“It may be a dream when he finds out,” Caroline huffed. She reached for the mantelpiece and clung to it. “Oh, Allie. Maybe you’re right.”
Alaina looked up from the flames into her friend’s eyes.
“Maybe we should come clean,” Caroline whispered. “We’ll go down and tell the duke together.” She suddenly nodded. “It may mean losing this beautiful life.” She sighed with the words. “Yet it’s better than me ending up married to him. He’ll be furious at the lie and no doubt cast us out of this house, not wanting to see either of us again.”
The easy way she said the words horrified Alaina. Her eyes stung madly. She blinked many times, but the tears still came.
“No.” Ther word escaped her so firmly that Caroline jerked her head towards her.
“What did you say?”
“I said … no.”
Chapter 16
“Don’t be mad at me, Caro,” Alaina pleaded, though her friend was currently staring at her with such horror that she knew it was a pointless plea. “If this is all I am to ever know with Marcus –”
“The duke!” Caroline cut in desperately. “Please, address him as such.”
“I can’t.” Alaina shook her head. She broke down, knowing that now she had to be completely open with Caroline. She moved forward in her chair so far that she was in danger of falling out of it. “I love him.”
Caroline looked as if she had been shot. She staggered back, her calves hitting the edge of the other chair before she toppled down into it. Her cheeks paled as she stared open-mouthed at Alaina.
“I … I suspected some care on your part,” Caroline murmured. “Some fancy. I didn’t think it would come to this. Love? Are you certain? Absolutely certain?”
“I cannot doubt it.” Alaina looked at the bedchamber door, thinking of all that she and Marcus did there. She shuddered with a kind of pleasurable delight to remember the thrill of his hands and tongue upon her. “He means so much to me. I care for him as I have never cared for another.”
“Alaina, think of what you are saying.” It was a testament to Caroline’s seriousness that she used Alaina’s full name. “Remember, he is charming you, thinking that you have a full dowry. That you are me.”
“I do not believe that.”
“How can you not believe it?” Caroline asked wildly, waving her arms in the air. “It is why we are here in the first place.”
“That is something he has never denied to me,” Alaina continued, her voice much quieter than Caroline’s. “He has acknowledged openly that he needs the dowry, yet he also says he cares for me. Look, look at this.” Alaina got to her feet and took out the piece of paper Marcus had left in her room. She thrust the poem into Caroline’s grasp. “Look at what he wrote for me. He said he has started writing again because of me. That I have inspired him. Is that not love? Is it impossible to think that he could love me too?”
Caroline said nothing. She read the poem, taking it all in, then sank further back in her chair, glowering down at the scrap of paper.
“He could have copied this out of a book,” she murmured.
“You are one of the most well-read people I know. I have read hundreds of poems in my time, and I have never read that anywhere. Don’t you think one of us would recognize it if he had copied it? Besides.” Alaina snatched the poem back. “I saw him one night in the library, writing out such things. He wrote it for me, Caro. He left it in here for me to find.”
“Alaina, I would be thrilled to hear that he did love you. I would love to hear that. Sometimes, I look at you together, and maybe I could even believe it, then I remember why we are here in the first place. I remember the dowry. You are caught up in a fantasy,” Caroline said with such sudden animation that it made Alaina topple backwards, now the one in danger of falling over. “He cannot marry you. You know that.”
“I know!” Alaina managed to lift her voice louder than Caroline’s. “I know he cannot. I need no more reminders that I am penniless. That I have absolutely no family, no connections, nothing that could induce a man of his standing to take me as a bride.” The heartbreak in her tone made Caroline sniff. It suddenly became apparent to Alaina that Caroline was now the one holding back tears.
“I wish it were not so,” Caroline murmured quietly.
“It cannot be changed.” Alaina could not look at her friend now. She stared into the fire, needing to compose herself. “I am well aware of the impossibility of the situation. He cannot marry me, but I am in no rush to end this,” she murmured. She knelt before the fire, adding another log onto the hearth to increase the flames.
“I should be stoking the fire,” Caroline cut in, drying tears from her cheek.
“We both know it’s my place to do it,” Alaina reminded her. She didn’t move from the hearth rug as she turned to face Caroline. “If we have one week left until the truth comes out, then I want to hold onto that week. Please, Caro. Let us enjoy this last week.”
Caroline didn’t answer right away. She dried her tears again, looking down at those flames.
“I don’t imagine you are in a rush to end this either, are you?” Alaina whispered. “You and the stable man …” She trailed off, waiting to see Caroline’s reaction.
At once, Caroline lifted her chin. She was blushing a deep shade of red.
