Free What a Woman Desires by Rachel Brimble Page B

crossing her arms. Thomas trembled with the effort it took not to go to her and turn her to face him. Everything inside him protected and fixed, whether it be his family, the estate, the horses, or the land. To stand here and wait for her to open her heart to him was a difficult challenge, but one he would conquer.
    At last, she turned. Her eyes had lost their softness and now glowed the darkest midnight blue. “Papa knew of our relationship. He knew how much we once cared for each other.”
    Thomas stared. What does she mean by that? Does she know . . . did the master know I once loved her? That there was a small possibility she might have loved me? “What are you saying?”
    She closed her eyes. “I’m saying as much as I admire your loyalty to Papa, he doesn’t deserve your insistence that he was a good and honest man.” She opened her eyes. “He didn’t care for your feelings any more than he cared for mine or Jane’s. Mama and his rise in society was all he lived for. Despite everything you did and gave to him, you were nothing more than his personal servant.”
    Her words pierced his ego and stirred his temper, but Thomas held fast and resisted the urge to deny her accusations. Who was he to correct her on a man she knew better than he ever did? “And if that’s true, what of it?”
    “He wouldn’t have confided any family secrets to you, no matter what light you try to paint him in to protect my feelings.” She smiled softly. “Never say again my parents loved me. Love doesn’t hurt. I know that now.”
    He swallowed. “You have found true love?”
    She laughed and stepped back, her gaze shifting to the distance above his shoulder. “No, not I, but I have witnessed it in others.” She faced him. “And it is a beautiful thing.”
    He met her smile. “I know.”
    She stiffened. “You do? You are married? Engaged?”
    He swallowed. “No, I speak of my parents.”
    “Oh.” Her shoulders slumped and her gaze lingered on his a second longer before she looked to the narrow ground separating them. “My estrangement from my family was long and final for a reason. Papa made it impossible for me to return home.”
    Thomas stared at her bowed head, trepidation of further unwanted knowledge bearing down on him. “What did he tell you to make you never come back?”
    She closed her eyes. “It’s not what he told me.”
    “Then what?”
    “It was his reaction to what I told him.”

Chapter 6
    Monica shivered despite the sun’s warmth on her face and the caring concern in Thomas’s eyes. To share her hidden shame with him was the very last thing she wanted, but she only had him to rely on, and she could not get through this time in Biddestone alone. More than anything, she needed Thomas’s trust and understanding.
    Fear skittered over her skin. He cared for her. They’d even wavered, naïvely, on the precipice of first love many years before. More than anything, discernment of his unending need to protect her and her sister hitched Monica’s nerves to breaking. Thomas’s temper was quick but always justified. That knowledge made it all the harder to tell him about her time with Malcolm . . . but tell him she must.
    She took a deep breath and exhaled. “Your words last night and the way you occasionally look at me with such disappointment tells me my parents never told you, or anyone else in the village, the truth behind my disappearance.”
    He drew his lips together, his gaze intense and unwavering on hers.
    When it was clear he had no intention of saying more until he had her explanation, Monica seized the moment to unburden herself before her courage was stolen, never to return. “The first time Malcolm hit me, I told myself it was warranted, that I had acted in too demanding and impatient a manner. Before that day, he’d courted me as only a real gentleman would. He took me to tea, dancing, introduced me to some of the loveliest people I have ever met.” She looked into Thomas’s eyes and