He blinked into the darkness. Arrogant of him, wasn’t it, to be so certain of that? He’d never encouraged her to say the words, given he’d been so set on not admitting to the same sentiment in return, yet…
While he couldn’t know with absolute certainty what she currently felt for him, his knowledge of the female of the species assured him that the glory they habitually shared in that very bed—an outcome that, despite his extensive prior experience, he’d only ever attained with her—was a manifestation of the emotion that, regardless of his deception and her obliviousness of his truth, lived inside them both.
Now that he’d cracked open the door on his most deeply held secret and invited her to explore, in the same way that he’d initially plotted to keep her—his otherwise highly observant wife—from perceiving his true state, he was going to have to tread warily in crafting their way forward.
The first step in any such plan was, unquestionably, to get up and leave her bed. Now, before she awoke and found him still there. As part of his pretense that, on his part, their marriage was entirely conventional rather than a love-match, he’d never been there, beside her, when she woke. He always left her sleeping, and as far as she knew, he spent the better part of every night in his own bed. As she slept soundly and he always made sure she was boneless and pleasurably enervated prior to her slipping into slumber, she had no idea that he rarely left her side until dawn drew near.
While the sun had yet to rise, dawn wasn’t that far off. He forced himself to adhere to the script he’d written and ease from the bed. Immediately, he regretted the loss of her warmth. Lips setting, he shrugged on his robe and belted it, then quietly left via the connecting door that led to his apartments.
Once in his bedroom, rather than crawl between his cold sheets, he walked to the window, drew back the heavy curtains, and looked across Park Lane to the trees in the park beyond. Leaves still clung to the branches of the old oaks, and a fine mist was slowly thickening, draping the nearly skeletal canopies with insubstantial wisps.
He stared out at the chilly sight while the reasons that had driven him to conceal his love scrolled through his mind. His parents and their marriage. And more recently, that of his best friend. At the time of his and Therese’s wedding, his reasons had seemed sound, undeniable, and self-evident, and the decision he’d made incontrovertibly correct.
As a young boy, he believed he’d seen first-hand the injuries that could be inflicted on a man, even one of strong character, who, having fallen in love with a lady of resolutely determined personality, made the mistake of acknowledging that love to its object. To his younger self, his parents’ marriage had served as a stark lesson in what could happen to a gentleman unwise enough to admit that he loved a strong-willed wife of managing disposition. In his eyes, his mother had lorded it over his father, taking his love, regard, and support for granted and frequently riding roughshod over his pride and his standing, belittling and diminishing him before their staff and their children. His father had never protested or reined his mother in, and times without number, Devlin had seen him swallow his pride and accede to her dictates. Devlin had been forced to stand and watch, impotent to do anything to lessen the impact as, in his eyes, his mother’s undermining had only grown worse and more hurtful with the years, albeit only in private. To the world, the previous Earl and Countess of Alverton had been a devoted couple.
Then Devlin’s close friend James, Viscount Hemmings, had married a virago, purely and openly for love. Despite the fact that everyone agreed James and Veronica were madly in love, they never ceased sniping at each other. If Devlin had needed a further lesson in the dangers inherent in a marriage between a gentleman of his ilk and a strong-willed lady being openly anchored in love, the Hemmingses had provided it.
His experience of his parents’ marriage and his observation of the Hemmingses’ union would have made him eschew the institution of marriage altogether, except that then, he’d succeeded to the earldom, and all the ton had expected him to marry and secure the succession. Admittedly, if he’d remained a bachelor until he died, his younger brother, Melrose, seven years his junior, would have stepped into the earl’s shoes, but neither Devlin nor Melrose nor, indeed, anyone else had deemed that a wise course to follow; currently twenty-nine years old, Melrose had shown no sign of settling down or becoming serious about anything at all.
Consequently, when Devlin had first locked eyes with Therese and recognized that she held out the promise of all he would ever want and need in a wife, he’d seized her. Despite her already well-established reputation of being strong-willed to the point of ruthlessness, despite her being in every possible way the epitome of the sort of lady he’d been determined above all others to avoid. Despite her being the very last lady he should have considered offering for, with one look—one fateful look—she’d changed his mind.
But she hadn’t changed his mind about allowing her to know that he loved her.
Prior to yesterday, he’d never let her glimpse even the slightest hint of his true regard.
Staring at the mist now blanketing the park, he grimaced. He’d thought himself so very clever, and indeed, he had been. He’d used her own self-conviction to steer her beliefs, subtly guiding her interpretation of what she saw. She was so confident in her own abilities to observe, understand, and manage, it had never occurred to her that, in him, she’d met her master—or at least, someone equally adept and rather more duplicitous.
Now, he faced unpicking and reforging the web of beliefs he’d encouraged her to create, the framework of understanding on which their marriage was based. And he had to—absolutely had to—manage that task without destabilizing the edifice that now rested upon that foundation. He did not want to damage—not in any way—what they already had, both the ease of interaction that had evolved over the years and the calm, ordered, settled existence that he, she, their children, and their households enjoyed. He was well aware the latter owed much to Therese’s managing disposition; she was adept at organizing so that everyone and everything ran smoothly and efficiently, to the point that the tranquil atmosphere that prevailed within his households was the envy of many of his peers.
In moving forward, impulsively or otherwise, he didn’t want to risk harming the relationship they already had, yet if he’d learned anything from his years of successfully investing in new industries, it was that, sometimes, risks were well worth taking.
His exposure to the marriages of her cousins, his awareness of the benefits that flowed from the acknowledgment of mutual love—the joy, the unfettered happiness and unrestrained sharing, the closeness that was so much more evocative and enthralling—had tempted, then seduced, until he’d finally swallowed his pride, accepted his innermost truth, and admitted that if there was any chance of claiming that sort of marriage for himself and Therese, then he was willing to fight for it, willing to sacrifice to achieve that goal.
How much, if anything, he might have to sacrifice wasn’t at all clear, but with his unwise words of yesterday, he’d taken the first irretrievable step toward claiming the sort of marriage that, were it not for his reservations over admitting to love, might have been theirs for the past five years.
Eyes narrowing, he gazed out at the fog that now obscured the park. He hadn’t had to woo Therese; instead, he’d manipulated her into persuading him to the altar. It would be up to him to manage this transition as well, and as he wished to succeed in that delicate endeavor, he was going to need a plan—a carefully thought-out campaign to convince his wife of five years that he loved her as much as she loved him.