“I was barely nineteen.”
“So you have been married to her for …?”
“Nearly fifteen years.”
It sounded shocking. “I know divorce is difficult to secure … and not always granted, but couldn’t you have divorced her? Had your marriage annulled?”
“Her father was determined that would never happen. The marriage contract he had drawn up covered all of those areas. If I were to do either then my father and I would lose everything we had gained. Our fortune, our estates, everything.”
“And yet you could have done it.”
“I could have. If I wanted to be reduced to a pauper and see her locked away in an asylum.”
“It seems as if I am not the only one who wishes to play t
he martyr,” she said.
He grimaced. “I prefer to think of it as an act of kindness.”
“Hmm.” She might have said more but decided against it. She did not want to argue the point with him, and besides, she understood very well why he had allowed himself to be forced into such a situation and then found it impossible to escape.
Margaret lifted her other hand and brushed her fingers across his hair, combing back the dark lock that had fallen into his eyes. He started and looked up at her, and then sighed.
“At first I believed being married to her wouldn’t matter to me. Not so terribly much. Many men of my rank are married to women they do not love and go off to find their pleasures elsewhere.”
“Is that what you did? Found your pleasures elsewhere?”
Despite her efforts to sound calm he must have heard the jealousy in her voice—who would have thought that the vicar’s daughter could be such a possessive woman? He bent his head lower and kissed her hand, and then turned it over and kissed her palm. There was a desperation about him that hadn’t been there before, and she sensed he was worried that what he had said would turn her against him even more.
“I won’t pretend there haven’t been other women in my life, Margaret. There have been. I have had several mistresses—one I kept for nearly a year. At my age you would not expect me to be a virgin.”
She gave a startled laugh. She supposed she should be offended and tell him she was a respectable young woman with innocent ears, and how dare he? But Margaret had never been one to be offended by plain-speaking. The truth was she thought herself rather worldly.
“But there is one distinction between those women and my wife. And you,” he went on, and now he was looking into her eyes, so close she could see his dark pupils against the dark brown of his irises.
“What is that?”
“Love. I love you and I never loved them.”
“Dominic …”
“I fooled myself into thinking it did not matter, that I was trapped in a loveless marriage.”
“Though you enjoyed giving other people happy endings,” she reminded him.
“Yes, I suppose I did. Maybe that was part of the longing to find my own happy ending. And then you came along and I saw how much I had been wronged all those years ago. I was forced into marrying someone I did not love and who would never make me happy. And now I have found the woman I love and want to marry, and I cannot.”
He was going to kiss her. She could see it in his eyes, in his expression. And if he kissed her then she would kiss him back, and she doubted she would have the strength to deny him anything after that.
Margaret stood up, releasing his hand. “I need to think,” she said in as practical a voice as she could manage. “You have given me much to consider.”
“Of course.” He withdrew from her, as if building a wall between them. “Of course you do.” He wouldn’t look at her now and she sensed his determination to give her time to come to her decision. “I will see you in the morning?”
“I doubt I will be setting out to walk back to Denwick,” she said, meaning to tease, but the way his head jerked up he must have thought her serious. She reached out her hand, as if to touch his face, but stopped herself in time. “Yes, Dominic,” she said gently, “you will see me in the morning.”
His story explained so much about this complicated man. His longing for a happy ending, for others if not himself, and his solitude. She had thought him proud and arrogant and so he was, but he was also hurt and lonely. And wronged. So very wronged.
Walking away from him was very difficult, especially when he seemed so defeated, but Margaret knew that was what she must do.