Secret Vows by Mary Reed McCall

Author:Mary Reed McCall [McCall, Mary Reed]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

After a few moments, Gray rolled away from his wife. Reaching to his side, he grabbed his long cape and tucked it around them against the chill. Then he just lay back and allowed the feeling to seep through him. Warm and sated. He shielded his eyes with his forearm, willing his breathing to slow. But no matter how his body rested, his mind continued to churn. Something was amiss. Something important. It had shadowed his thoughts while they were making love; now it returned with a vengeance.

His wife wasn’t a virgin.

There’d been no barrier to break. No innocence to shatter. She’d been smooth and achingly sweet when he took her. So sweet that even now the thought of what they’d done, of the pleasure she’d given him, caused his groin to tighten again in anticipation. But hurt lanced through him as well; she’d lied to him. A lie of omission, by keeping the truth of her lost virginity from him.

Lifting his arm a little, he peered from beneath its shelter to gaze at her, wondering what she was thinking. How she was feeling. She hadn’t uttered a word since their explosive climax. She rested next to him in silence, still but for the even rise and fall of her breast. Her eyes were closed, her face inscrutable.

She didn’t look guilty. She wasn’t acting afraid or nervous, or like a woman who was deceiving him. But then how to explain her lack of innocence?

Suspicion began to wind dark tendrils into his heart again, bringing with it memories of all the other times he’d felt this twinge in the past weeks, of all the other disparities he’d ignored because of his deepening feelings and his need for her. But they glared through his brain now, relentless, taunting.

He’d felt them from the start, from the moment he’d lifted her veil on their wedding day. There’d been her people’s false description of her and King Henry’s pointed comments about her changed appearance. And then the portrait. He remembered her strange reaction to it when Eduard presented it as a gift, and again later, when he’d caught her weeping over it. So many inconsistencies…

Elise opened her eyes. “Gray, there’s something I need to tell you. Something I should have told you long ago. ’Tis awful, and I pray you can forgive me for keeping it from you.”

Gray lowered his arm slowly, still looking at her. The tone of her voice had sent a shock up his spine; her expression was deadly serious. She turned to stare at him, eyes huge in her face, and he couldn’t keep back the renegade thought that those eyes were pleading with him, silently begging him to understand something that meant life or death to her.

Christ. He’d suspected right. She’d been hiding something, and she was about to tell him of it. Pain and doubt cut through him anew. That she’d lied to him about anything was serious; aye, especially if it had been a deliberate deceit on her or Montford’s part to shame him.

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