Wicked Intentions (Maiden Lane #1)(88)

To see him.

Those extraordinary gilded eyes shifted away from his gaze now. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He should’ve felt anger at her obvious prevarication, but instead tenderness flooded him. He pushed the hair back from her face. “Cut line, Temperance. Tell me.”

She pulled at the bonds on her wrists. “Untie me.”

He nuzzled her cheek. “Not until you tell me.”

She closed her eyes and whispered, “Mary Hope, the baby I brought home that first night we met, is dying.”

Relief was a liquid lightness in his chest. She’d told him; she’d let him in a little. “I’m sorry.”

“She’s so small, so weak. I should’ve known she would not make it. But then she rallied for a bit and I hoped…”

He was silent, absorbing her pain.

She sobbed and shook her head. “She’s dying there at the home. I couldn’t bear to watch her struggle to breathe, so I left Nell to nurse her.”

“It’s all right.” He lifted his head to look at her. “You bear so much already.”

“No.” She grimaced, as if in physical pain. “I don’t bear enough. Winter collapsed this morning. The home is killing him, I fear. I should never have left there today. I should never have come here.”

“No, you probably shouldn’t have left, but everyone needs a rest sometime. Don’t worry yourself so.”

She merely shook her head.

He kissed her forehead, thinking. An uneasy emotion he couldn’t quite identify was growing in his chest. “That home is like a prison for you.”

Her eyes flew open. “What?”

He reached to work at the ties at her wrists. “I’ve wondered for some time why you insist on working there. Do you like it? Do you enjoy the work?”

“The children—”

“The work is no doubt very admirable,” he said. “But do you enjoy it?”

She didn’t reply and he looked down at her. She was staring at him wide-eyed. He’d succeeded in shocking her into silence, it seemed.

“Do you like it?” he asked again gently.

“Liking has nothing to do with it.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“No. No, of course not. The home is a charity. One doesn’t have to enjoy charity.”

He half smiled. “Then there is no shame in admitting you don’t like it.”

“I’ve never thought about it one way or the other. I like the children, naturally, and I do sometimes feel satisfied when we place one in a good position. I must enjoy it, mustn’t I? I’d be a monster if I didn’t.” She appealed to him, as if she couldn’t answer the question herself.

He shrugged. “It’s neither good nor bad—how you feel about the home and working there—it just is.”

“Well, then, of course I—”

“No,” he said sternly. “Tell me without lies or evasions.”

“I don’t lie!”

He smiled at her affectionately. “Oh, my little martyr, you lie every day, to yourself, I fear, most of all.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she whispered.

“Don’t you?” He gave up on the bindings for the moment; she seemed comfortable enough anyway. “You refuse to admit love for Mary Whitsun or even tiny Mary Hope—I’ve seen you refuse to touch the baby. You hold yourself back, deny yourself pleasure—unless pressed. You make yourself work at a hopeless job that is killing you, and all for some ridiculous sense of unworthiness. You are the most saintly woman I know, and yet you think yourself a sinner.”

Abruptly, white lines appeared around her mouth.

“Don’t you…” She gasped for breath. “Don’t you dare tell me I’m saintly. That I don’t know what sin is.”

She was truly angry; he could see that. She yanked wildly at her bonds.

“Explain,” he demanded.

“Let me go!”

“No.”

“You don’t know me!” she screamed. Her mouth was wide, and tears had started at her eyes. “I’m not good; I’m not a saint. I need to work at the home.”

He pressed his nose to hers. “Why?”

“Because it’s a good and true thing to do. It doesn’t matter a whit how I feel about it.”

“You’re doing penance, aren’t you?” he whispered.

She shook her head, red-faced, the tears running into her tangled hair. “I don’t deserve—”

He leaned close, capturing her face between his palms. “Tell me.”

She gasped, closing her eyes. “When my husband died… when Benjamin died…”

He waited patiently as she sobbed. He’d known that something was here. Had she not loved her husband? Perhaps even wished him dead? He was prepared for such mundane confessions, but not the one that came from her mouth.

“I was with another man.”

He blinked, so startled that he let her go. “Truly?”

She nodded jerkily. “He was… Well, it doesn’t matter who he was, but I let myself be seduced by him. I was at his rooms, with him carnally, at the exact moment Benjamin was run down by a brewer’s cart. I came home, trying to decide how I would keep my sin from him, and he was dead.” Her eyes suddenly flew open. “He was dead.”