“Pardon?”
She waved her hand in aon with itmotion. “List them. Let us go through all of your reasons, hesitations, qualms, what-have-you, and I will refute each and every blasted one.”
His shoulders lifted and deflated on a sigh. “The scandal… It doesn’t matter that you are no longer betrothed to Colborn. You would still be moving on to the man’s father. Society will tear you apart. You will be given the cut direct, shunned—”
She flicked her hand dismissively. “You are already a recluse. I have no qualms joining you in your reclusivity. All I need is you. Not to mention, gossip fades with time. So, that is a non-issue.”
He frowned, his mouth opening and closing. “I… I don’t believe reclusivity is a word.”
That is what he took away from what she just said? She rolled her eyes. “Next reason, Duke.”
His eyes shot to hers, intense, dark, all frustration evaporating for a heartbeat. Her lips curved in a smug smile. Hereallyliked when she called him Duke.
He shook his head, and she let out a breathy snort as he struggled to bring himself back to the argument at hand. Something he wouldn’t have to do…if he just allowed himself to be with her. But men were lobcocks. Yet they ran the world. Lunacy. Blaspheme. Idiocy.
“Our age difference,” he said gruffly. “Eighteen years, Felicity. That is not a trivial difference.”
She bobbed one shoulder. “My parents were fifteen years apart. They were blessedly happy.” Granted, that was as friends, but Ash needn’t know that little tidbit.
“Is that not exactly my point?” he was saying. “Your father left your mother a widow much too young. Do you want that for yourself as well?”
Felicity jutted out her chin. “That is my decision, Ash. That is not your decision to make.”
He looked heavenward and swore, “Fuck, Felicity. Do you not see what that means, though?” He locked gazes with her again, blue eyes beseeching and beautiful. “I will be over fifty a decade from now. If you’re not mourning my death, you’ll end up caring for me as I age and become your invalid husband. You should be with someone closer to your age, who has longevity on their side.”
All the fight fled her person, and her heart constricted.Oh, Ash, you bloody thoughtful fool.She understood where he was coming from, she truly did, but it was still a daft argument.
“I want you to know I say this with the utmost care, with no intent for harm.” She took a deep breath and dredged up Ash’s painful past. “But your late wife passed young. She was close to my age, was she not?”
Ash’s body froze. His chest stopped rising and falling. His eyes stopped blinking. His hands stopped fisting his trousers. And then he let out a small breath. And another. As though he forcibly had to make himself work the breath in and out of his lungs.
“Yes,” he managed roughly. “She was eight-and-twenty when she passed.”
“Life is unpredictable, Ash,” Felicity said softly. “No one truly knows when their time on this earth will come to an end. Would you not want to take advantage of every moment you have left and spend it with the one you love? Would you truly rather cut our time short on yourownaccord? To watch me marry another, watch me live in an empty, lonely marriage instead? How is that the better option?” She stepped up to him and slid her hands to cup his jaw. “Because even if the fates decided to take you away from me tomorrow, I would still choose to love you for every minute up until then,” she whispered.
A small muscle above his eye ticked. He held so much back, so much trapped inside. He pressed his lips together, locked his jaw, and swallowed hard. Like he believed he could swallow away the emotion, choke it down until it wasn’t present anymore.
“I don’t deserve you,” he whispered back. “I have sinned too much in this life.”
She squeezed his jaw, fingers digging into his skin as she gently shook him. “No,” she said firmly. “No, Ash. You continue to come up with reasons that do not exist to deny yourself happiness because you believe you don’t deserve it. But Ash, you deserve happiness more than any man I know. You have lived a life constantly punishing yourself. For things that were. Not. Your. Fault.”
She loosened her hold on him, fingers brushing softly over his brow and pushing back his short brown hair, tracing over the distinguished silver at his temple. “You have turned yourself into a version of Sisyphus. But the boulder you repeatedly push up the mountain doesn’t roll down on its own. You push it back down, just so you have to push it back up again. Leave it at the top of the mountain, Ash. Stop punishing yourself. Let yourself be happy. I am standing right here. Yours for the taking. Happiness.”
He stared at her in silence, seconds ticking by loud and lumbering and seemingly lasting forever.
She dropped her hand and gave him the time he needed. Not pushing. Just patience.
Finally, his mouth opened. He struggled for a moment before the words came. “It-It is not… an easy thing for me to do. I was never the husband I should have been for my previous wife. And I was not the father my children needed either, even if I hope that part is changing for the better. Winnifred and I were together for twelve years and I didn’t inspire her to love me.” He took a step back and looked up at the ceiling as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Twelve years, Felicity. I couldn’t inspire her to even want my touch.”
His gaze fell to hers, exhaustion and defeat etched on his features. “She subjected herself to my visits; sheenduredthem. That should never be the case, but I was never able to inspire anything more in her. And in the end, not only could I not give her love or intimacy, but I couldn’t keep her alive either. Nor my daughter.” His voice broke. “I feel as if I have failed in every way possible in this life,” he whispered. “I do not know how to move past that.”
Felicity’s heart left her and went straight to him. She knew Ash felt responsible for his wife’s and daughter’s deaths. She knew he felt as though he had failed his children. But she had never realized that underneath it all lay the insecurity of a man who not only believed he was unworthy and undeserving of love, but believed he was not loveable at all.
Unlovable.
She would prove to him that he was.
Loved. Desired. Worthy.
