Chapter Sixteen
Colin was in a rather strange mood as he walked Susannah around Hyde Park, and she could not account for it. The musicale the evening before had been a great success, according to Tibby, and he had been so very handsome in his finery, even if he preferred the casual wear of daytime. He’d said nothing unusual then, had been charming and sweet, just as he had been of late.
When he had shown up at Tibby’s this morning just shortly after breakfast and asked for a walk, she’d been confused, but not concerned. Now that she had seen the evidence of some agitation… he spoke too fast, his walk was too clipped, his hold on her too tight… she was growing more and more worried by the moment.
Various scenarios and schemes worked their way in and out of her mind as they walked, neither of them speaking much. Had he been distressed by something at home? He’d had that moment of unease last night that he did not discuss; was it perhaps something more serious? It could have been something to do with the girls, but surely he would not have left them if it were so very bad. And he would have told her of them by now.
A cold fear lurched her heart. Had he somehow found out about her? Had Sir Martin’s identity and history somehow reached him? Or perhaps the debt collectors had discovered her and were making threats against her friends. It could not have been about her family, their once haughty view of life had long since vanished, and where they had once been appalled at the idea of the Gerrard family and fortune, now they would have welcomed it with open arms on bended knee.
The irony in that idea still left a very bitter taste in her mouth.
Whatever it was, Colin had made it perfectly plain that he would not tell her until he found a secluded spot for them. Such was his luck, the day was so fine that many had come out to the park, even at this early hour. The further they walked, the deeper Colin’s glower became.
Susannah chewed her lip anxiously as her heart pounded. Could this, perhaps, be the end of everything? It was too soon, she was not prepared to go back to the way things had been. But then, she might not have a choice.
She had survived it once, she could do so again.
Colin finally stopped in a secluded stand of trees far away from anybody or anything, and only then did he seem to relax. “I’m sorry,” he said on a sigh as he looked at her. “I just had to get you alone.”
Susannah tilted her head to look up at him with a small smile. “Why?”
He returned her smile. “Well, for starters…” He cupped her face with one hand and brought his lips to hers for a warm, teasing kiss that made her toes curl in her boots. She sighed against him and raised up to meet his eager mouth more fully, his other arm latching firmly around her as she did so.
She loved kissing Colin; from the very beginning, she had loved it. It was more than she had ever imagined a kiss could be, and it was also a tantalizing amount of fun. She had been kissed a few other times in her life, but there was something about Colin’s kisses that made her feel wild and giddy, that tasted of spice and heat, that sent her pulse pounding everywhere.
And she could cling to heaven a bit longer.
She raised a hand to the back of Colin’s neck while the other clenched at his jacket, her senses awash in the heady attentions of his lips. Her fingers tightened into his hair and he raised her higher, closer, his kisses turning into something deeper, darker, far more dangerous, and far more enticing. She wanted this, she wanted him, she wanted…
She broke off with a gasp, her head falling back as Colin moved to her throat, nuzzling and spreading soft kisses along the column.
She inhaled slowly and moved her hand to Colin’s face, forcing him to look at her. His eyes were dark, serious, and very focused.
Oh, no…
He lowered her until her feet touched the ground, then touched his forehead and nose to hers. “Marry me, Susannah.”
Her breath caught in her throat and her hand fluttered from his face to his shoulder, as if she needed him for balance.
“I love you,” Colin said softly, stroking her cheek with one hand, keeping her close with the other. “I’ve loved you for so long, I don’t know who I am without it. But it’s more than that, because ever since you have come back into my life, I feel whole again. I didn’t know what I had been missing all these years, I only knew something wasn’t right. Now I know.” He brushed his lips across hers again. “It’s you.”
She shivered in his hold and clamped her lips together to keep from crying.
Colin shook his head against her, laughing softly to himself. “I thought I knew how I loved you when I was seventeen. But it is nothing compared to how I feel about you now. I love you. I love your stubbornness and your sweetness, your generous heart and unconquerable will. I love that I want to spend every minute of every day with you, I love that you are the last thought I think at night and the first every morning. I love…” He pulled back and grinned broadly. “Oddly enough, I love that I have become the sort of lovesick loon I used to mock, all because of you. So marry me, my darling love, and let me worship you until the end of time.”
