And Then He Kissed Her by Laura Lee Guhrke

Author:Laura Lee Guhrke [Guhrke, Laura Lee]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Fiction, Romance, General, Love Stories, Historical, Etiquette for Young Women
ISBN: 9780061143601
Google: K03jCPKk8k4C
Amazon: 006114360X
Publisher: Avon
Published: 2007-02-27T07:00:00+00:00

“I was brought up to believe that marriage is a sacred vow before God and not to be broken, if that’s what you mean.”

“How easy that is for someone like you to say.”

“Just because I am a spinster, it does not mean I cannot form an opinion on the morality of divorce!” she countered, stung.

“Your opinion being that no matter what my wife did, I was wrong to divorce her?”

“It’s not my place to say.”

“Not your place?” He laughed, but it was a harsh sound. “Mrs. Bartleby spends a great deal of time advising people about the proprieties, so what’s proper in a case such as mine?” His voice was low, vibrating with an anger she’d never heard him express before. “What decorum should a man adopt when his wife spends every day of her married life loathing her husband and pining for another man? Should he be civil and sporting about it all and pretend to her that it doesn’t hurt? Should he be a saint or a martyr who never lashes back?”

He turned toward her, and in the twilight, something glittered in his eyes, something cold and icy blue. “When she runs off to America with her lover, publicly humiliating him and leaving his entire family open to scandal, should he have a stiff upper lip about it? Pretend it doesn’t matter? Should he file for legal separation? Should he live celibate? Take a mistress?”

She was startled by the raw pain in his face. “You loved your wife,” she said, appreciating that fact for the first time.

“Of course I did!” He looked away, drew a deep breath. “I wouldn’t have married her otherwise.”

“I didn’t understand that. I thought—” She paused, considering. “I suppose I always thought that if you loved her you would have gone after her.”

“I should have followed her to New York, you mean? Dragged her from her lover’s arms and resigned myself to spending my life in hell? Would that have been more proper than divorce?”

She looked at him helplessly, with no answer to offer. Divorce was an unthinkable thing to her, as alien a concept as going without a corset or not going to church. On the other hand, what did she understand about the private relations between men and women? Next to nothing.

“I fell in love with Consuelo the first moment I saw her,” he said, turning to lean back against the brick wall of the building. “I knew nothing of her character, nothing of her mind, nothing of her temperament, but I didn’t care. I fell in love with her the first moment I looked into her eyes. She had the biggest, darkest, saddest eyes I’d ever seen. I’d set myself on marrying her before the introductions were even finished. It happened that fast.”

She stared at him, stunned, her mind flashing back to the day long ago in Auntie’s drawing room when another man had confessed a similar experience.

“I was in love once, too,” she blurted out.

“Were you?”

She nodded and leaned back

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