“I beg your pardon?” she asked him. “I must have misheard you.”
He lowered his lips to hers then for a long, slow kiss.
When he pulled back at last, she almost forgot all her objections.
Almost.
“If you heard me asking you to marry me,” he said, “then you did not mishear at all. You would do me the greatest honor, Johanna McKenna, if you would agree to become my wife. My duchess.”
His words were so fantastical, so unexpected, that for a moment she could do nothing more than gape at him, wondering if he had somehow gone mad in the course of the hours since she had seen him last. He appeared quite serious, however. Quite sane.
Except for the words he had uttered.
“You cannot wish to marry me,” she said. “I am not at all the sort of woman a duke would take to wife. Indeed, I am no lady. I am a woman who has always treasured her independence. I am an actress. I have committed scandalous sins in my past. I was an unwed mother. And beyond all that, I am the sister of a Fenian.”
“Everything you have said is true,” he observed calmly. “With the exception of three of your statements, I shall not offer any arguments. However, I must point out that I do wish to marry you, you are just the sort of woman this duke would take to wife, and you are, indeed, a lady of the finest mettle. As for treasuring your independence, I can see and admire that in you, and I would never seek to encroach upon yours when we are wed. You are one of the most talented actresses of our age. You were taken advantage of by a much older man you viewed as a brother, and when he abandoned you, you did everything in your power to care for your daughter, and—”
“Stop,” she interrupted him, unable to listen to him extol her virtues for another second. “You make me sound so good. I am not, Felix. I am weak, and I have allowed my brother to rule me when I knew better. I failed to fight when I should have. I should have been stronger, too, with Pearl’s father. I should have known better.”
He stopped her with a finger pressed over her lips. “Hush. You are good, Johanna. You are one of the most kindhearted people I have ever met. I have never met another woman as good as you, aside from one.”
When he paused and clenched his jaw, he did not need to say more. She knew who he referred to. And though in a sense, she was honored he compared her to the woman he had so worshiped and loved, she was also acutely aware of what that appraisal meant for her.
“I am not her,” she told him, the fear that had been slowly burning inside her for the last few days finally finding its voice. “I am not your wife, Felix.”
She had no wish to be the replacement for the woman he loved. She was not a different version of his former duchess. She was herself. And she had no doubt his wife would have been perfection. Her hair would have always been neatly tamed into the most fashionable styles. Her dresses would have been the latest styles from Parisian fashion. She would have been an aristocrat. A lady. Someone who had been born and bred to be a duchess. Someone who would have brought neither shame nor scandal to his name.
Someone he could have been proud of.
“You will be my wife,” he countered. “When you marry me.”
“No.” She shook her head, steeling herself against a bitter flood of tears that threatened to consume her. The fear of inadequacy was beginning to steal her breath. “That is not what I meant. You misunderstand me. And you do so intentionally, I think.”
His gaze searched hers, unfathomable. “What would you have me say, Johanna?”
“The truth,” she whispered. “Tell me the truth, Felix. Do not insult my intelligence by expecting me to blindly believe you want to make an American actress who once bore a child out of wedlock your wife.”
His expression hardened, becoming impassive. “I do not scorn your past. I, too, have a past. Just as we all have.”
But that was not the point.
“We all have pasts, yes, but not all of our pasts are as scandalous as mine,” she reminded him gently. “You are a nobleman. You are held to different, higher standards. I am a lowly American girl. I am a no one. A nothing.”
“There is nothing,” he said, his voice vibrating with quiet fury, “not one single thing about you that is lowly, Johanna. Nor are you no one or a nothing. You are the most gifted actress I have ever seen tread the boards. You are the great Rose Beaumont. You have worked so hard to be who you are, to attain what you have. There is no shame in that, only pride.”
How easy it was for a man to say that. For a duke. There was shame in who she was. In what she had done. And that same shame had followed her here, to London. She was still the same woman he had invited only to the home he had shared with his paramours.
And while she had accepted it before, in the maelstrom surrounding them, she could not forget it now. Not when she needed to remember it most. And use it like a shield. A protective shield.
“And was it pride in my abilities that led you to want to take me to bed?” she asked, finding the courage to ask the question. “Was it pride that kept you from inviting me to your true home? Was it pride that relegated me to this townhome, with its remembrances of all your former paramours?”
She loved Felix. She knew she did. But she could not accept being his wife, his duchess, because she did not belong to his world. He was infatuated with her, she was sure of it, and he was allowing those feelings to rule his common sense.
There was no other reason why a man like the Duke of Winchelsea would ask Johanna McKenna—or even Rose Beaumont, for that matter—to become his wife.
“No,” he said, his voice low, the lone word sounding as if it had been torn from him. “It was not.”
“You were ashamed of me, then?” she asked.
