(de Warenne Dynasty #8) The Stolen Bride by Brenda Joyce

Author:Brenda Joyce [Joyce, Brenda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

“How bad was it?” She had to know. “Is that what happened to your voice? Is that why you are so thin?”

“It was bad…very bad…like being buried alive in a black hole.”

She didn’t understand. Surely he wasn’t speaking literally?

“You have changed.… And you belong to someone else.… I have changed—I am a criminal…fleeing to America.”

“There’s one thing that will never change.”

He looked at her as if he did not want to hear what was coming next.

“We can’t change the past. We can’t change our past. You are different now. It took a very painful lesson for me to learn that. But the past remains—and we share it. I don’t want to forget it. I will never forget it. And if I can help you heal your wounds, if I can help you return to me, then I am going to do just that.”

“No.” He whirled and started for the door

She ran after him, because she had to know. “Sean, you didn’t mean that you were really imprisoned in a hole, did you?” She was ill with dread.

He turned and stared at her.

“Oh, my God,” she gasped, shocked, because the answer was not just in his refusal to speak, it was in his eyes. “You were in a pit—for two years?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he rasped.

“It matters to me!” He was even more deeply scarred than she had thought. But the physical horrors he had suffered had to pale in comparison to the guilt he was afflicted with. “I am sorry, so sorry,” she tried.

“Don’t.” He reached for the door.

She seized his arm. “I know you are not a coward, yet you are running away from me, and from something and someone else. That’s it, isn’t it? You are running away, not from the British, but from whatever it is that you blame yourself for!”

He faced her, shaking her off. “You should hate me for what I did the other night.”

“Oh, so now you try to change the subject? The subject isn’t your taking my innocence—which I freely offered and gave. The subject is your running away now, from me, yourself and whatever you think you did.”

He stabbed at the air and turned to unbolt the door.

Her anger vanished. “Sean, stop. Where are you going?”

He leaned his forehead against the door, breathing hard.

“I’ll cease and desist. But my feelings won’t change.”

He made a harsh, disparaging sound.

“It’s not safe to keep going out and you know it,” she added firmly. “We are in hiding.”

He turned away from the door. “You eat and sleep.… I’ll keep watch.”

She smiled a little at him. “Very well.” But as she sat down at the table, aware of Sean crossing to stand by the window, her mind was not on her supper. He was running, not from her but from himself, and she was going to somehow stop that flight. She was going to find the man she loved, and bring him back to life.

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