Then stepping back, he let her go, even though it was one of the hardest things he had ever done.
Tess hurried from the room, and when Ian heard voices a moment later, he knew she was summoning her carriage. When eventually he heard the sound of horses’ hooves outside on the street, he moved back to the window and watched Tess run down the front steps to the waiting vehicle.
A feeling of emptiness, of dread, washed over Ian. Her despair had only confirmed his fears: She was still too much in love with his cousin’s memory to ever love him.
He’d wanted, hoped, to make her forget her former ardent feelings, but her heart still belonged to Richard.
No doubt she would forgive Richard in time, Ian surmised. Tess was too kindhearted not to. But more crucially, she would forgive his sins because she had loved him.
Ian’s jaw clenched. His own wicked past was another matter entirely. He doubted Tess could overlook his own sins as readily. Especially not now when her trust had been violated so painfully.
And therein lay the rub.
He’d known from the moment he laid eyes on Tess four years ago that he wanted her, but now he truly wanted her for his wife, his life’s mate. What was more, he desperately wanted her love. He wanted her to look at him with respect and affection and trust. He wanted to arouse the kind of deep, passionate emotion in her that she aroused in him.
The same heart-deep love she had felt for his cousin.
Yes, Ian was finally willing to acknowledge, he loved her passionately. In truth, Tess had invaded his barren heart long ago.
He’d always thought it would be difficult to open himself to love, but he’d had no choice in loving Tess. She had obliterated his legendary dispassion from the very first.
Fear of losing her made him ache.… Except that he couldn’t lose what he had never had, Ian reminded himself savagely.
Tess didn’t love him and likely never would. Their marriage was a sham. No doubt she wanted more than separate bedchambers; she wanted them to live separate lives, as he’d originally promised they would.
And he would let her do so if that would make her happy.
When had her happiness become so vital to his own? Ian wondered. Perhaps it had always been so.
He swore a vicious oath—a curse rife with anger, frustration, and despair of his own. Once again he had lost out to his saintly cousin. His saintly dead cousin.
Ian gave a harsh, bitter laugh as he watched Tess’s carriage disappear. After two years of watching her pine for her lost love, he should have learned by now that it was futile to fight a damned ghost.
Why am I not surprised to learn the truth about Ian’s character? He is not nearly as wicked as I have always believed, or as he himself led me to believe.
—Diary Entry of Miss Tess Blanchard
Tess’s tears continued to spill sil
ently down her face as her carriage left London and wended through the countryside toward Chiswick. She felt betrayed, sick at heart upon learning the shameful truth about her late betrothed’s failings.
Perhaps she should not have left Ian so abruptly, but pain had rushed up to swamp her. She’d needed to get away, to be alone while she reassessed her beloved memories of Richard.
When Spruggs eventually drew up before her house, Tess sat there unseeing, feeling the bleak weight of sadness. Moments later, her footman opened the carriage door and let down the step.
Suddenly realizing she would find no solace inside her empty house, however, Tess no longer wanted to be alone. “I have changed my mind, Fletcher. Please have Spruggs drive me to Wingate Manor.”
The footman looked concerned, but tugged on his forelock. “As you wish, your grace.”
Fletcher shut the door quickly and soon her carriage was moving again.
Retrieving a cambric handkerchief from her reticule, Tess attempted to dry her eyes and cheeks and strove to calm her distraught emotions. She was acting on impulse, but she wanted her godmother’s counsel and the comfort of a dear, familiar face. Even more, she wanted an explanation for Lady Wingate’s decision to shield her from the truth.
When they reached her ladyship’s estate in Richmond, Tess was admitted and shown into the elegant rose parlor, where Lady Wingate was finishing her tea.
“Ah, you deign to visit me at last,” her ladyship said with more than her usual acerbic bite. “I heard you had returned from Cornwall, Tess, but I expected you to call on me before this—”
She stopped abruptly, evidently deducing from Tess’s red eyes that there was something gravely wrong.