Shattered Rainbows (38 page)

His anger vanished, displaced by despair. "So you loved Colin that much, in spite of his infidelities and neglect."

Her mouth twisted. "One can't spend twelve years married to a man without caring, but I didn't love him."

Michael could think of only one reason for her attitude. "Your husband abused you, so you've sworn off marriage," he said flatly. "If he weren't already dead, I'd kill him myself."

"It wasn't like that! Colin never abused me." Her hands clenched. "I wronged him far worse than he ever did me."

He studied her haunted expression. "That's hard to believe. Impossible, in fact."

"I know everyone blamed Colin and pitied me because of his womanizing, but I was the one who made a farce of our marriage," she said in a low voice. "He behaved with great forbearance."

"I'm very slow, apparently. Explain to me what you mean."

"I… I can't." She looked down, unable to meet his eyes.

Exasperated, he stalked across the room and put his hand under her chin to raise her face. "For God's sake, Catherine, look at me. Don't you think I deserve an explanation?"

"Yes," she whispered, "but… but I can't bear to talk about my marriage, not even to you."

Getting information from Catherine was like trying to drag oak roots from the ground. It was time for another approach. He curved his hand around her neck and bent to kiss her, hoping that desire might do what words couldn't.

For a moment she responded with desperate yearning.

Then she wrenched away, tears running down her face. "I can't be what you want me to be! Can't you simply accept that?"

In a distant corner of his mind, he began to have an inkling what this might be about. "No, I'm afraid I can't 'simply accept that,' Catherine. I've wanted you ever since we first met. God knows, I've tried to deny it and find someone else. But I can't. If I'm going to spend the rest of my life miserable because I can't have you, it will be easier if at least I understand why."

The starkness in her eyes showed how much she was affected by his words. Guessing that her resistance was breaking down, he said, "The problem was sex, wasn't it?"

Her eyes widened in shock. "How did you know?"

"There were hints in what you said." He knelt before the chair so he wasn't looming over her, and took one of her hands between both of us. Her fingers were cold and shaking. "And it would explain why you feel too humiliated to talk about it. Tell me why you consider marriage unthinkable. I doubt you can say anything that will shock me."

She crumpled into a ball in the corner of the chair, fragile as a child, her hands pressed to her midriff. "Marital intimacy is… is horribly painful for me," she said in a raw whisper. "It's damnably unfair. I find men attractive, I feel desire like any normal woman. Yet consummation is excruciating."

And feeling that she was abnormal must be even worse than the physical pain. He asked, "Did you ever consult a physician?"

She smiled bitterly. "I thought of it, but what do doctors know about how women are made? I couldn't bear the thought of being mauled by a stranger in return for the dubious pleasure of being told what I already know, that I'm hopelessly deformed."

"Yet you bore a child, so you can't be entirely abnormal," he said thoughtfully. "Did the pain lessen after Amy was born?"

She looked away. "I became pregnant very soon after we married, and I used that as an excuse to forbid Colin my bed. I… I was never a wife to him again."

"For twelve years you lived together without marital relations?" Michael exclaimed, unable to conceal his surprise.

She rubbed her temple wearily. "Colin deserved to be called a saint far more than I. We met when I was sixteen and he was twenty-one. It was a case of mutual calf's love, wildly romantic and not very deeply rooted. Ordinarily the affair would have burned itself out quickly. Colin would have become entranced with another pretty face, and I would have wept for a few weeks, then gone on with my life a little wiser."

She took a ragged breath. "But my parents died in the fire, leaving me alone in the world. Colin gallantly offered for me, and I accepted with never a second thought. I had assumed I would enjoy the… the physical side of marriage. Certainly I had enjoyed the stolen kisses that I had experienced. Instead…"

She thought of her wedding, and shuddered. After the usual drinking and ribaldry, Colin had come to bed hotly impatient to claim his husbandly rights. Though nervous, she had been willing enough. She had not expected such vicious, tearing pain, or the ghastly sense of violation. Nor had she thought she would cry herself to sleep while her new husband snored contentedly beside her. "The best that could be said for my wedding night was that it was over quickly."

Michael studied her face searchingly. "The first time is often painful for a woman."

"It didn't get any better. In fact, things got-worse. The… the pleasures of the flesh were very important to Colin. He assumed that in return for surrendering his freedom he was getting a beautiful, lusty bedmate." Sadly she thought
of the exciting time when she had just met Colin, and she had believed she was normal. "Based on how I behaved when we were courting, he had every reason to expect that. Instead, whenever he touched me, I began to cry."

"That must have been dreadful for both of you," Michael said with deep compassion.

"It was
horrible
," she said vehemently. "I never refused him, but he found me so unsatisfactory that he soon
stopped asking. We were both relieved when I became pregnant. Without ever
discussing it, we devised a kind of silent pact that made our marriage tolerable."

