His face was still stern, but there was also sadness in his eyes and it deepened hers. If she could only make him happy. Right now that felt impossible—she was not enough. She might never be enough.
He touched the tip of his finger to the aching spot between her brows.
‘Don’t look so worried. I know my limits. I see I shall have to help you brush the sand dunes off yours.’
Sam tucked herself into his shoulder, leaking slowly into his coat while he held her.
* * *
Edge watched London form around them. She’d stopped crying, but remained in his arms and for once the lust that buzzed every time he touched her wasn’t there. No, it was there, but held at bay by a wall of ice. He could feel the cold creeping through him, dousing candle after candle.
Finally, he was beginning to understand what had happened to madcap Sam—her loneliness and need and the almost desperate act of her proposal. He must have been a fool to believe it was only because she wanted a home to atone for the one she’d never truly had. That restless, vivid soul of hers was twisting and turning, trying to fill the pit created by her one-sided love for some Venetian fool. She’d spoken of her love for that other man with an intensity and fatalism that didn’t sound like a love long faded—it sounded alive, with hooks deep in her flesh. She’d turned to her first husband to fill that pit, then to Maria. And now to him.
He could feel the ice spreading again, just like it had after Jacob’s death. But then he’d been numb and had hardly felt it until much later. Now it ripped and stung as it crept through him, like frost crawling over buds and destroying them.
He was tempted to send her to the devil. To give her this house and bid her joy of it. To leave her in the same limbo she was shoving him into. It was contemptible, but he could understand Ricki. Not his actions, but his anger, the need to wound... He wouldn’t do any of that. To walk away was simply not an option. He knew all about living with disappointment, but at least this time there would be the consolation of having Sam in his life and his bed even if he could not be in her heart.
He closed his eyes, tight, waiting out the sharpness of the pain. He very much hoped this was the beginning of a megrim, but it felt deeper than that. It felt as though he was breaking.
Chapter Sixteen
Jephteh’s smile was a crescent moon in the darkness of the tomb. Gabriel could smell his smugness—it reeked of mouldy papyrus and river sludge.
‘Being noble is a bitter brew, is it not, boy?’ the Priest cackled as he raised his staff for the blow.
—Lost in the Valley of the Moon,
Desert Boy Book Three
Edge tossed The Times on to the breakfast table with disgust.
‘It has only been three days.’ Sam felt as though she was watching a tiger pacing its cage—the beast might be confined, but the sense of peril leaked through the bars.
‘I know that,’ Edge snapped and then changed the subject with obvious effort. ‘I must meet with the lawyers this morning, but afterwards we may go to Richmond if you wish. The furniture is arriving today.’
His voice was utterly flat, even that momentary sign of impatience called back. For the past few days this had been their pattern. Every morning he’d glanced at the advertisements, his mouth a straight line, and then put it aside and set about the business of preparing their new home with a single-minded concentration that pushed everything else out of the way, including her.
No, that wasn’t true.
At night in the shared darkness of their bedroom they were still close. At least their bodies were. It was almost a race—every night they honed their skill at making the other moan and beg before joining in release. Every morning he made a conscious effort to be attentive and to anticipate her wishes about the house. But the chasm between them grew.
Since she’d told him the truth about Ricki and Maria a fragile layer of tenderness she’d come to depend on had been packed away and she didn’t understand why. She didn’t know whether it was because of what she’d told him about using Ricki to escape her broken heart or about her role in Maria’s death.
She’d been quite certain he would realise he had been the ‘other man’, but Edge seemed to have no vanity where she was concerned. She wondered if it would be better or worse to confess it all—that she had been in love with him eight years ago and though she’d not fully admitted it to herself, she’d only proposed in Bahariya because she’d never recovered from that heartbreak. Because she’d hoped he would come to love her as well.
She wanted so badly to tell him, spit it all out and have him judge her or condemn her on this truth, but she was terrified and didn’t even understand why. Every new admission felt as though it drove this wedge deeper between them. She was sinking back into timid, tame Sam and she hated it, resented him and despised herself.