He waited, then smirked, “For feeling something other than polite amusement?”
“Whichever way you want to call it, it is wrong, and I am not that sort of person. I am no lightskirt tart going around deceiving men,” Alice said forcefully—her hands fisting by her side were almost trembling with the strength of her words. “And I will not allow you to make me so.”
Gently, Edward rose from his chair and rounded his desk, “Truly, it is adorable how fiercely you are trying to convince yourself about what you donotfeel for me.”
“I feel contempt and sorrow at myself knowing that the one I am connected to is your brother, but I allowed you to have your wicked way with me,” she pressed.
“Do youreallyregret it?” Edward asked as he leaned on the desk.
“How can you face your brother in the face and not feel any guilt!” she lamented. “Do you have no shame?”
Sidestepping the question, Edward asked, “See, I don’t think you hate yourself for it, Alice. You simply have not allowed yourself to accept that you feel more for me than you do for Benedict.”
She stared at him blankly. “…What?”
“Admit it,” he shrugged. “I cannot do it for you.”
“If you think so, you are either foxed out of your mind or mad and on the way to Bedlam,” she said in outrage.
“Has Benedict made you an offer yet?” He asked calmly.
Her nose wrinkled, “No. Well, notyet.”
“Which means you are a free woman,” Edward told her.
She flung her hands up in frustration. “Do you not see the issue here or do you not care? What we are doing isimmoral.”
“Never said I was a saint,” Edward shrugged. “But if you are so decided, I will never touch you again. Not even when you ask me to.”
“I have never asked you to do such a thing!” Alice protested.
This time, Edward, knowing he was breaking the promise he’d stated seconds ago, reached out, and holding her chin, said, “You might not know it but your body… Your pulse is racing, Alice—” his fingers brushed her cheek, “—your skin is flushed and your breath increased twice its pace the very few minutes you have stood before me.”
She yanked her head away and he dropped his arm, a strip of red across her nose and cheeks, while her breasts rose and fell as rapidly as the beating pulse under her ear. His gaze roved over her silently.
“I don’t know what you want with me when it is clear that you do not want anything else,” she said quietly. “You do not want a commitment because you prize your freedom and you scoff at the notion of love because, well, I don’t know why you do, but that, in itself, is not enough for me.”
The lost, wistful look on Alice’s face stirred up a spark in a dark, frozen corner inside his chest—a dangerous spark of doubt and regret. He didn’t want to give her pain, but was there any other way? He was not in the way to marry—for any reason, money, companionship, even the basic cordiality of mutual respect.
“The one thing I could ever offer you is the one thing I know you would never accept,” Edward said while returning to his chair. “You are not in the market for that sort of arrangement, Miss Winslow.”
She wrapped her arms around her middle, “To be your mistress, isn’t that it?”
“In less vulgar terms,” Edward sipped his cooled drink and grimaced at the raw feeling in the back of his throat. “But essentially, yes.” Resting the cup, he asked, “Is there any other reason you came here than to tell me we will never become anything significant?”
“I suppose not,” she replied softly.
“You are free to leave whenever you’d like,” he muttered and held back the grimace at how uncouth and harsh it sounded. “But Alice, you need to ask yourself, what do you truly want?Whodo you truly want?”
She pivoted to him, her eyes big and brimming with a sheen of tears. “That’s unfair.”
“Why?”
“Because what I want is what I will never allow myself to have,” Alice said before walking through the door.
She would have done them both a service if she had slammed the door behind her, but she left with a whisper and not the bang he’d so wanted. Dropping the quill onto a blotter, Edward sunk into his seat and pressed the heel of his left hand into his eye.
“Damn and blast, what is wrong with me?” he asked himself with a croak.
