Mistletoe Wishes: A Regency Christmas Collection

“I…see.” His voice firmed. “At least I’d never leave a woman alone to face down an angry husband, with a blizzard about to start.”

Shamed heat stung her cheeks. She’d felt so strong and free and self-righteous when she’d arranged to go away with a lover. After ten barren years of thankless loyalty to a man who hardly cared she was alive.

But in retrospect, her behavior seemed shabby. Ill-advised. Despite her doubts, bravado and pride had kept her to her course until she’d reached York and that journey across the moors with no company but Harold and her howling conscience. She’d fought against feeling guilty about betraying Kinvarra, but it was no use. It seemed her marriage vows still held her fast, despite her long misery. With every mile they’d covered, she’d become more convinced that succumbing to Harold’s blandishments had been a horrible mistake.

Damn Kinvarra. He’d scarred her soul, and she’d never escape him.

“You wouldn’t hurt me,” she said with complete certainty.

“No, but Harold didn’t know that.”

She noted that he was upset enough to use Harold’s correct name. She tried to make light of the subject, but her voice emerged brittle and too high. “Anyway, no harm was done. I’m still the impossibly virtuous Countess of Kinvarra, who doesn’t even sleep with her husband. You may rest easy in your bed, my lord, sure that your wife’s reputation remains unblemished.”

An emotion too complex for mere anger crossed his face, but his voice remained steady. “Why now, Alicia? What changed?”

“I was lonely.” Her face still prickled with humiliation, and she knew from his expression that her shrug didn’t convince. “I needed to do something to mark my permanent break from you. It was, in a way, our ten-year anniversary.”

A muscle flickered in his cheek and his stare was uncompromising. “And you wanted to punish me.”

Did she? Even after all this time, turbulent emotion swirled beneath their interactions. What amazed her was that they seemed finally capable of holding a conversation that wasn’t composed entirely of spite and insults. Apparently they’d both changed in their years apart.

She spoke with difficulty, even as she wondered why she confided in her husband of all people. When they’d been married, he’d used any vulnerability as a weapon against her. “I haven’t touched a man since I left you. I’m twenty-eight years old. I thought…I thought it was time I tested the waters again.”

“With that cream puff?” He released a grunt of contemptuous laughter and made a slashing gesture with one hand. “If you’re kicking over the traces, my girl, at least pick a man with blood in his veins.”

“I’ve had a man with blood in his veins,” she said in a low voice. “I didn’t like it.”

That couldn’t be regret in his face, could it? One thing she remembered about Kinvarra was that he never accepted he was in the wrong. But when he spoke, he confounded her expectations.

“You had a selfish, impulsive boy in your bed, Alicia. Never mistake that.”

Astonished, she stared at him kneeling before her. “When we parted, you blamed me for everything. You said touching me was…was like making love to a log of wood.”

This time it was his turn to flush and glance away. “I’m sorry you recall that.”

Even now, the snide remark made her flinch. Perhaps because there had been an element of truth in his sneer. “It was rather memorable.”

When he looked back at her, she read remorse in his eyes. “No wonder you hated me.”

She shrugged again, uncomfortable with the candid turn of the discussion. Because the agonizing truth was that she hadn’t always hated him. Far from it. During most of their year together, she’d believed she loved him. And every nasty word he’d spoken had slashed her youthful heart.

His unexpected honesty now forced her to recollect that she’d hardly been an angel in that particular argument. She’d called him a filthy, rutting animal and barred him from her bedroom.

Only now did she admit that he’d had provocation for his cruelty. And he’d been young, too. At the time, his four years seniority had seemed a lifetime. Now she realized he’d been a boy of twenty-one coping with a difficult wife, immature even for her seventeen years.

No wonder he’d been glad to see the back of her.

She struggled to swallow what felt like a boulder stuck in her throat. If they’d spoken like this after their marriage, perhaps they might have stayed together. But of course, neither of them had been capable of setting aside pride and vanity to face why their union failed. Now it was too late.

Too late—the saddest words in the language.

Her voice emerged as a husky whisper, and her hands tightened on the arms of the chair until they ached. “There’s no point revisiting all thi

s history. Really, tonight we’re just chance-met strangers.”

Kinvarra’s lips tilted in the half-smile that had made her seventeen-year-old heart somersault. To her dismay, her mature self found the smile just as beguiling.

“Surely more than that.” He raised his glass. “To my wife, the most beautiful woman I know.”