She stared at him, breathless and unsteady, tears beginning the slow trickle down her cheeks. She longed to say yes, the words were there on her lips.
But…
“I can’t,” she forced herself to say, her breath hitching.
Colin’s brow furrowed and he pulled back a little. He swiped away one of her tears. “What do you mean you can’t?”
She swallowed and sniffed sharply. “I mean that I can’t marry you.”
Stung, Colin let go and stepped further back. “Why the devil not?”
“There are things…” She shook her head and fought for control. “Too many things. I can’t marry you, or anyone. It would destroy you.”
“I doubt that.”
“You don’t know!” she insisted, wanting to grab his coat and shake him. “You can’t possibly…”
“I’ve tried!” he interrupted, his voice rising. “I have tried to get you to tell me, but you won’t! How can I know without you opening up once in a while?”
She let out a sound that was half of a moan, half of a whimper and put her face in her hands. “I can’t. I can’t…”
“Why won’t you trust me?” Colin asked, his voice pleading.
She looked at him, agonizing over what he must be feeling. “I do trust you! Would I have done any of this if I didn’t trust you? I should be hiding in the middle of the darkest corner of the city, and here I am out in the open with you.”
“Hiding from what?” he exclaimed, flinging his arms out. “What is so horrible?”
Again, she shook her head. “I can’t tell you.”
Colin scoffed and put his hands on his hips. “You trust me. But you can’t tell me. Do you see why I am having trouble here?”
“Yes, I see it!” she cried. “And I am asking you to trust me that I can’t tell you!”
He shook his head, his eyes pleading. “I love you! I want to marry you! Is that not evidence enough? I don’t care!”
“You would care,” she vowed, suddenly very fatigued. “When it was all brought to light, when there were no more secrets, you would care very much. And I couldn’t bear that.”
His eyes narrowed at the catch in her voice. “You couldn’t bear it,” he repeated.
She nodded, swallowing with much difficulty.
He stared at her for a long moment, his shoulders heaving unsteadily with his breath. “Tell me now why you won’t marry me,” he said in a soft, almost dangerous voice. “And don’t you dare say a word about your past or our past or your ridiculous husband’s debts or anything else because I don’t care. I want to know why you won’t marry me.”
Would he never understand? Could he not see that she was all wrong for him? She had proven it time and time again, but he refused to accept it. She bit her lip and exhaled shakily. “A goose will never be a swan, no matter how fervently it is wished,” she murmured softly.
His mouth opened and his brows shot up. “What? Don’t be ridiculous!”
“I’m not being ridiculous! That is the best way I can think to illustrate it.”
He laughed one mirthless, cold laugh. “So you’re… you’re turning us into birds? Geese and swans, is that what we’ve come to?”
She wanted to cry, she wanted to hold him, she wanted to run… She caught at her trembling lips with her teeth and pled with her eyes, begging him to understand. “Colin, I can’t!”
He snorted once. “Yes, you’ve said that. Let me just tell you one thing. I love you. And I thought that was all that mattered.”
She looked down at her boots, willing her tears back. If only that were true. “You were mistaken.”
He seemed to fall back a step, and she looked up, catching the half-furious, half-horrified expression on his face. Then it all turned dark and a glower appeared. He inhaled through his nose and started past her. “I need to go, I need to think…”
“Colin, please,” she cried, reaching out for him.
He jerked away and held out a hand. “You can’t… you cannot expect me to stay with you right now. Not after this. I need time, I need to…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “I need to be away from you. I need time.”
“I understand,” she whispered.
He looked at her for a moment, and his hand raised just a bit, as if he were to touch her face. But then he pulled it back, and fisted his hand at his side. He nodded once, and then stormed out into the main of the park.
