Page 57 of Every Rogue Has His Charm

As it had that morning, his heart began to pound. “If I’m not mistaken about the arrangements,” he said, tumbling over her earlier words in his mind, “I’ve also given up my bed. Just where am I to sleep tonight?”

She rose up on her toes and pressed her lips once to his. “With your wife.”

Chapter 18

Caro stood alone in her bedchamber, waiting. Maxim had indicated that he would follow her upstairs in a few minutes. She supposed he meant to give her time to compose herself. Prepare herself.

Though it was unlikely to be the sort of preparation he’d had in mind, she had dismissed Nan without undressing and gone to the window to watch the waves roll toward the shore, timing her breath with their steady movements.

She had not considered that Maxim would try to capture her heart in such a dramatic fashion. Her father banished. Her mother and siblings saved. In stories, men made grand speeches. They groveled. And there was, she supposed, a certain triumphant pleasure to be found in a man who was willing to abase himself to atone for the wrong he’d done. A strong man made weak by love.

Personally, she much preferred Maxim’s determination to use his strength to lift others up. To lift her up.

In his words, his deeds, his eyes, she had seen how much he needed her. Wanted her. And she knew now how difficult it was for him to confess that desire, what it cost him to make himself vulnerable, after having been hardened by a lifetime of abuse, abandonment, and scorn.

He’d left her, he’d revealed that morning, because he’d been equally alarmed by the prospect of her needing him. And she—unwilling to betray her own weaknesses, determined to make a show of strength—had come to Brighton to prove to the world that she didn’t.

But oh, she did. And he deserved to know how much.

Her breath left her in a shivery sigh as she turned away from the window, away from her contemplation of the star-speckled sky, and settled her gaze on the bed. No matter how she’d tried, she’d never forgotten those long-ago nights after her wedding, their passionate encounters in the dark. Then, Maxim had insisted on shrouding himself in the night. Now, the light of the rising moon set the linens aglow. She made no move to draw the drapes.

No more hiding their scars from one another.

A tap on the door at last signaled his arrival. Before she could open it, or even call for him to enter, the door swung inward to reveal her husband, still clad in his dinner clothes, though his cravat had worked loose. In one hand he carried two half-full wineglasses, the stems threaded between his fingers, while on that same forearm, he balanced a plate of food. Once he released the doorknob, he retrieved the plate from its precarious position, stepped inside, and toed the door shut behind him.

“I wasn’t sure whether you actually ate anything at dinner,” he explained.

She smiled. It reminded her of the books he’d bought her for a wedding gift, to atone for having interrupted her reading at Lord Earnshaw’s. “And you didn’t want the wine to go to my head.” She hurried forward to relieve him of the plate and one of the glasses and carried both to the little table by the window, still positioned as it had been a few nights past. By the time she turned back, he’d drained the other glass. She cocked a brow in a teasing scold. “Have you eaten?”

“I’m not hungry.”

But he was. His hunger was etched into the harsh lines of his face. It glimmered in the depths of his eyes.

She lifted her face to his and closed her eyes. “Kiss me, Maxim.”

Instead of his lips on hers, she felt the weight of his hands on her shoulders, settling her back on her heels. She hadn’t even realized she’d risen onto the balls of her feet. “I have to ask you something first.”

“Yes?” Reluctantly, she raised her eyelids.

“If…” She couldn’t recall seeing him nervous before. He dropped his hands to his sides. “If your father hadn’t behaved so badly, would you have taken me back?”

She reached for her own wineglass and took a careful sip. “I suppose the honest answer is that, if my father hadn’t behaved so badly, I would never have married you in the first place.” His jaw set with an audible click, though from his expression it appeared as if he’d expected her to say as much. “But what a mistake that would have been,” she insisted, laying her free hand against his chest.

“A mistake,” he echoed, clearly having heard only half of what she’d said.

“Yes, a mistake.” She curled her fingers around his lapel, drawing him closer. “I might eventually have been persuaded to marry a dull, so-called respectable gentleman who wouldn’t have said a word against my father. Or I might have been still living in my father’s house, miserable and alone. Either way, I would have spent my nights reading Robin Ratliff novels and weaving fantasies about some dark, dangerous man who could take me away from all that. Instead, I have the real thing.”

“The real…?”

“You. I have you. I thought you read the end of The Highwayman’s Hostage?”

“Yes, yes.” He rolled his eyes. “The scarred villain who fancies himself a hero.”

She gave a prim frown. “I presume you are referring to the strong, intelligent man who’s brave enough to show the heroine how much he—” Once more on the precipice of a dangerous word, she caught herself. “How much he cares for her.”

Lifting a hand, he plucked the wineglass from her fingers and took a drink before meeting her eyes. “How much he loves her, I think you mean.”

Her heart leaped into her throat, and she had to swallow twice to speak past it. “Yes. So then”—she flicked her gaze to the nearly empty wineglass and back to his face—“you must also realize how much she loves him in return.”