“Am I too heavy for you?” he murmured against the warmth of her throat, his body stretched out above hers.
He was a little heavy, but Sylvie was loath to relinquish their closeness just yet. “No,” she denied even as she reached up to caress the heat of his shoulders, fingers lightly caressing down his muscled back. “I merely wondered—Christian?” Her voice sharpened in alarm as she felt and then traced the hard ridge of a scar running from his left shoulder across his back and down to his right side. “What happened to your back...?” she gasped as she attempted to sit up so that she might see his back for herself, only to find that Christian’s weight pressing down on her made that impossible. “Christian?”
“It is an old scar,” he dismissed lightly as his lips skimmed across her collarbone.
“But—” She stilled suddenly, eyes wide. “How old...?”
“Do we have to discuss this now, Sylvie?” he murmured indulgently as his lips continued that caressing assault on the creaminess of her throat. “I do not recall your having this need for conversation after our lovemaking in the past,” he added teasingly.
“Christian, please...!” she pressed, needing to know—exactly—when he had received the wound that had left such a terrible and lasting scar upon his back.
A scar that she knew had not been there four years ago...
Christian moved up onto his elbow to withdraw gently from Sylvie before moving to lie down beside her, satiated and satisfied in a way he had not been since they had last made love together. “Does the thought of my scar repulse you?”
“Of course it does not,” she dismissed impatiently, her face pale as she sat up and turned him slightly so that she might look at the scar for herself. “How—how did this happen?”
Christian shrugged. “A French saber.”
Her face became paler. “When?”
Christian fell back onto the pillows. “What does it matter—”
“It matters to me!” she assured him fiercely. “Tell me, Christian. Please!”
He frowned. “It happened four years ago, two weeks after I left you and two days after I returned to my regiment.” He smiled bitterly. “The wound incapacitated me, became infected, and I was out of my head with a fever for almost a week, and then weakened for many more.” He shrugged. “It is the reason I was unable to write to you. The reason for my delay in returning to you.”
That is what Sylvie had thought he might say. What she had dreaded hearing. “You were coming back to me?”
“Of course I was coming back to you!” He frowned. “How many times do I have to tell you that before you believe me? I had told you that I loved you and that I would come back to you as soon as I was able!”
Yes, he had. And, despite the rumors of his behavior in London after he had left her, Sylvie had waited and waited for his return, until the babe she carried meant she could wait no longer and she had accepted the offer of marriage made to her by another man.
And all the time she waited, Christian had been ill and fevered, cut down by a French saber. It was the reason he had not returned to England until it was too late; Sylvie had already been another man’s wife, and the babe she carried accepted as a child of that marriage.
What had she done?
* * *
Christian frowned as Sylvie moved abruptly away to sit on the side of the bed, before standing up to cross the room and pull on his black brocade bathrobe he had draped across the chair beside the window.
“Are you leaving already?” He kept his tone deliberately neutral as he sat up, knowing he had agreed, accepted, Sylvie’s decree that she would only stay with him for a few hours, but he had hoped, after the enjoyment of their lovemaking—Whatever he might have hoped, it was obviously not to be. “When will I see you again?”
She finished fastening the belt of the robe before looking up at him with dark and guarded eyes. “I—I will send you a note tomorrow.”
His brows rose. “A note...?”
“Yes.” She turned away. “I will leave your robe downstairs in the library after I have dressed, and then let myself out—”
“Give me a minute and I will come down with you.” Christian swung his legs to the side of the bed.
“No! No,” she repeated more calmly, the dullness of her eyes appearing like dark bruises in the pallor of her face as she refused to so much as look at him. “I—We will talk again tomorrow.”
“Talk?” he repeated sharply.
“Yes,” she sighed. “We will talk. I—There is something—I must
go!” She hurried to the door, wrenching it open before turning back to him briefly, her expression anguished. “Please believe that I—that I am sorry.”
Christian tensed, stomach churning. “You are not ending our association already?”
“No! I—” She gave a shake of her head, tears now glistening in the darkness of her eyes.
Relief flooded him. “Then what are you sorry for?”
“For everything!” she choked. “I am sorry for everything,” she repeated shakily.
“I do not understand, Sylvie...” He gave a pained frown. “You are not ending our association and yet you are sorry. What—”
“Tomorrow, Christian. I will explain all tomorrow,” she assured him dully. “Do not follow me now. I—It is for the best—Tomorrow,” she repeated before stepping out into the hallway, the door to the bedchamber closing quietly behind her.
Christian had no idea what had just happened. One minute he and Sylvie had been lying satiated in each other’s arms after the most satisfying lovemaking Christian had ever known, and the next she had run from him as if the hounds of hell were at her heels.
Tomorrow.
Sylvie had said she would explain all tomorrow.
And he hoped that explanation did not include the ending of their relationship, because having now made love with Sylvie again, that possibility was even less acceptable to Christian than it had been four years ago...
“The Earl of Chambourne to see you, my lady,” Sylvie’s butler announced from the doorway of her private parlor.
Sylvie ceased her restless pacing as she turned to him, the deep-brown gown she wore only emphasizing the pallor of her face. “Please show him in, Bellows.”
After a sleepless and troubled night, Sylvie had written a note and had it delivered to Christian only an hour ago, requesting that he call upon her at his earliest convenience. She should have known, after the manner in which she
