“Should you be out of bed?” I asked, setting down the tray of food and medication, and glancing around the small, dark room that served as Elliott’s workplace. “The doctor said you need to rest.”
“I can’t write in bed. I just fall asleep there, so I came down here. Sitting in a chair and speaking to the computer is well within my abilities, so you can stop making that mother-hen clucking noise.”
“Yes, well, I reserve the right to mother you if you do something to hurt yourself. Now, about the plans I came up with. I’ve already knocked up a brochure, and printed out enough copies to get us by until I can have some professionally made, and have put ads in at several spots, and have started collecting bids for a wee bit of renovation to the dower house. Not a lot, because I know you don’t want to spend big bucks just to get going, but a bit of paint will do wonders for it, and shouldn’t cost an arm and a leg.”
“That’s good to know,” he said, reaching for the bottle of pain medication that I’d brought in with a bowl of pasta salad and a roast beef sandwich.
“Now,” I said, waiting until he’d washed down the pills to sit on his lap, being very careful not to lean on the owie side of his chest. “You may duly reward all my hard work with many breath-stealing kisses.”
He gave me a swift, almost impersonal peck. The look on his face was anything but romantic. “There’s nothing I’d like to do more, love, but I really have to keep working. I’m just over the halfway point of the book, and I can’t slow down until I’m closer to the end. I lost too much time to the accident to be able to spend my day stealing your breath as I’d like.”
I studied him, trying to decide if he really was simply so stressed about the book deadline that it was consuming him, or if something else was going on.
Something more ominous.
Something familiar.
He’s getting ready to dump you, my inner self warned. It’s Patrick all over again.
It is not, I argued. Elliott isn’t like Patrick. Elliott is sweet and warm and loving, and he’d never boot me out of my own home.
Which is why he’s so uncomfortable now. Just look at him. My inner self pointed to Elliott. Look at that expression. That is not a man who is so head over heels in love with you that he wanted to marry you after knowing you just a couple of days.
She had a point. Even when he was Mr. I-Must-Write-or-Else on the ship, he still made time to be with me. And go places with me. And kiss me.
Tentatively, I nibbled on his earlobe. Maybe the problem was that he was waiting for a signal from me that I was comfy enough in his home to do those things that people in love did.
“Alice, I’m sorry, but I really must get back to this chapter.”
I released his earlobe, my stomach wadding up into a tiny little dense ball of misery. “I thought we could have lunch together.”
“I wish we could, but I need to get this chapter finished.” He kissed me on my forehead—my forehead!—and urged me off his lap.
I got up with a sense of doom that suddenly made the world dark. “I wanted to tell you about the plans that your Mom and I made.”
“And I want to hear about them,” he said, his eyes back on the laptop. He held up a small microphone with one hand, obviously wanting to continue dictating. “After dinner, all right?”
I nodded, too choked up to speak, not that he noticed. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, his voice rolling around the small room. “Chapter Eleven. New paragraph. With the blood of the assassin washed off in the cloakroom at the airport comma Damon Reeves fast-talked his way onto a flight from Geneva to Amsterdam.”
Sadly, I closed the door behind me, confused and unhappy and unsure of what I should do. Why was Elliott acting so indifferent to me? Was he tired of me already? Embarrassed by me? Out of love with me so quickly?
The hallway in this part of the castle was dark, since the public tours didn’t go through the area. I stood for a moment, hearing in the distance the voice of Cecily’s partner (and coworker) Clive as he brought yet another batch of tourists through the castle.
There was no safe place for me to go, nowhere I could curl up in a ball and cry, no room that was mine. I’ve never felt more out of place than I did at that moment, desperate for something comforting, something familiar. With a sob, I ran up the stairs to Elliott’s bedroom, throwing myself on the bed and indulging in a good cry.
But even that was ruined when I realized that I was sobbing into his pillow, and that the Elliott smell of it was breaking my heart.
