“I understand,” Eve said. Her voice was thick with tears for the boy who had seen his father broken and betrayed and for the young man who had had to step into his shoes at so young an age and take on all a grown man’s responsibilities. “It does not matter, Rowarth,” she said. “We have both made mistakes. It is all done now.”
Rowarth was still holding her hand, his thumb stroking in distracting circles over her palm. “No, it is
not,” he said, and Eve shivered because she knew what was coming. “Tell me what happened to you, Eve. Why did you run? I do not believe what you told me before. I know that you loved me, so why did you leave me?”
The grief and the misery wrenched at Eve’s heart. She looked up and met his eyes and saw nothing but compassion there, all anger spent.
“I cannot tell you,” she said. “Oh, Rowarth, don’t ask me. Please don’t ask me.”
His hand came up to cup her chin, forcing her to meet his eyes. “You’re afraid,” he said softly. His fingers touched her cheek with aching tenderness, cradling her. “Eve, I have to tell you that Miles Vickery told me something tonight that I never knew. He saw you on the day you left. He had come to call on me and he saw Dr. Culpepper leaving, too.”
Eve went very still. Icy shivers chased over her skin. Rowarth’s words had conjured all the fear and misery of those last days. She struggled to keep the horrible memories locked in the box where they belonged. She sat silent, her heart breaking.
“Eve…” Rowarth was gentle but relentless and she knew he would not give up now, not until he had the truth. She felt trapped. Could she relinquish half the secret, explain a little while keeping those worst, darkest and most devastating of memories safely locked away? She was terrified; she could never tell the worst of it. Even now it would destroy her.
“Were you ill?” Rowarth asked. “Eve, please—”
Eve gave a little hiccup between laughter and tears. “I was not ill. I was pregnant.”
There was a moment’s silence while Rowarth thought about this. “Did you leave because you thought I would not want our child?” His voice was rough. “Surely you knew me better than that? You knew I wished to marry you—” He broke off as Eve shook her head violently.
“It was not that,” she said. “I lost the baby, Rowarth. I had a miscarriage. I lost our child and I could not bear it.”
To her enormous relief he did not press her any further but gathered her close, brushing the hair away from her face as she cried now, unable to help herself. He murmured endearments to her, his arms as strong as steel bands about her.
“My darling…that you should have had to suffer that and I was not there for you…”
The warmth of his touch, the bliss of being in his arms after so many barren years, was too much for Eve. Suddenly she desperately wanted to deny the past, forget it and lose herself in this moment. She knew that she and Rowarth could not go back, that too much had happened to force them apart, but she wanted to hold on to this night forever. In the warm intimacy of this tiny room with the door closed against the world and the future, she could fool herself for a little while that she could recapture what they had had.
“I don’t want to talk about the past,” she said, pressing her fingers to her lips. “I want to spend this one night with you, Rowarth, and forget about all else.”
Rowarth went very still at her words. He held himself under absolute control, aching to touch her, hold her and kiss her to within an inch of her life. His body had sprung into almost instant hardness at the images her words conjured. To lie with Eve again, to rediscover the pleasure they could give one another, to hear her soft cries and take her with all the lust and tenderness and regret that was in his soul… But that was not enough. It would never be enough.
“Just the one night?” he asked.
“Yes.” The firelight shimmered on some expression in her eyes that he could not understand. “We both know that there cannot be anything else for us, Rowarth.”
He would take issue with that, Rowarth thought. Not long ago he might have thought that one night with Eve would be sufficient to sate his need for her and lay to rest the ghosts of the past. Now he knew that it could never be enough. His future would be a desert if Eve were not a part of it. The idea of her walking away from him again in a day, two days, and never seeing her again was intolerable.
His. The possessive desire almost floored him. She had always been his, from the first moment he had seen her, and she would be his again. They had lost each other a little along the way but soon, very soon, they could wash away the loneliness and grief he had seen in her, and the bitterness and revenge that had been in him. And then he would never let her go again.
Eve moved closer to him, which brought her into his arms, and raised her face to his so that he could kiss her. He was within an inch of forgetting everything except his need for her. With a groan he lowered his mouth to hers and she opened her lips to him and he tasted her, hot, sweet, as seductive as she had always been except that his desire for her was so much more potent now. His tongue grazed hers and she gave a little whimper of pleasure. He scooped her up in his arms, still kissing her, his only thought now to take her to bed and claim her once and for all as his own.
Eve stood on the rug before the fire in her bedroom, shivering. She was terrified. She had gone this far, recklessly, on emotion alone, and now a part of her was excited, wanting to luxuriate in the wonderful, wicked pleasure of rediscovering Rowarth’s touch, but she was also nervous, as gauche as a debutante.
He had carried her through to the bedroom and placed her gently on her feet but now he did not touch her. The anticipation and the anxiety thrummed through Eve like a wire. She had thought he wanted her with a hunger that matched her own.
“If you have changed your mind then let us forget the whole matter.” It was her pride talking because she could not bear for him to reject her now, after all that they had been through.
He moved then, so fast that she was taken by surprise, catching her hand and drawing her close.
“I have not changed my mind.” His voice was amused but with a rough edge to it now and the excitement flickered through her blood like sheet lightning to hear it. “I wanted you from the first moment I saw you again and I knew this would happen.”
“How arrogant of you.” How she loved that confidence in him.
Rowarth put a hand under her chin. His eyes scanned her face, eyes so warm, so tender. Eve shivered again, this time with longing as well as fear. She had always known deep down that she still loved Rowarth and tonight she did not want to think about the future. She wanted to banish the darkness, at least for a little while.
He brushed his thumb over her bottom lip and Eve felt her body quiver in response.