In the aftermath she felt him draw her close, tucking her into the curve of his arm as though she was the most precious thing on earth, her head on his shoulder and the beat of his heart against hers, and it felt like coming home.
Eve woke to see the light flooding the room and to feel a quick, uncomplicated joy. Rowarth was lying beside her, his arm about her waist in casual possession, his legs tangled with hers. She could smell his skin, at once familiar and exciting. Her body quickened again and she shifted, feeling the ache inside that was the aftermath of bliss and the promise of pleasure to come. It had been so perfect. She had never imagined it would be like that again.
The happiness fled. The loss she had staved off the previous night came flooding back, filling the emptiness within her soul with its bitter harvest. She had gone into this knowing that she loved him but that she could never keep him. Not Rowarth, with his responsibilities and his obligations, not least amongst which was his need to produce an heir for his dukedom with some suitable, blue-blooded, fertile aristocrat. She had borrowed him for one last night, loving him too much to deny either of them. And now she would have to give him up because that was the only thing to do.
“Sweetheart…” He was stirring. He stroked a palm over the soft skin of her stomach. He sounded happy. Another crack appeared in her heart.
He rolled over, looked at her, and at the expression in his eyes she felt sudden acute apprehension. Her heart was thumping. She knew he was going to ask her to be his mistress again and she was so sorely tempted to agree. To have Alasdair Rowarth in her life again, even if it was only for a little while… Would she sacrifice the independence she had achieved here and all she had worked for in order to be with him? And could she watch him wed another woman and produce an heir when she had thought once that she would be his wife and she knew that she loved him more than anyone else ever could?
“I once asked you to be my wife, Eve,” Rowarth said. “Now I am asking you again. Will you marry me?”
“Oh, no!” Eve could not quite bite back the words in time. This really was a disaster. She had not imagined, not dreamed, that this could happen. And of course it was utterly impossible, for all the same reasons that it had been before.
Rowarth was looking quizzical and a little chagrined at her outburst.
“I did not think the idea would be so abhorrent to you,” he said.
“I thought you were going to ask me to be your mistress again,” Eve said helplessly.
Rowarth did not look pleased. In fact he looked most forbidding. “That position is not on offer.”
Oh, dear. She knew she had offended him. No, she had hurt him. She could see it in his eyes. She loved him so much that it made her want to cry, she who had once thought herself as hard as diamonds. “I… I cannot.” Her heart was breaking piece by little piece. She wanted to explain why, but it hurt so much to open up those final dark secrets that she did not think she could force out the words. Besides, she could not bear to see his face when he knew the truth and to hear him retract his proposal. Like her, he knew that a man, a duke, needed an heir to his dukedom. He cared for Welburn so much, had done so since his youth with both a sense of responsibility and a deep love. It would be imperative for him to pass on that love and that duty to the next generation.
“My life is here now, Rowarth,” she said. “Flattered as I am by your proposal, I believe that it would be a mistake to try to re-create what we had.”
He had gone very still. There was a hard, determined light in his eyes. “Last night you told me that you loved me.”
Had she? She had no recollection of it at all, but during their impassioned lovemaking it would have been fatally easy to pour out all the feelings she had harbored for him during those five long, lonely years.
“Did I say that?” She forced lightness into her tone, making the entire experience sound no more than a pleasant tumble rather than something that had touched her soul. “A figure of speech, my dear. I certainly enjoyed it—”
He looked as though he was going to argue. He looked as though he did not believe her. Her defenses felt perilously weak. One word from him and she might falter. She moved to put a stop to it before it had started.
“I believe a gentleman can accept a refusal with good grace?”
Now he looked really angry. “If you wish to put it like that…” He bit the words out. “You tie my hands, madam. I will say no more.”
He leaped from the bed, magnificently unconcerned about his nudity, and gathered up his clothes, throwing them on haphazardly with swift, angry movements before wrenching open the door. Then he looked back.
“Farewell, Eve,” he said.
She heard his furious steps on the stairs, heard also Joan’s startled squeak as they met in the shop doorway and heard the door slam behind him. She lay still and forced herself not to watch him walk away from her because she knew that if she did she would change her mind and run after him and that was the one thing she could not permit herself to do.
It had been the m
ost damnably miserable day. No matter that the sun poured down from a cloudless sky and the pavements of Fortune’s Folly bustled with people shopping, taking the waters or walking on Fortune Row. Eve was unhappy and Joan shook her head over her and brought her endless cups of tea for solace.
“I told you so,” Joan said. “No good ever comes from tangling with handsome gentlemen.”
“I am not tangled,” Eve snapped. “He has gone.”
Business was improving. A young lady had called by that morning. Miss Alice Lister had brought in a footstool to sell with an enormous, vulgar coat of arms on it.
“I’m afraid my mother embroidered it,” she said sadly. “She will sew our family crest on anything that doesn’t move away fast enough. Please, could you get rid it for me? I truly cannot bear to look at it.”
Eve had chatted with her and had smiled and sorted out the stock that had come in over the past few days and the time had dragged, the hands of the clock edging around so slowly into a future that now seemed colorless and gray. She had sent Rowarth away again because it was the only thing that she could do, for his sake and her own. Now all she had to do was forget him for a second time; no easy matter when she ached for him with every particle of her being.
At three-thirty the doorbell clanged again. Eve had been dealing with the accounts—hateful job—while Joan was in the village. She came out into the shop in time to hear the key turn in the lock and the shutters rattle closed.