Unfortunately, it was quite possibly the worst moment for a proposal, and he did not want to pull it out of nowhere when he could wait until a better time. Instead, she would have to trust his feelings that he had shown her, and it would have to be enough for her to believe him.
“So you promise me that your fight had nothing to do with you still wanting to marry Lady Ophelia? You promise me that you are not going to abandon me for her if and when she confesses to you?”
He already had, of course, but it was not the time to tell her that he had only just been alone with her in his study for an extended amount of time. Not when he was attempting to ease her concerns, that is.
“I promise you,” he assured her. “And the next time she tries to enter this household, she shall be sent away in an instant. I should have known not to let her in in the first place, but my mother liked her once upon a time.”
“And how does she feel about her now?”
“I do not know, and quite frankly I do not care. What I do know is that she adores you, and she has from the moment you arrived, and she has had every reason to. What is important is that Ophelia will no longer be a concern of ours. Do you believe me when I say that?”
Jackie looked up at him, her eyes searching his, and he willed her to answer.
Chapter 26
Jackie wondered if the duke was lying to her for a few mere seconds.
Then the truth of the matter settled in. He had never lied to her before, even when it had been in his best interests to do so. Not only that, but she knew him, and she knew him well. He had always acted with kindness, even toward those undeserving of it. If he had snapped, it was not through any fault of his own, and she was certain of that.
She also did not know the viscount at all. He had been a charmer toward her, saying and doing all of the right things, but it had not shown any of his character except for the fact that he was a charmer. If anything, it only proved that he was trying to woo her so that she did not fall for the duke, exactly as Philip had said.
Her heart believed the duke, and every word that he said, but then her self-preservation told her otherwise. If she allowed herself to love him, only for Ophelia to come running to him and take him away from her, it would destroy her. She couldn’t allow herself to put herself in harm’s way, could she?
“I believe you,” she whispered.
This was not a monster. This was a man that she had fallen for, the only one that she had ever done so for.
“Oh, Jackie, that is—”
“But,” she interrupted. “I cannot handle these entanglements anymore. I hate them.”
“What do you mean?”
“It is rather obvious, would you not say? From the start, there was the issue of me being brought here under false pretenses by my father. I know that that was not your fault, nor was it mine, but it hardly helped us. Now we have two people determined to come between us, that you have spent a long time liking. It is a lot to undertake, and it is exhausting.”
“Is my appearance also a problem?”
Jackie froze. Was he truly asking her that after everything they had been through? She had promised him that she did not care, and unlike his explanations for Ophelia only to allow her continued presence there, her actions had backed up her words.
“How could you even ask me that?” she asked. “Is it not the one thing that I have proven time and time again that I do not care about?”
“I know, but others have held it against me.”
“Are you saying that I am like them? I thought you would have seen me in a better way than that.”
“I do!”
“Then why did you feel the need to ask? Is it because you are still thinking about Ophelia?”
“Of course not. I only ask because these scars have caused me so much pain.”
“They would not have, this time. This time, you only have yourself to blame for any pain you might feel, because they have never made a difference to me.”
She did not give him time to answer, turning on her heel and walking away.
It was almost unbelievable. Jackie wondered what the duke truly thought of her, if even after all the time they spent with one another, he could not see that his scars did not matter to her.
She no longer had an appetite. Dinner came and went, and she did not leave her room, instead staring at her ceiling and thinking about how she felt on her first night there after discovering the true purpose of her visit.
