“I am… utterly replete,” Leah whispered back. “But you are not. You touch me so carefully, Nicholas, so caringly, but you haven’t found your pleasure.”

“Leah, I can’t…” He didn’t know how to tell her what he needed, but any minute—any second—it would be too late. With a soft groan, he rolled them and lifted himself out of her body, then lay himself over her, tightly seaming his wet cock between them.

“I’m sorry,” he rasped, thrusting against her belly until pleasure radiated through him and he spent his seed between their unjoined bodies. “I’m just so… damnably sorry.”

He lay between her legs, physical repletion warring with self-disgust, while Leah’s arms went around him and her hands threaded through the hair at his nape.

The haven she offered was precious and never to be his. If he allowed the embrace, then he might allow the confidences such embraces engendered.

The thought inspired him to lever up, taking his weight on his forearms and knees.

“Don’t go.” Leah tightened her grip. “I like your weight on me.”

Confound the woman. “You can’t breathe,” Nick answered, more harshly than he’d intended. “And I’ve made a mess of you. Let me go, Leah. Please.”

Her arms slid from his neck, and she let her legs fall open. He extricated himself from her, crossed the room, and fetched the basin and towel kept near the hearth. As he sopped one end of the towel in the water then rubbed it briskly over his flat stomach and his genitals, all he could think was: What have I done? What have I done?

“Say something,” Leah prompted, her voice catching, as if tears threatened.

“I’m sorry,” Nick said flatly. “That should never have happened.” He used the towel on her as impersonally as he could, when what he wanted was to bury himself in her again and again and again.

“Why shouldn’t it have happened?” Leah asked, bewilderment coming to the fore. “It was beautiful, and ordained by God, and one of the few pleasures any married person is entitled to expect of his or her mate.”

Beautiful—and potentially tragic.

“But not us,” Nick said, firing the towel across the room with unnecessary force. “We’re not entitled to that. I am not entitled to that.”

“But, Nicholas, why not?”

“I could get you with child, even if I don’t spend inside your body,” Nick said wearily. “I wish it were not so, Leah. I desperately wish it were not so, but I was honest about my terms when you agreed to marry me. I am profoundly sorry to have breached my word to you as far as I have, and I can only hope there won’t be consequences we both regret.”

“I do not understand you,” Leah said in quiet misery. “You are a sumptuous lover, Nicholas, and I will not, not ever, regret what has passed between us here tonight. I will instead resent until my last day that you deny us both what is our right.”

She flopped back down to the bed and pulled the covers up to her chin.

He had hurt her, hurt her in the one area a spouse’s trust and protection ought to be inviolate, and the need to comfort her was a living, writhing misery in Nick’s soul.

He hadn’t the right. He also hadn’t the right to stalk from the bed and leave her even more alone than she felt now.

And he hadn’t the courage to ask her if she wanted him to leave.

So he waited until Leah fell asleep then carefully folded himself around her once more, and like a thief in the night stole what consolation from her he could, while darkness hid his anguish.

* * *

“Is it time to rise?” Leah asked, blinking.

“Not yet,” Nick said. “There’s tea on the hearth. Shall I fetch you a cup?”

He was polite, at least. They’d spent the previous day being so polite Leah’s teeth nigh ached with it, and then last night in his sleep, Nick had held her desperately close.

“Fetch us both a cup.” Leah pushed her braid over her shoulder and wrestled the pillows behind her back. “How are you on this day, Nicholas?”

He rose from the bed, naked—at least he wasn’t going to deny her that much. “I feel like I felt when Ethan was sent north to school: bewildered, powerless to stop someone I love and rely on from being taken away.” He brought the whole tray to the bedside table and sat on the mattress, his back to Leah.

“You have known a bucketload of loss,” Leah said. She wrestled the bedclothes aside and knee-walked over to Nick, wrapping her arms around his shoulders for a brief hug. He tolerated it, closing his eyes on a sigh.

“Let’s drink this in bed,” Nick suggested, maybe by way of an olive branch. “Soon enough we’ll be up and about, dressed in sobriety and grief.”