My stupid inner voice was right. He didn’t want me anymore. I don’t know what happened, but it was plain as day that he no longer loved me, but was too nice to simply come out and say that. He knew how devastated I had been with Patrick, and was trying to be nicer about his breakup.
“Devastated,” I said, blowing my nose. My voice was thick and wobbly. “I didn’t know the meaning of the word. Now I do. Now I really am devastated.” The last word was a wail, and brought on a fresh volley of tears that utterly drenched Elliott’s pillow.
“Good,” I said when the tear storm faded. I glared at his pillow. “Maybe he’ll get a cold in the head from it.” The instant I spoke the words, I regretted them. I didn’t want Elliott to be sick. I wanted him well and happy and warm and sexy and all the things that he was.
Except mine. He wasn’t mine any longer. He was going to dump me, and I’d be alone again. Homeless, loveless, and hopeless.
“Well, not this time, Lord Ainslie,” I said, leaping to my feet. I hurried over to a massive wardrobe and yanked out my suitcase, ripping clothing out of drawers and off hangers to fling into it. “This time, I’m the one doing the dumping. I’m going to walk away from you with my head held high. I don’t need you, Elliott Ainslie!”
Liar, my inner voice said.
“I don’t love you anymore, either!” I zipped the suitcase closed, and jerked it off the bed, hauling it after me as I stalked toward the door, snatching up my purse en route.
And again, a lie. Of course you love him.
I ignored the voice in my head.
“This is over,” I said loudly, marching down the hallway, my suitcase in tow. “I will seek a divorce from the Church of Jante!”
Now you’re just being stupid. And overly dramatic. No one loves an idiot drama queen. Get over yourself already.
“And I’m breaking up with you, too, voice in my head!” I shouted, starting down the grand staircase to the main floor. “We’re done, do you hear me? No more advice, no more snide comments from the peanut gallery, no more so-called insights! I hereby divorce you, too!”
The group of eight people waiting for the next tour watched with interest as I stomped across the black-and-white stone floor, jerking my suitcase viciously. Cecily was in the middle of pointing out something in the brochure. The look on her face was indescribable.
“Don’t say it,” I said, leveling a finger at her as I stormed past. “Or I’ll divorce you, too! Just see if I don’t!”
Halfway down the long drive, the growl of a motorbike came up behind me. I moved over a bit so that whichever one of Elliott’s brothers it was could get around me. I was distracted, desperately trying to feed my anger so I wouldn’t throw myself on the ground and dissolve into a giant puddle of heartbroken goo.
The motorcycle stopped next to me, and the rider flipped up the visor on his helmet. It was Bertie, Elliott’s youngest brother, a nice kid whom I liked, despite the fact that he regularly hit me up for money I didn’t have. “You going into town, Alice?”
“Yes.” I marched on.
“Want a ride?”
It was on the tip of my tongue to refuse, but the sane part of my mind—which I was mostly no longer listening to—managed to point out that I didn’t need to cut off my nose to spite myself. So I accepted.
“Hop on.”
“What about my suitcase?” I gestured toward it.
He held out his hand. “You’ll just have to hump it.”
“I beg your pardon!”
“Carry it. Here, get on behind me, and put it between us.”
It wasn’t very comfortable, but at least I wouldn’t have the indignity of standing at the bus shelter with my suitcase, looking every inch the woman who had been rejected by the local baron.
By the time Bertie dropped me off at the train station, my face was lashed with tears. He cocked his head as I climbed off the bike and pulled the handle out of the suitcase. “You going up to London?”
“I’m going home.”
“Oh.” He gave me a friendly smile. “Gotta get your things, eh? I thought Elliott said he was going to go with you to help you pack up, but I guess with his shoulder such a mess, he’s not able to. See you later.”
He zoomed off without giving me a chance to correct his false impression, not that I would have. I was in enough pain without telling him that his brother didn’t love me anymore.
