He didn’t know how to court a woman. There had simply never been time for such grace notes in his life; he’d bought his commission with earnings from a shooting contest he’d won at age sixteen.
But one advantage he had over all of these aristocrats was that he knew how to revere even the smallest moments of beauty and pleasure. For all of his had been rare, fleeting, and hard-earned.
He knew he could make a woman laugh.
And he knew how to make a woman come.
When he laid eyes on her, he understood after sixteen years in the army, his soul was at last sore and weary from bearing the weight of grief and death and responsibility and the mantle of triumph and a nation’s gratitude. In her presence he’d felt that weight lift and shift long enough to imagine what his future could look like.
No one knew better than he did that peace was an illusion. But he understood at once that the closest thing to personal peace was a sense of “rightness.” And nothing had ever felt so right to his soul as her.
He knew nothing about love.
But he knew how to cherish.
And he bloody well knew how to win.
Within days of his arrival he’d decided she would be his before he left for Spain.
But today, when he’d seen those women gathered around Alexandra in that Newgate cell, their faces turned up to her as though she was the fire on a hearth, her own sweet face open and welcoming and drawn with fatigue, he understood that not a damn thing would have made a difference. No matter when, no matter how he’d first seen her, the result would have been the same.
Somehow, she was now embedded in him, like that shrapnel in his leg.
She hadn’t wanted him then. He’d known that.
But he’d understood full well why she’d married him.
He’d counted on it, in fact.
And he knew she would have likely patiently and kindly endured her marriage to him, because she was patient and kind. She would perhaps always view him as something of a savior, and he would have been apportioned gratitude for that, too.
But he’d been convinced there was a spark between them.
As a man who had built many a fire with flint and steel, he knew even the tiniest of sparks could be fanned into a conflagration. In his hubris, he had thought himself perfectly capable of building that between them. All it required was time, and he would have had the rest of his life to do it. He would have, as the vows said, worshipped her with his body.
Well.
He’d presciently anticipated French troop movements during major battles.
But he had failed to consider that his twenty-two-year-old wife might already have a lover.
At least history was rife with formidable men who had proved to be fools when it came to one particular woman.
Since he’d needed to leave for Spain the day following his wedding, he’d had mere hours to decide upon the right and just thing to do.
Ultimately, he’d done what felt like the just thing.
But he’d had years to contemplate whether he’d done the right thing.
He still didn’t know.
Even now, he couldn’t quite forgive her. He simply was not made that way. Although sometimes he thought all this meant was that he couldn’t quite forgive himself.
He’d gone to ask the staff of The Grand Palace on the Thames to prepare her a bath and bring her a little meal—there was an extra charge for both, the proprietresses had sweetly informed him, although breakfast and dinner were of course included with their board—and he would be going out again to order the town house servants to pack trunks for her.
They’d never spent a single night together.
And even though in the eyes of the law she was his, it seemed intrusive and wrong to watch her sleeping, while she was unaware and vulnerable.