“My actions? I did nothing.”
“Nor did I,” he said. “Yet the result is the same. You need to go. Now!” he hissed, praying that he might scare her away.
For most, such a demand coming from Alaric would work without hesitation. He had spent years developing a reputation that made him the most feared duke in London. The things people said about him were not true.Not by half. But he stoked those rumors nonetheless, for they achieved exactly what he wished. To be left alone.
Yet she did not budge. Shaking from fear. Her big, brown eyes looked at him helplessly. She was as desperate as she was scared, the same as she had been the other night when she had sat beside him. As was the case then, she needed saving. But Alaric was not the man to do it.I can’t be that man! Never again.
“Please…” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I have nowhere else to go. Nobody else to…” She sniffed. “You are my only hope.”
It was that word which touched him the hardest of all.Hope. He found himself faltering as memories of another began to batter at his defenses. The last time someone had dared to rely on him for protection, and how disastrously he had failed them. It had him feeling sick with despair, shame, and guilt.
“I…” He grimaced as the guilt battered him further. “What do you want?”
“You saved me once,” she said. “And I ask that you do it again.”
“I told you, I am no savior.”
“My father means to send me to a convent,” she continued. “The rumors about us…” She winced. “He is convinced they will ruin my name and his if I am not hidden away.”
“Which is why I cannot help you…” His stomach continued to twist. “I cannot help anyone. Better that you leave here and forget you ever saw me.”
“But you can help me,” she pressed. “I have been thinking about it and…” She tried for a smile; it was as desperate as it was forced. “And these rumors only exist because the ton does not know what to make of what happened between us.”
“There is no us.”
“But there can be,” she insisted. “If you and I were to… to…” Her body was still shaking, but he could see the strength in her. To have come here alone had taken more courage than he believed she was capable of. Certainly more than he possessed. “If we were to wed, it would dismiss the rumors and unwarranted and –”
“You are not serious!” Alaric laughed in surprise. A harsh sound, and unfamiliar—how long had it been since he laughed, even in derision?
“I do not!” Her eyes widened, and she looked at him. “I am not asking you to fall in love with me. I am not asking you to care. But if we marry, it will save us both. It will smother the rumors, the scandal, and within a few months, we will be forgotten. It will be as if none of this happened.”
“And then what?”
“I have been thinking about that too,” she said. “Which is why I have a proposal. Marry me. Allow me to live with you for one year, long enough so that people forget. And then, once the year is over, I will leave.”
“And go where?”
She shrugged. “Anywhere. Away from here. That way, you will have your peace, and I will have…” A smile now, soft and hopeful. “I will have my freedom.”
Alaric stared in bewilderment at the young lady. Her words… he could not believe what he was hearing! It was absurd! It was insane! It was enough that he should have thrown her on a horse and sent her back to her father at once! And he very nearly did too.
Only then did he look at her again. More memories of the past flood him. His failures. Mistakes made that led him down this path. Could this redeem him? Did he owe it, not to himself, but to the woman who had suffered because of his weakness?
No… this is not about her. It is about me, a way out that I do not deserve.
“You would confine yourself to a loveless marriage?” he asked her. “How is that better than what Lord Ayles offered you?”
She scoffed. “With you, at least, I know what I stand to gain.”
“No,” he said, fixing her with a final glare; his last-ditch effort to scare her away. Thunder rumbled behind her. Darkness spread from him, wrapping itself around her. A cool breeze, and she shuddered. Still, she did not run. “You have no idea.”
“Please,” she said again, her expression soft and pleading. “You and I both need this. Marry me, and as quickly as you do, forget that I am here. I will not trouble you. I will not impose. You might not think yourself to be a savior, but…” She laughed bitterly. “To me, that is what you have become.”
A savior…The word hung between them. Alaric tried to dismiss it. He wanted nothing to do with it! But it refused to leave him, and for the first time in years, he felt something he had thought lost to him. He felt hope.
But he refused to admit as much. Not yet. He did not deserve such things.
Rather, he focused on what he needed. That this marriage was sure to be a most treacherous endeavor that they would both regret. That it would only serve to remind him how unlovable he was, how deserving he was of being alone, how utterly wretched he had become in his isolation, so that by the time the year was over, she would be begging to leave.I deserve nothing less than to be hated and despised.