I sat on a hard, uncomfortable plastic bench at the small station, facing the track and a scraggly line of vegetation that marked the border of some field. The grasses were brown and lifeless, sagging limply downward toward the steel of the train tracks. Two trains arrived, spat out a handful of people, and took off without me. I sat with my hand on my suitcase, watching the trains arrive, eject small groups of people, and take off again. The faces of the passengers in the train had a sickly hue to them, their eyes expressionless, their faces masks of indifference.
Is that what I’d look like one day, the day that this pain stopped tearing me apart inside? I tried to see into my future, to imagine myself riding on a commuter train, or bus, heading to some boring job, the same look of indifferent numbness on my face.
I didn’t want to be that way. Even if I had to live without Elliott, I didn’t want to have to be numb just to exist.
People came and went around me, but only a few cast curious glances at me. Most of them ignored me, no doubt figuring the crazy lady who sat clutching a suitcase, tears running down her face, was best left alone. In time, the tears stopped, but still I sat, watching trains come and go, and wondering if I’d be able to survive this. And that was when I realized that running away wasn’t the answer. I had to go back and face Elliott. I couldn’t just leap before I looked anymore, not where he was concerned. He mattered too much.
I was rehearsing the things I was going to say to Elliott, how I would explain that I understood that his feelings had changed, but that I wasn’t ready to give up on us, when a man sat down next to me.
I was irritated by his presence. How could I formulate a good argument for why Elliott needed to see reason when there were distractions all around me? This was important, the most important thing I’d ever done. I needed to get it right.
“Where are you off to?”
“I don’t know,” I answered without turning my head to look at my seatmate. My gaze was firmly affixed to a clump of dead grass that swayed gently in a tiny breeze sweeping along the track. “I’d like to say home, but I don’t have a home. Not really.”
“Everyone has a home.”
I shook my head. “Sometimes, you just live in a place. But it’s not a home. A home has heart. It has meaning. It welcomes you and wants you, and you want it. Not every place you live is a home.”
“I have a home. It has heart and meaning and welcomed you, Alice.”
“Did it?” I turned my head to look at Elliott. “It’s not enough, though, is it? Not without the master of the house wanting me, as well.”
His gray eyes were solemn as they considered me. “Why do you think I don’t want you? Is it because I couldn’t have lunch with you?”
“No, it’s not just today. It’s every day since you got out of the hospital. You’re a nice man, Elliott. You’re not a Patrick. I know that you don’t want to destroy me when you tell me that you made a mistake, and you don’t really want to marry me after all. So you’re letting me stay at the castle and maintain the fiction that all is right until . . . well, I don’t know until what. Or when. Maybe you figured I’d get tired of you and want to leave. The problem is, I don’t want to leave you, and I never will get tired of you. I don’t know what I’ve done to change things between us, but I can’t stand trying to kiss you and not having you want to kiss me back.” My voice caught when my throat tightened. Tears were rolling down my face again, but I didn’t care who saw us. My heart was breaking, and I truly didn’t know if I could live with the pain for the rest of my days.
“When have I not wanted to kiss you?”
I laughed, more than a bit hysterically, and dripping with bitterness. “When have you? I’ve tried for days to cuddle with you, and you spurn me at every opportunity. Just today you kissed me on my forehead. My forehead, Elliott! The least erogenous part of anyone’s body. You only kiss someone like that when you don’t want them. And since you’ve made it clear you don’t desire me physically anymore, not even to kiss, what am I to think but that you’re sick and tired of me?”
“Oh, god, it’s that, is it?”
His words jolted me out of my black well of pity. I finally looked at him. The pain in his eyes had me blinking back the rest of my tears.
“I’m sorry, Alice. I hoped you wouldn’t notice. I hoped you’d be so busy with doing things around the castle that you just . . . wouldn’t care.”