Alone and exhausted, Susannah slumped back against a tree, hand clutching at her chest, where her heart threatened to burst. Her tears were gone, but her breathing refused to settle. She would break Colin all over again, and it would be more painful the second time than the first.
Because his words were true for her as well. She thought she knew what love for him felt like when they were young, but now? Now she loved him with a full woman’s heart, grown and mature and full of deeper meaning than she’d ever thought she could have. He was everything to her, more than he’d been before. He was her heaven and her hell, her salvation and her damnation.
And it would be better for him, for all of them, if she were gone.
But she couldn’t go.
Painful as it would be, she had to stay.
For now.
Colin seethed the entire walk back home, his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. He walked passed his house and continued for several blocks, then walked down to St. James, then wandered as his feet carried him. He really didn’t care where he went.
So long as he didn’t have to see her.
What did she mean by refusing him? He loved her, and he thought she loved him. But now, just as it had been then, he didn’t know. She’d never said it, despite what her smiles and her eyes and her kisses might have led him to believe.
She’d said she needed time. She had never said that she could not marry him, or anyone. What did she mean by that? Did she really consider her situation so bad that she could not marry at all? Or had her marriage been so bad that she refused to enter into such an agreement again?
The latter he could understand, but it was still a ridiculous notion. Her marriage, by her own account, had been set up by her parents, and she’d had little choice in the matter. A marriage of her choosing with someone she trusted or loved would hardly be comparable.
She claimed to trust him, but he failed to see how that could be true. If she trusted him, she would confide in him. He would move heaven and earth to save her, if only he knew where to begin.
And the Gent had yet to give him any sort of details.
He could do it on his own. He could march down to the financial district and get Mr. Jacobs to talk to him, despite whatever agreement of secrecy they might have had. Colin did not know any man who could not be tempted by the right amount of money. There was not that much honor in anyone.
Well, all right, there were a few, himself included, that still had scruples, but his were crumbling at a rapid rate.
The tension in his neck and shoulders eased a bit as he thought about Susannah.
She had been in distress today, he was not so blind as to miss that. He had seen the battle waging within her, and had willed her to his side of things. But it was not to be, and he saw the cost of it in her face. It had angered him, had cut him quite deeply, and echoes of the past had sprung into memory. But what about her? They’d had so many delightful days of late, and still she hid. Still she refused him.
Still she was afraid.
And he couldn’t do anything about it.
He found himself back in Bruton Street without realizing it, and he leaned against the brick façade of his home. He was supposed to have come home in unfettered delight, whistling jaunty tunes, ready to spread the news far and wide of his impending nuptials. Now he was feeling rather devoid of any emotion at all. The anger had faded, the embarrassment had ebbed, and now he was weary beyond anything.
Where did he go from here?
Did he continue to court her? At the moment, he was not even sure he wanted to see her again, let alone give his heart another chance. But could he leave her alone?
That sent a cold chill through him.
A mother and her two daughters walked past, the girls smiling invitingly at him as their mother greeted him.
He nodded absently in their direction, and he saw the flash of disappointment in their faces as he turned and entered the house.
He didn’t care.
Colin Gerrard had a heart, contrary to popular belief, and at the moment, it ached like hell.
A note sat on the desk in the study in familiar handwriting and he seized it at once, breaking the seal so hastily the paper almost ripped with it. His eyes scanned the short missive multiple times, and the information gave him as little pleasure on those attempts as it had the first time.
Two solicitors, it appears. Tracing what I can. Reply only if you wish me to stop.
Colin scrunched the paper in his hand and tossed it into the corner of the room with a sigh. He had not expected a full report, the Gent would hardly put such details onto paper. Gossip was one thing and this was entirely different. But he had expected to hear something. This was nothing, this brought only more questions, this…
He grunted and sat down at the desk roughly.
He hated not knowing what he needed to.
Another paper caught his eye, and his jaw tightened as his stomach roiled. He grabbed this paper more gently than he had the Gent’s note, but he was quick to shove it into the nearest drawer and close it tightly. He did not need that now, though this morning he had been keen enough to look at it. What use was a special license to a man without a bride?
