‘Go away,’ she said. He did not have to say a word for her to be sure it was Gregory on the other side.
‘We have to talk.’
‘No, we don’t,’ she said. ‘Never again.’
He opened without permission, came in and closed it behind him. ‘Then I have to talk and you must listen.’
‘If you mean to apologise, do not bother. I do not wish to hear it.’ She kept her eyes focused on the floor, not daring to look at him.
‘I am not sorry about last night, if that is what you are referring to,’ he said. ‘I refuse to apologise for the most wonderful night of my life.’
‘If it was so wonderful, then why didn’t you speak when my grandmother wondered about it?’
‘You did not give me a chance,’ he said, then dropped to his knees in front of her so that it was impossible for her to evade his gaze. ‘Just as I had no chance to refuse you last night, or in the library in London.’
‘Are you suggesting that this is all my fault?’ she said, trying to pull away from him.
He reached out to grasp her hands before she could escape. ‘There is no fault. No one is to blame because we did nothing wrong. We love each other.’
‘Do we?’ Had he ever said so, before this moment? Or had she simply assumed that he must love her to do the things he did.
‘I thought it was understood,’ he said, giving her the same narrow-eyed look she was giving him. ‘But after what you said to your grandmother, it seems I was mistaken. You talk as though you would still prefer to wed an earl.’
‘Notanearl,’ she said, yanking her hands free. ‘The Earl of Comstock.’
‘Now that you know he is everything you dreamed he might be, I am no longer worthy of you,’ he said, standing up again.
‘That is not true,’ she snapped, averting her eyes so she did not have to look into his. To do that was like staring into the sun, blinding and confusing. ‘There is nothing wrong with you. It is me.’ She did not have the words to explain what had changed in her, but something had.
‘Perhaps it is you,’ he said. ‘Did you not understand that we would be obligated to marry, after what happened last night?’
‘Obligated?’ she said. That was what she had wanted. To make sure he had no choice. But now that it had happened, it was an empty victory.
‘Yes,’ he said. There was a faint softness in his voice. ‘You might be carrying my child. I am not capable of doing what was done to me and abandoning a son or daughter, allowing them to be raised by strangers.’
She had not considered the possibility of a baby. But neither did she think that a child would be the first thing on his mind when making the offer she had hoped to hear. Now that she had fallen, what she had thought would be an act of love was nothing more than a duty. She stood up and walked past him to open her door. She pointed to the hall. ‘You may think we have to marry, but I have no intention of forcing you to wed me. Nor can you force me to wed you.’
Now, he looked baffled. ‘No one is being forced to do anything. If, after what has happened between us, you do not want me, I cannot make you. And if there is a child...’
‘There will not be,’ she said, terrified for the future. What child would want a mother bearing the mark of licentiousness that her sister and grandmother had spotted so easily? ‘I will not be with child. I refuse to be. I will not have it. Or I will and I will give it to you, since that is all that you seem to care about. Now please leave me alone.’
‘You think I do not care about you?’ He laughed. ‘Hope Strickland, I care more for you than I have ever cared for a woman in my life.’ His hands reached out to her in supplication.
She could feel herself weakening and turned away. ‘I care for you as well.’ The words sounded false, even to her. They were far too weak to encompass her true feelings which ranged from love, to fear, to confusion and back to love again. ‘I care for you. But that does not make it right.’ She walked to the door and opened it, praying that he would understand and leave.
He shook his head, amazed. ‘Very well, Miss Strickland, I suppose I must thank you for changing a lifetime’s assumptions about the world and my place in it. I have wasted far too long trying to be a better man than the father I never knew. I thought he abandoned my mother to bear me and die. But perhaps she sent him away for no reason, just as you are doing to me. You have taught me that in matters of the heart women can be every bit as cruel as men.’
* * *
The four of them rode back to London in ominous silence. Or rather, three of them did. Charity disappeared into her book the moment she was seated, blissfully unaware of the tension inside the coach.
The Dowager was her usual self as she entered and sat down, smiling brilliantly and joking that she would enjoy playing chaperon for the young people. Still smiling, she took the seat next to Hope and gave Gregory a look that said if he as much as stretched a finger in Hope’s direction, she would have him thrown from the coach and whipped by the driver.
Hope might as well not have been there at all. She was not just quiet; she hardly seemed to breathe. Nor did she move, staring straight ahead at her sister on the seat across from her for the whole trip.
Gregory tried to tell himself that it was better than the alternative. When a love affair ended, some women were prone to hysterical tears, or angry tirades. They went out of their way to make the parting as difficult as possible.
But not Hope Strickland. After hours of nothing, it would have been a relief to see any emotion at all. The woman sitting on the other side of the coach from him might have been a total stranger instead of the most passionate lover he’d ever known. It made him wonder if he had imagined the last week. He could see no sign on her face that she had been in any way moved by him.
