Page 78 of When We Touch

“Oh, Lord! Yes, I am guilty!” She backed into the chair.

She was startled to look up and find that he was standing before her. She was more startled when he hunkered down in front of the chair, closer still. “Explain,” he said, and his tone was gentle, but had an edge.

“I think I prayed him dead!” she whispered.

“Prayed him dead?” His brows shot up.

She shook her head, face coloring as she turned to the flames once again. “I had thought . . . I don’t know what I had thought. I’d wanted . . . darkness. I knew what marriage was, but I had thought . . . and he wanted light. And he wanted . . . a show. And I was miserable and mortified, and I was praying that I didn’t have to go through with it, and then . . .”

He was just staring at her. She’d expected total condemnation. She was stunned to see a slight curl to his lips.

“Maggie, I don’t believe that you prayed him dead.”

“But I did.”

“You said, ‘Oh, God! Please strike this man dead!’”

“No, but, you see, I prayed that I wouldn’t have to go through with it . . . and then Charles fell back.”

Jamie’s smile deepened. “I wouldn’t divulge this line of thought to anyone else.”

“I didn’t intend to divulge it to you. You were simply too rude to leave, and so boorish as to demand an answer.”

“Yes, well, do excuse me, he was my uncle, and I loved him very much.”

“I did love him, too. I really did. I recognized him for a truly honest, considerate human being, one who cared about the world, people, social reform . . . I love the man he was. I just . . . I didn’t actually want to be his wife, though.”

“Maggie, I don’t believe that God just decided to strike Charles dead because you wanted to avoid your wifely duties,” he said.

“He wouldn’t, would He?” she said, hopefully.

“I quite honestly don’t believe so,” Jamie assured her. “Actually, it’s a little presumptuous of you to be so worried.”

“Presumptuous?”

“Charles was a good man. God wouldn’t have taken him unless it was his time—I mean, certainly not just on your say-so.”

She flushed again. “Yes, you’re right, that was horribly presumptuous of me. But still . . . I was so awful. In what I was thinking. I mean, after all, I did marry him.”

“Yes, you did,” Jamie said abruptly. He seemed very angry again, and stood, moving away from her. “The solicitors will be here at ten. Please be ready to see them. And stop with the laudanum, now. It was something you perhaps needed at first. No more.”

He strode across the room, reaching impatiently for the door. The he paused, looking back at her. “The thing is, you see, there is no going back. And you’re now Charles’s widow, and there are responsibilities.” He stared at her curiously another minute. Then, impatiently, he turned and nearly took the door off its hinges in his haste to leave.

* * *

Justin awaited Mireau in the grand salon. It seemed incredible that Lord Charles, Viscount Langdon, had been dead nearly a week. As he stared at the flames, he was grateful that his sister had been cleared of wrongdoing. Officially, of course, she had never been charged with anything. Unofficially, of course, there were those who still remained highly suspect of her.

He wondered at the wisdom of all that he had done. Perhaps Angus had been the one to make the contacts and inform them that it was really their only choice, but he was Lord Justin, Baron Graham, and he had set his signature to the consent forms. He reflected that, most men of sense and business would still consider that the right moves had been made. Lord Charles had been elderly—it wasn’t as if the marriage might have gone on for a spectacular number of years. He was a good man, and his death was sad.

And in the marriage, he had become free from debt, free from the threat of debtor’s prison, and he was even in position again to take charge of his own finances—and make something of his life. Perhaps that was it.

He had gone through the proper training to acquire a military position, and he had served for a few years. But the greatest action he had seen had been that of controlling a riot in Trafalgar Square when the insurgents had protested factory conditions. He had served a requisite time, and left the military. And since then . . .

He’d gambled away the estates his father had left him.

Lord Charles’s death had left him feeling that his own life was quite a waste. His sister had come this far in his behalf, and asked only that he find the right girl, marry—and keep the family title from Angus and their cousins. Fine. He had simply not found the right girl. Never, in all the whirl of teas and hunts and balls had he found that one person who . . .

But actually, he had. Glaring at the flames, he remembered how he had come across the girl of his dreams in this very house. Hair like India ink. Skin as fair as snow. Eyes dark, lips so sweetly, and yet lusciously, red. The servant girl who had helped him adjust his cravat . . .