“It’s not just that you presume to know how to run our lives better than those of us who must actually live them,” he continued inexorably. “It’s that you come into my club, into my home, into my bed. And you don’t even bother to talk to me about the things I care about most.”
Her legs trembled.
“I am not your plaything,” he said quietly. “Frances and I are not your dolls, awaiting puppet-mastery. We are people, too. I thought you knew that.”
Hot pinpricks seared the back of her throat and stung her eyes. Of course she had disappointed him. She disappointed everyone. And she was exactly as he painted her.
Her breaths were shallow.
Even when she tried to do the right thing, she ended up hurting those she loved.
“It wasn’t my intention,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean—"
Max cast her a flat look. “You are the smartest person I know. When have you ever done something you didn’t mean? If you had spared a single thought, paused to consider whether Frances would wish to determine the course of her life on her own, you might have concluded that these are the sorts of things one doeswithsomeone, not against their knowledge.”
She hung her head. His conclusion was incontrovertible.
“I cannot believe you didn’t take the brief moment it would have required to think things through. After everything. After us.” He dropped his arms to his sides as if defeated. “You just acted. On whatyouwanted,youfelt,youdecided.”
“I thought it was the right thing,” she whispered.
“Life isn’t always a matter of being right. It’s about making other people feel like they matter.” His eyes were haunted. “The worst thing you can do to someone who has never had anything, is to take away their power to choose for themselves.”
Bryony sucked in a shuddering breath at those words. They hurt because they were true. She wanted to marry this man, to live in bliss forever, yet when given the opportunity to treat him like a partner, she had cut him out instead.
Of course he would be hurt.
He had spent his life trying to help his sister. She and Max might have pooled their resources, found a way to offer Frances an option that allowed her to choose her destiny for herself.
But that was not the path Bryony had taken.
Instead, she was standing outside a gaming hell staring up at the man she loved. The man she had hurt. The man who blocked the entrance. She had lost her right to be let in.Blackballed.
As she deserved.
Her grand sacrifice had been for nothing. All she’d wanted to do was show her love. She had ended up alone, facing unending repercussions. By selling her violin, she had also lost her right to be part of her own family. Now she’d alienated Max, too.
She fought back tears. They solved nothing. She had gotten so close to everything she had always wanted. The confidence to just be herself and the great fortune to find someone who liked her for her differences, rather than despite them. And it was all falling apart. She couldn’t lose him. Now that they’d finally found love.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “In the future—”
“We don’t have to worry about the future,” he said. “It is no business of mine what happens when Lord Moneybreeches puts a ring on your finger and allows you to rule over his household however you wish. You’ll be good at it. You’ve proven that.”
Lord Moneybreeches.
Cold fingers of ice snaked through Bryony’s chest and encased her heart in its grip. Even after making love, Max still intended their paths to diverge.
Her pulse fluttered in horror.
Belatedly, she realized he had never made a single verbal commitment beyond granting her a month to shadow his club. Not even yesterday, when they had joined bodies. She closed her eyes as the available facts clarified to terrible precision.
His repeatedAre you sure this is what you want?was because he was offering her ruin, not marriage.
Not out of heartlessness, she realized. He was being logical. She should have done the same.
Even if he would have presented himself to her father, Bryony would not have been granted permission to marry him. If they made the attempt regardless, her parents would protest at the first banns and lock her straight into a nunnery. Or a madhouse.
She was not destined to live happily ever after with Max. The only place such a fantasy had seemed possible was inside her own mind.
