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Chapter 29
MEGGIE SAID, HER voice dull and accepting, “I loved him beginning when I was thirteen years old.”
“Why did you marry me, dammit, when you loved another man?”
“I liked you very much, Thomas, you pleased me, you made me laugh, better still, I made you laugh. I esteemed you. I admired you and knew you were honorable. I wanted to marry you.”
“You loved another man.”
Slowly she nodded. “You didn’t love me either.”
“How do you know?” He slashed his hand through the air. “Not that it matters. Is that your defense? Let me tell you, Meggie, I wasn’t cherishing some other woman in my heart, which is balderdash, naturally, but that is the way one says it, I suppose. I didn’t marry you under false pretenses.”
Meggie felt her heart pounding slow deep strokes. Her mouth felt dry. “May I ask how you know about Jeremy?”
“Yes, I’ll tell you. We had been married all of an hour when I happened to overhear you speaking to your father about how very noble Jeremy was, how you admired him, how you would have loved him forever, if only he hadn’t met Charlotte.”
Meggie squeezed her eyes closed, remembering each word, feeling the pain each one brought her, pain that just by saying them had flowed over her husband. “You remember so very much. I’m sorry, Thomas. You see, my father was very worried about me and about you as well. He didn’t want either of us to be disappointed. When he asked, I admitted that I knew Jeremy had been playacting when he’d come to the vicarage, that he’d just told me he wasn’t really obnoxious at all, that it had all been an act to help me get over my feelings for him. He was telling me then since it wasn’t important any longer since I’d just married, and he didn’t want me to dislike him anymore.”
Thomas wanted to yell down the moon, which was bright overhead tonight, not a single cloud in the Irish sky, a perfect spring night, the air soft and fragrant with the scent of new flowers, but he didn’t want her anymore now. His sense of betrayal was greater now that she’d admitted to it.
“Well, damn you, you didn’t get over your feelings for the bastard. Then you married me.”
“Yes, I did.”
“But he was married and he didn’t want you?”
“No, but he was betrothed, something I didn’t know about until it was too late.”
“I see. If Jeremy walked through that door this very instant, told you he wanted you, would you go with him?”
“No.”
“Because you’re a damned vicar’s daughter.”
“Because I don’t break my promises.”
He plowed his hand through his hair, making it stand straight up. Meggie smiled.
“So I am stuck with a wife who loves another man,” he said finally, and hated the words as they poured out of his mouth, hated them to his gut. They were stark and ugly, those damnable words, sounded like nails in a coffin lid.
“Listen to me, Thomas. I have a very high regard for you. I very much like it when you kiss me, when you love me. You have given me great pleasure just as, I trust, I have given you. Jeremy isn’t part of my life now. Only you are. I am your wife and I will protect you and honor you until I die.”
“Wonderful,” Thomas said, and began pacing, his dressing gown flapping at his ankles. “Just bloody wonderful. An honorable wife who’s already betrayed me. Damnation.” The fingers went through the hair again.
She said suddenly, “That is why you were so very rough with me on our wedding night, wasn’t it? You were thinking about Jeremy and you wanted to punish me.”
“I’m not proud of it, but yes. I heard you talking about him and I couldn’t bear it. I hurt you.” He paced again. She could feel anger radiating off him. She realized fully what she’d done to him.
“I’m very sorry, Thomas.”
“Yes, naturally you are because you’re so damned honorable and you recognize that you’ve done a very wrong thing.”