real, anything genuine otherwise.
“I want you happy, Evie. I would never want you hurt or frightened.”
A ragged breath shuddered up through her chest. “I am happy.” And that bit of truth frightened her. It didn’t seem wise to let herself feel happy. Happy with him. When it could all disappear with a few simple words. “Nothing scares you,” she teased, eager to change the topic. “You survived war.”
“I wouldn’t say that. Fear drove me to take the commission.”
She propped up on one elbow and looked down at him. “You became a soldier because you were scared? You’d rather risk a saber, a bullet, than”—she shook her head, bewildered—”than what?”
“Becoming my father. My brothers. Reprobates all, drowning themselves in vice until they were shells of men. I watched my father crush my mother, kill her with betrayals and lies and then not shed a tear at her grave.”
Lies. Her stomach heaved. Betrayals and lies colored his past—a past he’d entered war to avoid.
Lies and betrayals colored his present, too. He just didn’t know it.
He continued, “My father and brothers thought nothing of lying or cheating to get what they wanted in life.”
“Adara,” Evie couldn’t help suggest, too curious to hold her tongue.
“Yes. Adara. She was the catch of the season. A prize for Cullen to lord over all those vying for her hand. Myself included.” He caught a strand of her hair, rolled it between his fingers. “Only I’m glad he won her.”
“You’re not like them, Spencer.”
“Am I not?” His gaze ensnared her. “I didn’t give you much choice in marrying me. I manipulated the situation. I let Sheffield think I was Nicholas’s father. Because I wanted you.”
It hurt to hear him say that. He wanted Linnie—he thought he had her. There was never any escaping that in her mind.
She forced a smile and teased, “Well, yes. That was a bit manipulative. Perhaps you’re a little like them, then.”
Spencer smiled, only there was no levity behind it. “My father believed our birthright made us above everyone. The Winterses take what they want and the rest of the world be damned . . . he raised us to be that way.”
Her smile vanished, and she shook her head. “You’re not that way,” she insisted. “You’re considerate. Selfless. You married me for Nicholas, for Ian—”
“Did I?” he broke in, his eyes vivid, almost a silvery green. “Looking at you right now, feeling the way I do, it’s hard to imagine that.”
She swallowed.
Still holding her hair, he tugged her face closer. His lips singed hers as he spoke. “I’ll be honest.”
Because honesty was so important to him.
“I married you out of the basest, most selfish of impulses.”
And then he kissed her like a man denied food and water for far too long. Like a man returned from war, hungry for the woman of his heart. Anything else to say was lost in the hot press of his lips over hers.
He didn’t need to explain himself. She understood perfectly. Understood the slide of his tongue against hers . . . the hand tangling fiercely in her hair, the roll of his body over hers. As if he could never get enough of her. As if he wouldn’t be whole until he found a way to fuse their bodies together.
She understood.
Just as she understood her desperate love for him swelling in her heart. Damn.
Chapter 24
Evie fidgeted in her seat as they clattered through Little Billings and neared home. Spencer watched her, warmth constantly glowing in his green gaze. The look made her feel warm, made her remember what he could do to her . . . what he had done all the previous day. And still, she longed for more. Longed for him again and again.
“You look like a little girl bouncing on your seat,” he teased, leaning forward to adjust the heavy blanket over her lap.
“I’ve never been apart from Nicholas this long before,” she replied.
Her heart raced as they stopped before the house. Spencer didn’t wait for the driver to open their door. He descended and helped her down. She surveyed with fresh eyes the whitewashed cottage that had been her solace during the last years.
The Harbour looked different. Smaller, not nearly so . . . essential to her existence. She missed the people within, but not the house, not the sanctuary she had clung to through the last five years. She slid a glance at the strong profile of her husband. He had done that. Had wrought change in her.