“No.”
“And she said?”
“‘A woman needs to be adored every now and again.’” He spread his hands wide in a gesture of helplessness. “I politely informed her that wouldn’t be possible.”
“You told your fiancée—the woman you were to spend the rest of your life with—that you would never adore her?”
“Or any other woman, to be fair.” He shrugged. “It was only the truth.”
Lady Amelia’s brow furrowed. “But why deny yourself?”
“I deny myself nothing,” he said. “Just ask the gossips.”
“Oh, but you do,” she said. “It’s the most wonderful feeling in the world to adore something or someone, to feel absolutely smitten. Sometimes it’s a beloved pet or a particularly juicy peach or a new dress—”
“I’ll have to take your word for that one.”
She wasn’t to be interrupted. “But the feeling fills you as if you’re bursting with light. To adore feels better than to be adored, and yet you deny yourself the feeling.”
“Perhaps I don’t have the same capacity as you.”
Lady Amelia shook her head. “I’ve seen you at your work, your passion for it. That’s adoration. You have the capacity.” Her head canted. “And that’s why Lady Sarah jilted you?”
“In part.”
“You’re about to tell me what set off the scandal, aren’t you?”
“I merely informed her—politely, as one adult to another—that was what lovers were for.”
Lady Amelia’s mouth gaped. He’d shocked her. It was, as a matter of fact, the same expression Lady Sarah’s face had taken.
“It’s true then,” said Lady Amelia, aghast. “You told her to take lovers.”
Tristan shifted uncomfortably. “A suggestion, really. She wasn’t obliged to take me up on it.”
“You…you…you…” sputtered Lady Amelia. Tristan couldn’t decide if she was lost for words or had too many clamoring to get out. “You are a singularly infuriating man.”
He shrugged. “And that was the last I ever saw of Lady Sarah Locksley.”
“But not heard of her.”
“The gossip does have a habit of haunting my footsteps.”
Lady Amelia tapped paintbrush to mouth. “What I don’t follow is how you went from there to Italy. You’re a duke and, really, it’s not an unsurvivable scandal for a duke.”
He sensed a raw spot in her words. “And you would know all about that?”
“I’m acquainted with the subject.”
He didn’t have to tell her the next part, but for some reason he wanted to. “It was through my mother’s grace and understanding. She understood that I needed a taste of freedom. A taste of life outside the structure and inflexibility of being a duke. So, she came to me with an offer. She would give me five years of freedom. She’d run the estates during my minority, and she’d do it again.”
“She offered you the opportunity to experience life as a man, not a duke,” said Lady Amelia. He detected understanding in her words, in her eyes.
“At the end of those five years, I would return and resume my duty.”
“How old were you?”
“Thirty.”
