Whisper of Scandal (29 page)

Joanna started to shake. “As the months of our marriage went by and I did not conceive he grew more and more angry,” she whispered. “There was no reason, no explanation, but I started to believe that it must be my fault. And then we quarreled and he hurt me and—” She stopped. Huge tears were rolling silently down her cheeks.

Alex drew her close. “Joanna, we need never speak of Ware again, except this one thing—” He hesitated. “After he hurt you—” Joanna shivered and felt his arms tighten about her “—when the doctors came, did they tell you that you would never bear a child?”

Joanna rested her cheek against his jacket. She felt frightened to open up her mind to those memories again, but she knew she had to do it. She had to let the light in and trust that this time Alex would be there to help her. “N-no,” she said. “You know what doctors are. They could not be certain. It was just that I felt it.” She drew away from him. “I felt different,” she said. “I felt empty. It is difficult to explain. I had lost all hope, I suppose, all belief that it might happen.”

“But now,” Alex said, his tone so gentle that she marveled at his tenderness, “could you begin to hope again and see what happens?”

Joanna looked across the blue, dancing sea. “I do not know,” she said honestly. Then, with a rush of feeling: “Alex, I am afraid to hope, afraid to allow those dreams and desires back in. I don’t want to give them the power to hurt me again.”

“Yes,” Alex said, “I understand.” He kissed her hair. “But if you love me, Joanna, as I love you, then the worst that can happen is that we shall never have a child—but we shall still have each other. That is enough for me. Is it enough for you?”

Joanna smiled. “A little while ago I thought that I had lost you, too, lost all hope.” She sighed. “But I am afraid, Alex. You are an adventurer, an explorer. Your first love will always be to travel.”

“That was what I told you, was it not?” Alex said. “I was unconscionably selfish, offering nothing of myself to you or to Devlin or Chessie or to any of the people who cared about me.” He sighed. “It is true that I shall always wish to travel. It is a passion, but I do not think it is my first love anymore. You changed that the day you came to find me at the Villa Raven.” He shifted a little, raising a hand to Joanna’s face, where the strands of hair danced in the breeze. “I was already half in love with you then,” he said. “I had been even in London, I think, though I pretended it was only lust not love.”

He touched her cheek. “It would be dishonest of me to say that I will stay in one place for the rest of my life,” he said. “But I thought that to start with, we might go back to London—I have my peace to make with the Admiralty—and then perhaps to Balvenie and Edinburgh, and I can show you my home…”

He released her and made no further attempt to touch her and Joanna knew that he was waiting for her to make
her decision. She looked at his face, the dark, stern face of the man she had once thought of as her enemy, and felt submerged by the force of her love for him.

“I have heard that Edinburgh is a very fair city,” she said. “I believe the shops are almost as good as London’s.” The fear brushed her again. She could not help it. “Oh, Alex,” she said, her breath catching, “we are all wrong for one another, you know.”

“No,” Alex said. “We are different from each other, that is all. Don’t be frightened of it,” he added. “If a marriage is worth having then it is worth the fight.”

Joanna leaned on the rail and felt the spray against her face and tasted the salty tang of it on her lips. It should not work, of course. She was the darling of the ton and she needed the lights and the diversions of town. Alex loved traveling the world. And yet neither of them was that straightforward. Alex had shown her wide horizons and taught her how it felt to be truly alive. He had shown her that there was far more to see, far more to experience, than she had once thought. And for her sake, Alex was prepared to go back to England and build a home. That, surely, was a measure of his love for her.

“Well,” she said, “I am not sure that I am prepared to follow you to the ends of the earth, but I will come with you to Scotland.” She touched his cheek lightly, feeling the stubble rough against her fingers, reveling in the intimacy at last. “I have a small taste for travel now,” she continued demurely. “Perhaps I might like to see other lands if you are with me. Or we could come back to the Arctic in winter and our boat will get trapped in the ice and we will lie in the snow and watch the
northern lights. Alex darling,” she added, and smiled, “and this time I do mean it.”

Alex’s arms went about her gently and he drew her to him so that she could hear his heart beating strongly against her ear.

“The shirt that they gave you at our wedding breakfast,” he said softly, “the one we are to wrap our firstborn child in for luck. Do you still have it?”

Joanna nestled closer to him. “I do,” she said. “I could not destroy it, or leave it behind. It felt…” She hesitated. “It felt like the tiniest ray of hope.”

Alex turned her face up to his. “Then,” he said, “let us go and stake our claim on that future.” He kissed her with sweetness and promise, and the hope unfurled in Joanna’s heart and she felt the spark of it catch and grow, never to be extinguished again.

“Since you have left all your clothes behind,” Alex whispered, against her lips, “I fear there is only one way in which we may pass the voyage home.”