Page 51 of Go, Rogue

Chapter

20

“Menace,” McGann says from his place on the deck. “Did you tell me that story so that I’d tell you this one?”

“I’m not quite so mercenary as that, no. You did ask me what I was thinking of. But I did hope—I do still hope—we’ll be able to converse about that night. The story of your mother rather puts it in a different light, doesn’t it? A much worse one.”

“Aye,” he says. “That it does.”

McGann takes a deep breath and he begins. “You came,” he says, “to Nowhere, knowing you were to be married to a man who doesn’t love you.”

“Yes,” she says. “That’s the part of the story I just told you.”

“Aye, but I did not know it then. All I knew was that you came and I’d been sitting there, waiting for you, feeling worse and worse, like more of a dolt as each minute passed by. Nothing better than a damned dog, panting by the door, waiting for his mistress to come home.

“And then you knocked and I opened the door and I knew something was wrong but I don’t know what.” He pauses. “Why did you snap at me? Just because you were angry at Pembrooke?”

“No,” she says. “I snapped at you, because when you opened the door you said, ‘Come in, my lady,’ and that was the last thing I wanted to hear.”

“Ah,” is all he says.

“Why,” Catherine continues, “did you think I snapped at you?”

“I thought you were telling me I had no right to address you as my lady because of what I am. Who I am. And so I said, ‘What else should I call you, then? My lady the earl’s daughter? Or Your Highness?’

“And I told myself I was joking when I said it,” he goes on, “but that’s not entirely true. I think that I really said it because I was angry too. Because I’ve been told my entire life I’m less than nothing, and there you were, with your ball gown and your title and your expensive gloves, and I wanted you. But I didn’t get to have you because he got you. The goddamned Viscount’s son got you and you were standing in front of me and telling me it was because I was nothing too.”

He stops. He didn’t mean to tell her that. He didn’t mean to tell her anything close to that.

“Well, then,” she says, and he can hear the surprise in her voice at what he’d been thinking that night. She hadn’t known any of it. “And when I reached for you?”

He clears his throat. “I was beginning to realize that you were upset and angry and looking for comfort. Or a diversion. I didn’t want to be that for you; just some rough fellow from the wrong quarter you toyed with before marrying your Viscount’s heir. Any other woman and it didn’t matter. But it mattered with you.” It still matters, no matter how hard he wishes it didn’t.

“Andrew,” she says. “I was trying to show you how I felt. That I… that I looked at you the same way Crawford looked at Violet and Pembrooke at Sarah Jenson.”

“Aye, Menace. That may be. But you were still engaged and not to me.”

“I know,” she says, quietly. “I wish I’d been braver earlier. I wish I’d spoken to Chester before the day of my wedding. I wish a great many things.”

“If wishes were horses,” he says.

“But would it have been different, do you think, if I’d told you how I felt about you? If I’d said that what I wanted was more than a kiss or a dalliance?”

“No,” he replies, after a while. “Esmee used to warn me that I was a fool not to believe in love. That even though I ignored it, it would find me one day. And because I wasn’t on the lookout for it, it would surprise the hell out of me. Tip me straight over like a Scots pine in the forest. But do you know, Menace, what happens to a felled pine tree? It never stands upright on its own again.

“And I knew that if I kissed you, even once, it would fell me. So, when you pulled me close to you and closed your eyes… I knew what you wanted, lass. And I knew I could never, ever give it to you. So I stepped away. And I told you it was because you were a lady, an English lady at that. That I’d never lay my lips on an earl’s daughter.”

“I am sorry,” she says, “for being impulsive.” She pauses. “And oblivious.”

“Thank you, Menace. But that wasn’t really the issue.”

“I know. I’m working my way up to that. All the little apologies before…” She pauses again. “What I’m trying to say is that I was hurt that night and I was angry. At Pembrooke and the whole world of the ton that was never anything but a gilded cage. And at myself for not seeing what it was until that night. And at you because you didn’t want me.”

“I always wanted you.”

“Yes, but I didn’t know that then. And, drat it all, Andrew, I’m sorry that I said all I was worth to you was money. And I’m sorry that I tossed that bag of coin into your face. And I’m sorry that I ever made you feel like you weren’t the person I wanted. Because you are. And I suppose—” He hears her moving, and before he can stop her, she’s risen from the bed and lain herself down next to him on the deck. “I suppose that what I truly want to say is that I hope you can forgive me, and I promise to do better if you’ll give me a chance.”

He lays still, with her heat next to his, remembering how that night had felt. How it had underscored everything he’d always thought about himself, about his own worth. About how the English try to buy everything, especially people. His mother. His grandmother. About how his father and brother had been the purchasers. And how they had treated him like he was so far beneath significance he might as well have been dead.