“Maybe at first, but you grieve in proportion to how you loved, and eventually, the love pushes back through the loss.” She knew this. If it was all he’d allow her to give him, she’d offer it freely.

Nick settled back against his pillows and sipped his tea.

“You speak such eloquent words, Wife. Nonetheless, I am royally out of charity with my papa, and that is hardly worthy of me or the life he lived.”

Of course he’d be angry, and Nick was not comfortable with anger in any sense.

“You think I wasn’t wroth with my mother for leaving me so soon after my child died? It frightens us to be without our parents, whether they were doing much parenting before they died or not. Nicholas?”

“Wife?”

Wife—that was something.

“For today, don’t shut me out. I know you are displeased and upset over what passed between us in this bed, but you bury your father today, and that must take precedence over our troubles. Your family will need to lean on you, and…” She looked away, self-conscious, yet unwilling to back down. “I am inviting you to lean on me.”

“I have leaned on you.” Nick reached out a long arm and let the backs of his fingers drift over her cheek. “And, Leah, I am so damned sorry about the way I spoke to you the other night. You are not to blame.”

And then she was angry. Angry at the big, noisy family who assumed Nick would take on every difficulty and see to every problem. Angry at the mother who’d died and left him with such a load of guilt, even his broad shoulders should not have to bear it alone.

And she was angry at him, so stubbornly determined to keep every burden ever thrust upon him.

“We can deal with all that later, Nicholas, agreed?” She studied her teacup lest she start shouting at him.

“We’ll deal with it later, and you have my thanks for your understanding.”

“I am your wife, and I would be your friend.”

Nick turned to set his teacup aside and spoke to Leah over his shoulder.

“Will you let me hold you? I know I should not ask this of you, but I can behave, Leah. I promise you that, it’s just…”

“Of course.” Leah passed him her teacup and scooted over. She settled against his side, where she fit as if God had made her just for that cozy location. Nick’s hand fell to her shoulder, brushed her braid aside, and began drawing slow patterns on her arm and her back, until she was dozing contently in his arms, his chin resting on her temple.

A soft tap on the door heralded the arrival of breakfast. Nick brought the covers up to Leah’s chin and bade the serving maid enter, then dismissed her after she’d built up the fire.

Before he could leave the bed, Leah climbed over to straddle Nick’s lap. There were mounds of bed covers between them, softly compressed between their bodies. She batted them aside until she got her arms around Nick’s neck, hugging him close at the start of this most trying day.

“I know, Nicholas, we have dreadful difficulties ahead, sad things to say to each other, but one grief at a time is more than enough. For today, I am your devoted wife, if you’ll allow it.”

“I’ll allow it.” Nick pressed his face to her throat. “I don’t deserve it, but I’ll allow it.” Unspoken between them hung two words that held back a wealth of foreboding and misery. Nick would allow her support—for now. Only for now.

* * *

“Leah?” Nick poked his head into the ladies’ parlor—the Squealery, according to the late earl—the day after the burial in the late afternoon, and found his wife surrounded by all of his sisters, addressing replies to cards of condolence.

“Nicholas?”

“A word with you, if you can spare me a moment,” Nick said, purposely not letting even one sister catch his eye. “I’ll meet you in the gardens.”

Nick waited for her on the same bench they’d occupied after the viewing, feeling more solemn than even at the burial.

“You look very serious, Nicholas.” Leah took her seat beside him, her fingers twining with his. In just a few short days, this had become their habit—to hold hands, regardless of the company or the hour.

“I am serious,” he said, his gaze tracing over each of her features. She was tired and probably didn’t even realize it. “I asked you out here to let you know I have considered your suggestion that we separate, and find myself agreeing to it.”

Leah’s fingers went limp in his. Nick had never hated himself more.

“I see.” Leah’s voice held no more life than her fingers. “Is this to be a permanent separation?”

“If I were less selfish,” Nick said, “I would tell you that yes, this is permanent, except for those unavoidable family occasions when we must be seen together, or the periodic meeting we schedule for business purposes. Then too, you’ll be expected to attend my investiture. But I am selfish, Leah, and so I will say I do not know how long we will need to live apart, and I regret this development, because it hurts you.”