“Release me.” She yanked back.
“No.”
“No. Is that all you can say? No?”
“Chandler,” he swallowed, “took what you gave—and then called you unnatural?”
He felt her blanch as if he, too, had paled.
“Yes,” she said.
“Ah, hellion.”
“I was to blame,” she whispered. “If I’d been good. If I’d been proper…”
He eased his grip on her arms and lifted one hand to cup her face. “Stop this, Katherine.”
“Don’t,” she said with tears in her eyes. “Don’t pretend you understand. Don’t pretend you see me as anything but unnatural. I’ve always known I wasn’t good. Not on the inside.”
“But youaregood.” He ran the back of his hand down her cheek in a gentle caress. “Virtueismore than a lack of carnal knowledge.”
Her lips trembled, but she didn’t pull away.
“There is no shame in desiring the person you love,” he continued. “And I don’t see you that way—I don’t see you as unnatural.”
“What do you see?” she challenged.
Shame filled her gaze—not her own shame, but a response the tarnished, unworthy-of-his-presence image she expected him to create.
The image he likely would have created, if he didn’t need her—body, soul, and heart.
His mind filled with thick white nothing like the mists that cloaked Bromton Castle, and she emerged. Fog and shadow. Beauty. Defiance. Determination. A broken being, stumbling through her world, stripped of the smug superiority cloaking many of their peers.
He did understand. He understood all too well.
“I see my future,” he said softly.
…
His future? Was he determined to make her cry? “You cannot believe I deserve you.”
“Shh,” he crooned. He drew her so close, his silk waistcoat warmed her cheek. He traced comforting patterns on her spine—his touch even more tender than before. “You deserve better than me.”
She shattered. Again.
“You hate me,” she said. “I told you you’d hate me.”
“No,” he said. “I—I don’t hate you.”
She turned her face into his neck, inhaling a scent so calming and so real. “But you no longer wish to marry.”
“I’ve said nothing of the sort,” he replied.
“You—you would take a tarnished bride?”
His silence lasted a very long time. His breath skimmed her ear, and she took reluctant comfort in the solid curve of his shoulder. Where words failed, his heat and scent consoled.
“I won’t lie,” he said. “I wish I could have been your first.”
