Married: The Virgin Widow by Deborah Hale Page B

did I have to wait seven years to get that information from your sister?”
    “I see no sense in dredging up the past.” She’d spent seven years doing her best to forget. She had no intention of exhuming those horrible memories just to satisfy Ford’s tardy curiosity. “What happened cannot be changed. The reasons no longer matter, if they ever did.”
    “You are wrong.” He clung tighter to her arm. “The past lays a foundation for the present and the future.How can one hope to build anything solid and lasting without knowing what sort of groundwork it rests upon?”
    “Then perhaps you should have made the effort to ask your questions seven years ago. If you start digging now, everything you have built on those foundations may come tumbling down.” She tried to walk away from him, to avoid further questions by taking refuge with her sisters.
    Ford refused to release her. “Is that some kind of threat?”
    “I threaten you?” Laura stared pointedly at his large, brown hand clenched around her slender, gloved wrist. “That would be a fine turnabout.”
    Ford released her arm. “No threats, then, just plain answers. Tell me what happened. How did the fire start? Was your father killed trying to fight the blaze? Why was your family left with no resources?”
    Laura struggled to master the turbulent feelings his questions roused. She had once longed to tell him everything he now demanded to know in such a peremptory manner, and a great deal more besides. But his questions were seven years too late.
    The last thing she wanted now was to relive those wretched days.
    “Please,” she begged him as she had once begged Cyrus for his help, “I cannot bear to talk about what happened. It is too painful.”
    Besides, she could not risk letting something slip that might expose long-buried secrets. Secrets that would destroy her family. Secrets that had already cost her a high price to keep hidden.
    “Was what happened so painful it made you jilt meto marry my rich cousin?” Though Ford had released her arm, his fierce gaze bored into her.
    “Why does it matter to you now, if it did not then?” Laura demanded. “Were you so relieved to be rid of the burden I’d become that you did not care why I had such a sudden change of heart? If you did not want me to marry Cyrus, you might have tried to prevent it. But you didn’t. Explain that to my satisfaction and I might answer your questions.”
    She stared into his face, frozen into a stern mask of chiselled dusky marble. It did not give her the slightest indication of what he might be feeling.
    “You were the one who broke your promise, remember? I owe you nothing. Least of all an explanation for my behaviour, which was perfectly correct.” With that, he turned his back on her and walked away…just as he had done seven years ago.
    The next evening, as Ford, Laura and her sisters walked the short distance to the Adelphi Theatre, his thoughts churned with questions and doubts. He’d scarcely slept a wink the previous night for thinking about the few things Laura had told him and the many things she hadn’t. After what she’d done to him, he was entitled to an explanation at the very least. Why would she not give him one? Were the events of seven years ago truly so painful that she could not bear to recall them? Or was she hiding something? All the instincts he had honed in the cut-throat world of Indies trading assured him she was.
    But recent events had presented a possible explanation. Much as Ford wished to dismiss it, he could not.
    “Were you able to find suitable premises for your business, Ford?” Belinda’s question roused him from his restless brooding.
    “I…looked at quite a few.” His mind had not been on the task, though. “But none satisfied all my requirements. Some had wharf and warehouse, but no proper counting house or office. Others had office and warehouse, but no wharf to unload goods. In a busy port city, dock space is at a