"So you knew about his other women, but never complained?"

"Complain?" She gave a humorless smile. "I was grateful for them. As long as he was happy, I didn't feel so guilty. I did my best to provide a comfortable home for Colin and Amy. In return, he supported us and didn't torment me about my failure. I got the better of the bargain, really. Colin was a decent husband and a father. He was careless in many ways, but he didn't abandon us, and he never allowed another man to bother me. No one ever knew what a farce our marriage was. Not until now."

"There were benefits for him," Michael said dryly. "Colin was a born womanizer. In you, he found the perfect wife—a beautiful, compliant woman who was the envy of every man he met. You never nagged about his philandering, and as a married man he never had to worry about other women trying to maneuver him into marriage. Some men would consider that heaven."

"Perhaps that's true. But the fact remains, I was the one who failed our marriage. I'm not fit to be a wife." Especially not the wife of the man she loved. She continued, "You see now why I can't marry you, or anyone. You can't possibly want a woman who cannot fulfill the most fundamental duty of a wife."

"Considering how much I desire you, that would be difficult. And yet…" Michael hesitated, then said slowly, "even so, I think I would marry you if you would accept me."

Her eyes widened. "You can't be serious."

"No?" He cupped her face with a warm hand. "I enjoy being with you, Catherine. As for the physical part—we may be able to work that out to our mutual satisfaction."

Her lips thinned. "I accepted Colin's infidelity, but I hated it. I won't have such a marriage again."

"Adultery was not what I had in mind." His fingers lightly skimmed her ear and throat, causing a shiver of pleasure to run through her. "Intercourse is not the only way to find physical satisfaction. I don't think you're cold by nature, so you might learn to enjoy some of the other possibilities."

"I'm not sure I understand." Heat rose in her face. "I'm ignorant as well as deformed."

"Ignorance can be cured, and it's possible that you're not deformed at all. The pain you experienced could have been the result of youth and inexperience, and a certain insensitivity on the part of a young husband." He searched for more words, then shook his head with exasperation. "Polite society doesn't discuss such matters, so forgive me if I say things that embarrass you. Bluntly put, if intercourse is forced too quickly, it will be uncomfortable for both partners, especially the woman. Once fear set in, you might have been caught in a vicious circle, with your body so dry and unyielding that you experienced pain again and again. The more the pain, the greater the fear."

"Surely it was more than that," she said doubtfully.

"Perhaps," he admitted. "But even if you were unusually small when you were sixteen, bearing a child causes permanent changes. It's quite possible that you will no longer experience the pain you felt when you first married."

It was a startling theory, almost terrifying in its implications. To be able to lie with a man without agony. To have another child. To be
normal
.

Not quite daring to hope, Catherine said, "You're about to say there is only one way to find out if you're right."

Michael gave her a long, level look. "I know I'm asking a great deal. Are you willing to try?"

"It was easier to go onto a battlefield during combat," she said with a shaky laugh. "But… dear God, Michael, I want so much to believe that you're right. That I'm a normal woman, that I'm capable of doing what almost every other woman in existence does."

He took her hand again. She looked down and saw the faint saber scar, and the sheer size and power of the warm fingers that engulfed hers. He was so large. So male.

The awareness triggered a sudden, ghastly memory of being a helpless
thing
trapped beneath a pounding masculine body. Of pain and violence that were degradingly personal. She pressed her fist to her mouth, her teeth biting into her knuckles. "But… the fear runs deep."

"Of course it does. It wasn't created in an hour, and it won't be healed in an hour," he said soothingly. "There are many, many kinds of sensual pleasure other than intercourse. You need to learn to enjoy them. Only when you've done that will it be time for the final intimacy."

She felt like a young bird being told it was time to leave the nest. All she had to do was jump from her nice safe bough and she would be able to fly. Unless, of course, her wings were inadequate, and she fell helplessly to the ground, smashing every bone in her body.

Seeing her indecision, he gently kissed the inside of her wrist. Her pulse accelerated under his warm lips, and heat curled insidiously through her.

"I swear I will do nothing—nothing at all—that you don't like," he said softly. "If you become uncomfortable at any time, simply tell me to stop. Can you trust me to do that?"

His green eyes burned with an intensity that touched cold, desolate places deep inside her. With a shock, she recognized that ever since they had met, he had suppressed his innate sensual power because he considered her beyond the pale.

That was no longer true. He desired her, and he was saying so with every subtle, voiceless lure a man could use to enthrall a woman. In the fact of his potent masculinity, she had no more will than a moth flying into the flame, seeking one transcendent moment of joy before being consumed.

"Yes, Michael, I trust you," she said huskily. "Do with me what you will."