She wanted to rest. She felt tired to her bones after everything that had turned her world upside down in the past few weeks…months…years. But she didn’t have that luxury, not when she had responsibilities to the child she’d just been holding. She owed him her full attention until she was certain of his future.
Which meant she forced herself to stride from the parlor and down the hallway. She wasn’t certain where Rhys had gone. His bedchamber was a logical choice, and if he had gone there, she would follow and barge into his private space. But she avoided thinking of that. Thinking about it felt very dangerous.
Luckily, she didn’t have to go upstairs and rattle his doors. When she paused to peek into Erasmus’s small study, she found Rhys there, standing beside the window, looking down onto the street. She felt the tension in him even from this distance. She felt the anguish and it touched her far more than it should have.
She stepped into the room and silently shut the door behind her. She drew a few long breaths before she turned back. He was still staring out at the street and she cleared her throat softly. “My lord?”
He jumped at the sound of her voice and pivoted to face her. She caught her breath at his expression. He looked drawn down to nothing in the sunshine coming through the window and hiding nothing from her. Like he could cry or break everything in this room. Like he could collapse into a heap under the weight of everything he had to carry thanks to his feckless, foolish brother. One she recognized he’d had no time to mourn.
Rhys looked broken, and in that charged moment she wanted so badly to fix things for him.
She crossed the room toward him. He tracked her, those blue eyes taking in everything, but he didn’t back away. That was something at any rate. She caught his hand and held it between her own.
“Oh, please,” she said. “Please talk to me.”
His body gave a great twitch, and he turned his head so he was no longer looking at her. “Perhaps that is not a good idea,” he said, his voice rough. “Considering the kiss and our mutual vow to maintain distance.”
The rejection stung, and she wanted to let him turn away. But in the end that would only protect herself, not Kenley. Not Rhys. So she drew in a breath and squeezed his hand a little tighter. The action forced him to look down at her again. Drown her in those beautiful blue eyes.
“Of course you’re right,” she began, voice trembling like her entire body was trembling. “But my lord…Rhys…we are the only two in this world in the middle of this. The only ones who can fully understand each other. You came here to help me, I want to help you.”
She leaned a little closer, even though it was too close. She could feel the warmth of his breath stir her skin, feel the shift in him that told her she wasn’t the only one haunted by that kiss. “Please let me. Please.”
Rhys felt the weight of Phillipa’s hands around his, the warmth of her body seeping through his bloodstream. He caught every hitch in her breath and tremble of her body. All of it consumed him and made it hard to think, let alone speak.
But she had made a good point. In this horrible destruction, they were two of the few survivors. The only two in this house. And if they didn’t lean on each other, there would be no one else who understood.
“He looks like my brother,” he choked out.
She bent her head. “Kenley,” she whispered.
He nodded. “Who in turn looked like our father, far more than I ever did.”
“That’s how I determined the child’s parentage, you know,” she admitted, and her cheeks flamed the most fetching pink, though he hated the reason for it.
“How did that happen?” he asked. “All of this is so convoluted, between a fake murder and a real murder and a woman with two names and a child he didn’t claim.”
She choked out a humorless laugh. “Perhaps we should sit before the fire if I’m to tell this tale.”
“I’ll pour some whisky,” he suggested, and went to the sideboard to pour them each one. When he returned, she took hers and slung back half of it in one gasping sip. “That bad?” he asked as he sat.
She met his gaze. “Very much so.” She cleared her throat as she fiddled with the lip of her glass, tracing it with her fingertip. “When we married, Erasmus did not wish for me to bring along my maid to our new home. I’d known her for years and I argued it strenuously, but he insisted, over and over, and finally I relented.”
“What reason could he have possibly had?” Rhys asked.
She shrugged. “Any reason he thought would sway me. He said he wished to start our life fresh in a new house with new servants, he said she was untrustworthy, he said she had stared at him too long.”
Rhys pursed his lips, as he tried to rein in his anger at this topic. “He was always very good at demanding his own way.”
“Given the story you told me last night during supper, it seems he was taught that he could,” she said.
He bent his head. He didn’t regret giving her that glimpse into his soul, but it was odd to have someone know so much of his past that he had generally kept hidden. But here they were.
“Yes,” he agreed.
She shook her head as if trying to refocus. “Once we moved here, he told me he had hired a new maid for me. I was shocked. I’d been given no ability to interview this woman myself, I hadn’t been asked for my needs or preferences.” She drew in a long breath. “It was the first time I had an inkling he didn’t care about them at all. I shoved that feeling aside, though. I forced myself to keep believing I’d made the right choice in him.”
Rhys pursed his lips. It was such an odd thing to think this woman he craved so deeply had once been his brother’s wife, even if not legally. He couldn’t picture them together. In truth, he didn’t want to.
“He brought this woman in, and she was very pretty, very young. Dark haired and eyed. Of course I had no idea that she was Erasmus’s first love, his true love, Rosie Stanton. He called her Rachel, I suppose to cover up the truth in case I dug for it.”
“How did she behave toward you?” Rhys asked.
“Cool. Mostly professional, though I think she purposefully pinched me helping me into my clothes and often tugged hard combing my hair.” She shrugged. “I suppose it was her only recourse against a woman who was leading the life she thought she deserved. Six months into the marriage, he started acting more…cool…toward me. Some nights he wouldn’t come home, or at least he wouldn’t come to our chamber. And nine months into the marriage, Rosie came to me and told me she was…”
She broke off, and in that moment Rhys saw the pain etched across her face, the humiliation that she normally seemed capable of shrugging off like it meant nothing. Phillipa used her strength as a shield, easily pretending that nothing had ever hurt her.
But so much had. Beneath the armor were so many scars. And he ached for them and for her.
“She was with child,” he finished for her.
“Yes.” Her voice trembled and she finished the rest of her whisky with as big of a swig as the first one. “With my husband’s child. And I was too stupid to realize it.”
Chapter 6