“I pledged you my word as a matter of honor,” he reminded quietly. “I promised to serve as guardian to any child of yours.”
“Please, Hurtheven.”
Please, what?“You have a right to rage at me, and I, a responsibility to absorb the blows, but if you think I am going to voluntarily walk away to spare you the embarrassment of telling me explicitly to leave you alone, you are mistaken.”
She swallowed roughly. “I should not have left the explanation to others.”
“And I should not have assumed you’d be happy to wed me. I—I thought your refusal modesty on your part. If I had known the truth?—”
“You would have simply accepted me and my bastard child?”
“Again, I agreed to serve as guardian, did I not?”
Her expression blanked. “You did not know then that I conceived Annis before I knew you.”
“I wish you had told me.” He palmed his hands together in a prayerful, pleading manner. “Hera...keep me at arm’s length if you must but allow me to perform this service. The Chancery, I believe, regularly handles such matters.”
“You would do that...because of the contract?”
“I would do that, because I love you. I want to marry you. But, if you can tell me honestly that you do not love me, I will content myself with performing the service I’ve already pledged.”
She turned away. “If we marry, there’d be a scandal.”
“And?”
“You don’t know what you’re asking.Youcannot know what scandal truly means. You have never had the circumstances of your life—your failures, your poor judgment—laid out before a panel of people predisposed to think ill of you. If you had, you would no longer simply dismiss opinion as something easily ignored.”
He could not imagine how painful the hearing had been for her. He took a step toward her. She flinched.Very well.He folded his hands behind his back, and, since he could not hold her, he tightly gripped his fingers.
“I doubt there is anyone alive who has never faltered in their character. The foibles we allow for in our friends we call,” he paused for emphasis, “intolerable arrogance in others.”
“I’m sorry I called you arrogant.”
“You were not wrong. Iamarrogant. I have—by deliberate cultivation as well as by the privilege of my birth—analmostunshakable confidence. But what Ido notdo…what I wouldneverdo is assume other’s lives are of less value than my own.”
“Odd for an aristocrat. Even odder for a duke.”
“Thank the army of servants who raised me, then.”
She stared down at the hand-woven carpet beneath her feet, her face averted from his scrutiny. “I could not bear you coming to shame in the same way I have.”
“And I,” he retorted, “cannot bear to be parted from you.”
“We are at an impasse, then.”
“A standstill, more like. We will move as soon as we wish to move.”
She raised her gaze. “You are...difficult to deny.”
He half-smiled. “I know.”
She sniffed. “What do you want from me?”
Everything.“Two things, for now—your permission to pursue guardianship and the chance to court you.”
“And if I decline?”
“You may, of course, decline either point, but if you do so, you must swear you are refusing me because your heart is not engaged—and not formyown good. I treated you as if I knew better what was best for you than you knew for yourself. Don’t do me the same bad turn.”
