Almost Heaven (Sequels 3)

"I feel like one." His grin faded to a somber smile when she handed him a mug of coffee. "Can breakfast wait a little while?" he asked.

Elizabeth nodded. "I thought I heard you moving about almost an hour ago, and I put the bacon on then. I intended to make more when you finally came down. Why?" she finished, wondering if he was afraid to eat her cooking.

"Because we have some things to talk about." Elizabeth felt an unexpected lurch of dread. Last night, she'd lain beside him and explained everything that had happened from the time Robert appeared at Havenhurst until she arrived at the House of Lords. By the time she was finished, she'd been so exhausted from her tale and from Ian's lovemaking that she'd fallen asleep before he could explain his own actions. Now he obviously wanted to discuss the subject, and she wasn't entirely certain she wanted to spoil the beauty of their reconciliation by reopening it.

"We've wronged each other," Ian said quietly, seeing her reluctant expression. "If we try to hide from it, to pretend it didn't happen, it will always be there, lurking. It will come back to haunt both of us at odd times, for odd reasons, and when it does, it will come between us. Some little thing I say or do will rip open your scar from this, and I won't know why you're angry or hurt or mistrustful. Neither will you. Last night, you made your explanations to me, and there's no need to go into it again. I think you have a right to some explanations from me."

"How did you become so wise?" she asked with a soft smile.

"If I were wise," he said dryly, "this separation would have ended months ago. However, I've had several agonizing weeks to try to think how we could best go on after this-assuming you ever let me find you, and it seemed to me that talking about it, openly and thoroughly, was the only way."

Elizabeth still hesitated, remembering the murderous fury he'd turned on her in his study the day of his acquittal. If talking about it would make him angry again, she wasn't certain it was worthwhile.

Reaching for her hand, Ian drew her down onto the sofa, watching as she tucked her skirts around her, fidgeted with each fold, and then looked apprehensively at the snowcovered windowpane. She was nervous, he realized with a pang. "Give me your hand, sweetheart. You can ask me anything you want to know without fear of any anger from me."

The sound of his deep, reassuring voice, combined with the feeling of his strong warm fingers closing around hers, did much to dissolve her misgivings. Her gaze searching his face, Elizabeth asked, "Why didn't you tell me Robert had tried to kill you and you'd had him taken aboard your ship? Why did you let me go on believing he'd simply vanished?"

For a moment he leaned his head against the back of the sofa, closing his eyes, and Elizabeth saw his regret, heard it in his voice when he looked at her and said, "Until the day you left here last spring, and Duncan greeted me with a list of my crimes against you, I had assumed your brother returned to England after he got off the Arianna. I had no idea you'd been living alone at Havenhurst since he'd left, or that you'd become a social outcast because of what I did, or that you had no parents to protect you, or that you had no money. You have to believe that."

"I do," she said honestly. "Lucinda ripped up at Duncan and told him all that, and you came to London to find me. We talked about it before we were married, except the part about Robert. Why didn't you tell me about him as well?"

"When?" he asked, his voice harsh with self-recrimination and futility. "When could I have told you? Consider the way you felt about me when I came racing to London to ask you to marry me. You were already half-convinced my proposal was made out of pity and regret. If I'd have told you my part in Robert's disappearance, you'd have been sure of it. Besides, you didn't like me very well as it was, and you didn't particularly trust me, either," he reminded her. "You'd have flung my ?bargain' in my face if rd confessed to kidnapping your brother, no matter how valid my excuse was.

"There's one more reason I didn't tell you," Ian added with blunt honesty. "I wanted you to marry me, and I was prepared to do almost anything to bring it about."

She gave him one of the disarming, sideways smiles that always melted him and then she sobered. "Later, when you knew I loved you, why didn't you tell me then?"

"Ah yes, later," he said wryly. "When rd finally made you love me? For one thing. I wasn't anxious to give you a reason to change your mind. For another, we were so damned happy together, I didn't want to spoil it until I absolutely had to. Lastly, I didn't know exactly what I was guilty of yet. My investigators couldn't find a trace-Yes," he said, seeing her startled look, "I hired investigators the same time you did. For all I knew, your brother had stayed away to hide from his creditors, exactly as you suspected. On the other hand, it was possible he died, somehow, trying to make his way back here, in which case, rd have had that crime to confess to you."

"If no information, no word of him ever came, would you have ever told me why he originally left England?"

He'd been looking down at her hand, his thumb idly tracing her palm, but when he answered, he lifted his eyes to hers. "Yes." After a silence, he added, "Shortly before you vanished, rd already decided to allow the investigators six more months. If no trace of him was discovered by then, I intended to tell you what I did know."

"I'm glad," she said softly. "I wouldn't like to think you'd have gone on deceiving me forever."

"It was not an entirely noble decision," Ian admitted. "Fear had something to do with it. I lived in daily dread of Wordsworth appearing at the house one day and handing you proof that rd caused your brother some irreparable harm, or worse. There were times," he added, "near the end when I honestly wished one of the investigators would produce evidence to either damn me or acquit me, so that I could put an end to my uncertainty. I had no idea, you would do what you'd do."

Ian watched her, waiting for her to comment, and when ;he didn't, he said, "It would mean a great deal to me, and to our future together, if you could believe the things I've told you. I swear to you it's the truth."

Her eyes lifted to his. "I do believe you." "Thank you," he said humbly. "There's nothing to thank me for," she said trying to cease. "The fact is that I married a brilliant man, who taught me to always put myself in the opponent's place and try to lee things from his point of view. I did that, and I was able to guess long ago your reasons for keeping Robert's disappearance a secret from me." Her smile faded as she continued, "By putting myself in your place, I was even able to guess how you might react when I first came back. I knew, before I ever saw the expression on your face when you looked at me in the House of Lords, that you would find it extremely difficult to forgive me for hurting you, and for shaming you. I never imagined, though, -,' the extent you would actually go to retaliate against