Rake with a Frozen Heart by Marguerite Kaye

Author:Marguerite Kaye
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2012-08-28T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

Was he really contemplating this? ‘I can’t refute my actions, but I can explain them.’

It seemed he was. Rafe took a quick turn around the room. It mattered that she understood. Only now did he admit to himself how much her opinion of him counted, how hurtful had been her judgements. How had she come to be so important to him? He didn’t know. He just knew she was. Telling her would be a relief, if not a release. He wanted to tell her.

He took another turn about the room. Henrietta was still standing in the middle of it, in her brown gown with her brown eyes, watching him. He owed her the truth. He took her hand and led her back over to the bed, sitting down in the chair opposite once more. She looked so compliant, yet there was a core of steel running through her. It gave her a strength of purpose, a solidly grounded moral certainty at her centre that he envied. He might not agree with all of her opinions, but at least she had them and she meant them. She had integrity. He particularly admired that.

Settling back in the uncomfortable wooden seat, Rafe subdued a craven desire to extinguish the lamp and make his confession in the dark. ‘I was only nineteen when I married Julia,’ he said, launching into his sorry tale before he could think again. ‘Lady Julia Toward. She was twenty-three, the same age as you are now.’

Henrietta listened intently. Rafe’s voice was not much above a whisper, but the bitterness was there, like a rusty blade hidden in the petals of a flower.

‘She was very beautiful,’ he continued, ‘very beautiful and, though I did not know it, very unstable. She had been betrothed some two years before, but her fiancé died. I thought her over it when I met her. She said she was. I wanted to believe her. When you want something enough, you can persuade yourself of anything.’

Silence. Henrietta waited, biting back the urge to protest. She hated the implications of what he was saying. Despite the evidence—foolishly, she now realised—she had persuaded herself that he had not loved his wife.

‘I was just returned from my Grand Tour and was as green as spring asparagus.’ Rafe’s voice was stronger now. ‘My father had packed me off with dire warnings of the dangers of salacious Continental women, but in truth I was more interested in ancient history. I spent my time seeking out every set of crumbling ruins that Greece and Italy had to offer. Father died quite unexpectedly while I was still abroad. When I returned to England, it was to take up the title. I had always known it would be mine, but I hadn’t expected it to happen so soon. I was not close to my father, but I was shocked and saddened by his premature death. There was no one else, you see. I have no siblings and my mother had died years before.

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