Page 56 of Secrets of the Heart

“Yes, you are probably right. That would be much more likely, of course.”

They reached the The Red Boar, the inn where they had eaten the other day, and were once again ushered into the private dining room.

“I thought it would be better if we talked here,” he explained. “I dislike imposing on my sister any more than I have to, and, well, it isn’t exactly a proper place for a lady like you—especially when Sir Robert is there.”

Rachel raised an eyebrow. “You need not protect me, Mr. Hobson. I am a grown woman—and married.”

“Still…it is an awkward situation.”

“I am surprised—” Rachel began, then stopped, aware that what she had been about to say might sound rude.

“You are surprised by what?”

She shifted a little uncomfortably in her chair. “Well, I am just a bit surprised that you take Mrs. Neeley’s…relationship with Sir Robert so equably.”

He smiled faintly. “Truth is, I have little to say about the matter. She is, as you pointed out about yourself, a grown woman.”

“That would scarcely stop my brother,” Rachel commented wryly.

“No, I am sure not,” Michael agreed, with a grin.

“What did you say?” Rachel looked at him oddly.

Michael realized that he had made a slip. He should not know what Devin Aincourt was like. “I, uh, I mean, he is an aristocrat, and I cannot imagine one of them not having the arrogance to run your life.”

“Well, Dev is not arrogant,” Rachel defended her brother. “But he would feel he had to protect me.”

“Lilith does not need protection from Rob. He is—I know him well. We worked together during the war. The fact is, he loves my sister very much. I am sure that he would, in fact, defy all the social rules and marry her if he were free to do so.”

“He is married?”

He nodded. “It is a terrible situation.”

“An arranged marriage?”

“No. They married for love, actually. She was young, only seventeen, but her parents were happy for her to marry. They neglected to inform Sir Robert that she was not stable in her mind.”

“What?”

“She was subject to peculiar fancies. At first Rob wrote them off as girlish silliness. But when she conceived a child, she grew far worse, and he began to realize that her mind was…disordered. After she bore the child, she became quite mad. One night she even tried to harm the baby. Sir Robert took her to doctors, but they all offered no hope for her. All he could do was keep her as comfortable as he could and make sure that she was never around the child. Her room had to be stripped of anything she could use to harm herself or others, and there are bars on the windows and a stout lock on the door. Most of the time she is harmless. She carries on conversations with people who are not there, but then she will suddenly turn on her keeper and attack her, claiming that God or the archangel Michael told her to.”

“How awful,” Rachel said, shocked.

“Yes, it is. He has borne it for many years now. He makes sure she is well taken care of, but of course he can have no real life with her. Then he met Lilith. He loves her truly, but he cannot marry her. And Lilith loves him. She wants no other. Who am I to tell her that she cannot live the way she chooses? Have the love she wants?”

“What a sad story.” Tears glistened in Rachel’s eyes. “I cannot blame either one of them for what they have chosen.”

He reached out and touched her cheek, where a tear had rolled from her eye. “You cry for them, even though you scarcely know them.”

“Their story is sad,” Rachel said. “And yet, there is also a beauty in it. It must be sweet to know that the one you love, loves you in the face of society’s strictures, that he stays with you even though nothing binds him but love. I have to think it must be even sadder to live without love.”

“There are those who would call them sinful.”

Rachel looked up to find his eyes fixed on her face as though he could read what lay inside her. She hoped he could not, for at the moment, what was uppermost in her mind was the desire to feel his lips on hers again. “I—I don’t know. Is love a sin?”

“Some would say ’tis only desire.”

She could not look away from him. “And is desire so separated from love?”