Page 105 of Rogue of My Heart
Marie thought she might be sick. Of all the ways God could have punished her for the sin of lust and the wickedness of everything she and Christian had done, subjecting Christian to even the whiff of an accusation of murder was the very last thing she expected. What would people say if he really was to blame? Would they accuse him of doing away with his father and brother as a way to gain the Kilrea title? She’d heard Lord Boleran refer to Christian as “my lord” and inform him he was the new earl. Would that alone be enough to raise suspicion?
“No,” she whispered, more as a denial of those potential accusations as anything else. She pivoted sharply, searching Christian out. He had climbed into the farmer’s wagon and was helping the doctor settle his mother in the nest that had been made for her.
As if he could sense her, he glanced up and met her eyes. Marie lurched forward, as if she could go to him and somehow make the whole situation better. But the blankness of his expression held her back. He was overwhelmed, beyond feeling anything. She could see that as plainly as if she held him in her arms and the two of them were whispering to each other in bed. All she could do was to put every ounce of the love she felt for him more strongly than ever into her look and nod at him, letting him know she was there for him.
He nodded back, but that was all he could do before the doctor commanded his attention. As soon as he looked away, Marie’s heart sank. She couldn’t shake the feeling that a terrible wall now divided them.
Seven
The terrible feeling in Marie’s heart and gut persisted for days. It kept her up nights, tossing and turning and scrambling to remember as many details of the wreck as she could so that she could exonerate Christian. He couldn’t have been the cause of the fatal accident, he simply couldn’t have. It was just a harmless prank, a bit of fun. Life was supposed to be fun and filled with laughter…wasn’t it?
Twined together with her anxiety about the accident was a worry of a different sort. The morning she and Christian had spent together had been magnificent. She’d known full well that she liked Christian, but kissing him so freely and making love to him had been exquisite. His body was every bit as wonderful in action as it had been to look at. Being with him that way had confirmed the one thought that pulsed louder than any other in her mind or her heart. She loved Christian. Yes, the feelings had come on quickly, but she was sure of them. Christian was the only man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with.
He also wasn’t replying to the numerous letters she’d sent him in the three days since the accident. Worse still, those letters had come back unopened. That couldn’t be his doing, could it? Surely, some servant or solicitor had taken it upon themselves to deflect all of Christian’s communications, seeing as he had suddenly been weighted down with the responsibilities of the earldom and his mother’s continued dangerous health.
“Good heavens, Marie. You’ve been holding that spoon halfway to your mouth for so long that I’m surprised your soup hasn’t evaporated,” Shannon said, snapping Marie out of her thoughts.
Marie blinked rapidly, lowering her spoon and letting it sink in her bowl of soup. She hadn’t had much of an appetite for the last few days anyhow. Who could think about food in such a dire situation?
She blinked again when she realized her sisters were all staring at her. Fergus and Henrietta had been invited out to luncheon, which meant the four of them had been left to their own devices for the meal. But instead of laughing uproariously over someone’s amusing story or plotting mischief, Marie’s sisters were unusually somber. And they were all studying her with varying degrees of worry.
“You’ve hardly eaten anything since….” Chloe bit her lip, shrugged, and finished simply with, “Since.”
“You’ve hardly spoken either,” Colleen said with a far more somber air. “Which is twice as concerning, if you ask me.”
“I haven’t had much to say,” Marie told them, her voice sounding hoarse and unused.
Shannon reached across the corner of the table and covered Marie’s hand with her own. “This is a trying time,” she said sympathetically, ever the eldest sister. “First, Fergus threw you into an engagement that you didn’t want and that was clearly unsuitable for you. Then, your fiancé is killed in an accident.”
“Not to mention that Marie was one of the first on the scene,” Colleen said with a little too much excitement in her eyes. Colleen always had had a fascination with the morbid.
At the moment, Marie didn’t appreciate it at all. “It’s not that,” she said, her voice dropping to a listless sigh. “I’m terribly worried about Christian.”
Her sisters all seemed to freeze for a moment. They exchanged looks that made it clear all three of them knew full well there was much more to the story than they’d been told.
“It’s kind of you to be concerned for Lord Kilrea,” Shannon said carefully. She eyed Marie closely, as if waiting to see how she would react to Christian being referred to by his new title.
Marie sent her a flat look in return. As much as she enjoyed games and merriment, she wasn’t in the mood for anything but the bald truth. “We’re lovers,” she blurted before she lost the nerve. It was technically true, even if their affair was new.
Her sisters reacted with varying degrees of surprise, and in Chloe’s case, delight.
“How exciting and delicious,” Chloe said, eyes sparkling. “Is he a good lover? Does he make you feel spectacular? How long does it take to do that anyhow? When do you?—”
“Chloe, hush.” Shannon silenced her with a stern look. “Now is not the time to interrogate Marie about such things.” Her mouth twitched up in one corner. “Though any other time I would encourage every inappropriate question possible, if only as punishment for not telling the rest of us what you intended sooner.”
“It happened quite unexpectedly,” Marie told them, leaning stiffly back in her chair and fiddling nervously with the edge of her soup bowl.
“I’ll say.” Colleen stared at her with curious, narrowed eyes. “The two of you only met a month ago.”
“I suppose you could say it was love at first sight,” Marie sighed, biting her lip and feeling unaccountably sad at the prospect instead of delighted.
“I thought love at first sight only happened in storybooks,” Chloe said with a dreamy look, leaning one elbow on the table and resting her chin in her hand.
“If I recall correctly, that first sight involved the sight of his prick,” Shannon said, one eyebrow arched.
Marie answered Shannon’s stare with a quelling look. “Christian Darrow is more than just a fine prick,” she said. “He’s a lovely, warm, open-hearted man. Whether we’d known each other one day or one hundred years, it would be the same. We knew at once we were meant for each other.” She supposed that was true, looking back on their meeting.
She wriggled uncomfortably in her chair as her sisters continued to stare at her. “And then Fergus had the audacity to engage me to his brother, and Christian’s father was mad enough to betroth him to Lady Aoife.”