“Wouldn’t care about the fact that you don’t want me anymore?” I wanted to hit him. “What the hell sort of person do you think I am? I love you, Elliott. I fell in love with you, and I married you, and I went through hell to get to you even though you couldn’t be bothered to tell me where you were, or that you were hurt, or even to let your family know about me so someone could call me.”
“I didn’t have your mobile number,” he protested. “I was going to have Dixon hunt you down via the tour line, but I was so out of it with the surgery and drugs that I hadn’t had time yet.”
That mollified a bit of the pain and outrage, but I still had a veritable sea of grief to get through. “You admit then that we made a mistake.”
“No, I admit that I made a mistake.”
My heart shattered into a billion jagged pieces. I stared dully at him, wondering how anyone could live with a shattered heart.
“Sweetheart, don’t look at me like that.” With a pained look, he put his arm around me, pulling my limp body against his. “I didn’t mean that I made a mistake in marrying you, not that the marriage—never mind. I meant that I made a mistake in not telling you the truth.”
Wildly, my thoughts shot to his secret spy career. Dear god, was he working for the other side? “What truth?” I asked in a squeaky voice.
“You’re right that I didn’t want to kiss you.”
I stared at him some more. My brain didn’t want to process those words.
“But not because I don’t desire you, or want you in my life, or, hell, even want you sitting on my lap when I should be working.” His face twisted, and he dropped his arm from around me. “I didn’t want to tell you the truth because . . . well, because of pride.”
“It’s because you’re a baron and I’m a nobody—”
“Hell, no. You should know me better than that. It was my pride that was threatening to be hurt if you knew the truth about me.”
Oh my god, he was an enemy spy!
He took a deep breath, and said quickly, “I’m a weakling, Alice. I have a low pain threshold, and this collarbone has been the very devil to live with since I left the hospital.”
I stared in utter surprise at him. That was the last thing I expected him to say.
“I’ve been going through the pain medications like they were candy, but I know that can’t continue, and they aren’t very strong to begin with. I thought if I could keep you busy and at ar
m’s length, then I wouldn’t be tempted by you.”
“I don’t understand. What does your broken collarbone have to do with kissing me?”
He looked intensely embarrassed. “It hurts to kiss you. Just putting my good arm around you makes the bone ache, and there’s no way in hell I can kiss you without wanting to touch you. Without wanting more. I decided that if I focused on writing this damned book, and you were busy organizing things with the castle, then my collarbone would have time to heal.”
“You hurt?” I asked, mentally shaking out the cobwebs of confusion that clogged my brain. “But I was so careful. I made sure I wasn’t touching your owie side.”
“The break is such that when you sit next to me on the bed, it jars my collarbone.”
I clapped a hand over my mouth for a moment before saying, “Oh, Elliott. I’m so sorry.”
“I know it wasn’t intentional; that’s why I didn’t want to say anything.”
“Even when you were standing up? That hurt, too?”
“You try moving any part of your body without the movement also moving your torso,” he said with a wry twist to his lips. “Yes, even when we were both standing, it hurt. And when you sat on me, or leaned into me, or hugged me—”
“I am the worse fiancée and wife ever,” I said, wanting to bang my head on the wall. “You were so cold and uninterested. . . . It never occurred to me to ask why. Well, other than the obvious—that you’d decided you made a mistake in marrying me.”
“I would like to be outraged that you had such a lack of confidence in me, but the truth is, my darling, you married a coward,” he admitted with a watery smile. “I didn’t want you to know the truth that I was so . . . weak.”
“You’re not weak; you’re an idiot!” I said, and was about to throw myself against him when I realized what I was doing. Instead, I leaned forward, careful not to touch any part of his body but his lips, and kissed him very, very gently. “Elliott, why didn’t you tell me? No, I know you believed I would think the worst of you, but seriously, you idiotic man, why would you not tell me that sitting with you and on you and near you was making your broken bones hurt? I love you, you foolish man. I thought you didn’t care about me anymore.”