“I wished there had been another way because your family had already forced you to live a life you didn’t want. I felt like I was doing the same to you, taking away your ability to choose your own path. I have regretted that for three-and-a-half years, Gemma. Regretted that. Not you.”

Without looking at him, she sat beside him on the pallet. He slipped his hand around her far shoulder, a one-armed side embrace.

“You never seemed happy being married to me,” she said. “You was kind, and you cared how I were faring, but love never seemed part of the arrangement, and you said it weren’t never meant to be.”

“I—I don’t—”

Gemma leaned against him, her head resting on his shoulder. “You sometimes have trouble talking with me.”

“I stumble over myself with you,” he said. “I’ve never had any deep connection to anyone aside from my mother. And she had no connections to anyone but me. I don’t know how to be—how to make it work when . . . Marrying you meant we were connected, and I don’t know how to not make that a disaster.”

“My family life didn’t teach me that either,” she said. “The Kincaids are held together by greed and fear.”

“So is this all we have to hope for?” he asked. “Two people looking for a connection but who can’t possibly forge one themselves?”

“I don’t know.” Her tone sounded very near to exhaustion.

His first instinct was to shrug it off, to tell himself that if it couldn’t work, he’d best not set his heart on it. But he’d come with the hope of courting her and the knowledge that he loved her. She didn’t seem entirely opposed to the possibility.

“We weren’t able to get to know each other much after we were first married,” he said. “I should have tried harder so we wouldn’t be such strangers to each other.”

“The past often comes with regrets, don’t it?” she asked softly.

He tentatively took hold of her hand. She didn’t pull away. “I’m grateful you’ve let me come see you while you’ve been here. It’s nice being with you, sitting beside you, talking with you.”

She met his eye. “I like talking with you too. I ain’t always been able to trust people enough for talking. I’ve needed to, though.”

“I’m here now. I’m listening.”

She shifted her position and tucked herself up against him, her legs bent and resting against his. He set his other arm around her and held her close. The arrangement felt like something a husband and wife would do at the end of a difficult day: quietly sitting, taking comfort in each other’s nearness. He liked having her there, liked holding her this way.