Again the Magic (Wallflowers 0.5)(92)

Aline’s mind went blank. In the carriage she had managed to think of a fairly well-structured explanation, but all her carefully considered phrases had suddenly vanished. Nervously she dampened her lips with the tip of her tongue.

McKenna’s gaze flickered to her mouth, and his dark brows drew together. “Get on with it, will you?”

Aline inhaled and exhaled slowly, and rubbed her forehead. “Yes. I’m sorry. I’m just not quite certain how to begin. I’m glad of the chance to finally tell you the truth, except…this is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” Looking away from him into the empty hearth, Aline gripped the upholstered arms of the chair. “I must be a better actress than I thought, if I’ve managed to convince you that your social standing matters to me. Nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve never cared one whit about the circumstances of your birth…where you came from, or who you are…you could be a rag man, and it wouldn’t matter to me. I would do anything, go anywhere, to be with you.” Her nails dug deep crescents into the worn leather. She closed her eyes. “I love you, McKenna. I’ve always loved you.”

There was no sound in the room, only the crisp tick of the mantel clock. As Aline continued, she had an odd sense of listening to herself as if from a distance. “My relationship with Lord Sandridge is not what it appears. Any appearance of romantic interest between the two of us is a deception—one that has served both Lord Sandridge and myself. He does not desire me physically, and he could never entertain that kind of feeling for me because he…” She paused awkwardly. “His inclinations are limited exclusively toward other men. He proposed marriage to me as a practical arrangement—a union between friends. I won’t say that I didn’t find the offer attractive, but I turned him down just before you returned from London.”

Opening her eyes, Aline stared down at her lap, while the blessed feeling of numbness left her. She felt raw and exposed and terrified. This was the hardest part, making herself vulnerable to a man who had the power to demolish her with a single word. A man who was justifiably furious at the way she had treated him. “The illness that I had so long ago…” she said raspily, “…you were right to suspect that I was lying about that. It wasn’t a fever. I was injured in a fire—I was burned quite badly. I was in the kitchen with Mrs. Faircloth, when a pan of oil started a fire in the basket grate on the stove. I don’t remember anything else. I was told that my clothes caught fire, and I was instantly covered in flames. I tried to run…a footman knocked me to the ground and beat out the flames. He saved my life. You may remember him—William—I think he was second footman when you were still at Stony Cross.” She paused to take a long breath. Her trembling had eased a little, and she was finally able to steady her voice. “My legs were completely charred.”

Risking a glance at McKenna, she saw that he was no longer leaning back in his chair. His body was canted slightly forward, his large frame overloaded with sudden tension, his eyes a blaze of blue-green in his skull-white face.

Aline averted her gaze once more. If she looked at him, she wouldn’t be able to finish. “I was in a nightmare that I couldn’t awaken from,” she said. “When I wasn’t in agony from the burns, I was out of my head with morphine. The wounds festered and poisoned my blood, and the doctor said that I wouldn’t last a week. But Mrs. Faircloth found a woman who was said to have special healing abilities. I didn’t want to get better. I wanted to die. Then Mrs. Faircloth showed me the letter…” Remembering, she trailed into silence. That moment had been permanently engraved in her mind, when a few scrawled words on paper had eased her away from the brink of death.

“What letter?” she heard McKenna ask in a suffocated voice.

“The one you had sent to her…asking for money, because you needed to break your apprenticeship and flee from Mr. Ilbery. Mrs. Faircloth read the letter to me…and hearing the words you had written made me realize…that as long as there was a chance that you were in this world, I wanted to go on living in it.” Aline stopped suddenly as her eyes blurred, and she blinked furiously to clear them.

McKenna made a hoarse sound. He came to the chair and sank to his haunches before her, breathing as if someone had delivered a crushing blow to the center of his chest.

“I never thought you’d come back,” Aline said. “I never wanted you to find out about my accident. But when you returned to Stony Cross, I decided that being close to you—even for one night—was worth any risk. That is why I…” She hesitated, blushing wildly. “The night of the village fair…”

Breathing heavily, McKenna reached for the hem of her gown. Swiftly Aline bent to stop him, gripping his wrist in a convulsive movement. “Wait!”

McKenna went still, the muscles of his shoulders tightly bunched.

“Burn scars are so ugly,” Aline whispered. “They’re all over my legs. The right one is especially bad, where much of the skin was destroyed. The scars tighten and shrink until it’s difficult to straighten my knee sometimes.”

He absorbed that for a moment, and then proceeded to pry her fingers from his wrist and remove her slippers, one after the other. Aline fought a wave of nausea, knowing exactly what he was about to see. She swallowed repeatedly, while salty tears burned the back of her throat. He reached beneath her skirt and slid his hands along her tense thighs, his palms skimming the fabric of her drawers until he found the tapes at her waist. Aline turned chalk-white, followed by brilliant scarlet, as she felt him tugging at the undergarment.