Breathing was suddenly too hard, perspiration was beginning to form, and the room was much too hot. He couldn’t stay in here, when everything would remind him of her. He couldn’t stay in the house, where her smell seemed to invade everything. He could not go to the garden, where the laughter of his sisters brought her smiles to memory.
No, he needed to escape and to work. Something to burn off his agitation and keep him from going completely mad.
Dressed as he was, he left the house through the servants’ entrance and made his way to the mews, knowing he would shock anyone there, but also knowing it was one place he could let out whatever he wished without consideration to anybody.
His servants greeted him, and then ignored him as they continued with their work. He was rather pleased they were so disinterested in him at this moment. He headed directly for a chopping block and a large pile of wood that could serve his purposes quite nicely. The sky, once cloudy before, now began to sprinkle light drops of rain, but he did not care. In fact, he liked the day better for it.
It should rain again, on this day of all days.
Nearly an hour later, he would surmise that he had not gone completely unnoticed from the house. Kit must have seen something, and acted upon it, for Colin’s four friends had now appeared at the mews, dressed as he had been, though his coat and cravat had long been tossed aside. His shirt was drenched, from the now steady rain and from his sweat, and it clung to his skin in an irritating way. He had split almost twice the amount of wood that was needed, and his servants had told him that. But he ignored them, and they let him be.
Just as he ignored his friends now.
They stood near him, watching, no doubt waiting for him to greet them in some fashion.
They would wait quite a while.
“Colin?” Geoff finally tried.
He chopped another piece of wood, a bit askew this time. He swore and kicked it aside, picking up another one.
“Are you… perspiring?” Derek asked, trying to tease him.
Colin grunted as he swung the axe again. “Yes.”
“Voluntarily?” Nathan asked, and he could hear the smile in his voice.
Again, he swung the axe. “Yes.”
“Are you quite well, Colin?” Geoff sounded the slightest bit concerned. “Do you need to lie down?”
“No,” he bit out as he picked up another piece.
“No?”
“No what, Colin?”
He swung the axe, but said nothing.
“Colin?”
“What I need,” he ground out harshly, picking up the wood pieces and setting them in the pile, “is for someone to figure out what she wants. What I need is for her to not be so blasted tempting and addicting.” He snatched up another piece of wood and set it on the block. “What I need is to push myself to my limit and beyond so that I can still be a gentleman in public and not some wild animal. What I need is to not feel as though my entire life has been a waste. What I need is for my so-called friends to get out of my face if all they are going to do is pester me with inane questions on a subject they know absolutely nothing about!”
With a harsh cry he slammed the axe down and split the piece into perfectly even halves that careened off of the block.
Breathing heavily, he waited there, axe down, unmoving.
No one said anything. No one made a sound at all.
Then Duncan bent down to pick up yet another piece of wood, set it in the middle of the block, and waited.
Colin gave a short exhale and dislodged the axe with a brief nod at his friend.
Duncan returned it, then put his eyes back on the wood at hand.
Without a word, the others removed their coats and hats, set them in the relatively dry stables, and went to the woodpile themselves, stacking the wood neatly beneath its shelter, and finding more pieces for Colin to split.
No one asked questions, no one told him he was mad, and no one complained that it was raining.
He might not be able to understand Susannah’s reasoning for her refusal, he might not be able to make sense of his own life, he might be a complete idiot when it came to love, but here, at least, were men who could sympathize, some in very real ways. They were his friends, his allies, and men who understood that there was no understanding anything in the realm of one’s heart.
When he had exhausted the woodpile, and himself, he let his friends lead him back home, and once they had seated themselves in the kitchen with a hot fire, warm blankets, and warmer drinks, they sat in silence there as well.
In some cases, such as this, words were unnecessary.
One by one, his friends drifted off, each clamping a hand on his shoulder as he left, returning to their houses and wives, to their children in some cases, and to their relative comfort. He was grateful for each of them, and for their happiness and contentment. And he was envious of it.
He was oh so very envious.
And that burned just as fiercely as anything else.