“I know that as well.” She turned back toward the bed. “The walls constrict not just the body, but the soul.”
She attempted to recall the times she’d found pleasure with Karl, but reality stripped her excuses. Beneath them she finally found her anger, although Hurtheven was the one to give that fury voice.
“I want to burn this place to the ground,” he said.
“Me, too,” she agreed. She faced him again. “I appreciate the sentiment. But there are thousands and thousands of these rooms. There are rooms like this in your very house.”
He pressed his lips together. Then, he nodded. “I recognize something I hadn’t before.”
He did. She could see it in his eyes. The shock. The sadness. He’d linked her pain to his own. He would never know completely what it was to have no good choices and no means of self-support, but he would try. He was, right now, doing his best.
“I didn’t fully appreciate the power I held over you,” he said. “Accepting your suggestion of a contract was ghastly.”
“I think you were rather pleased with the idea of saving me.”
He winced. “You might be right. Only, you didn’t need saving, did you? You’d survived so much already on your own.”
“I don’t need you tosolveme or save me.”
What she needed was a friend. A person she could trust with her secrets and who would trust her with his own.
“Hurtheven, had you ever drawn up that sort of contract before?”
He shook his head no.
“Youneverkept a mistress?”
“I’ve had lovers. But a mistress? No.”
“Because of Penelope?”
“Not just,” he replied. “I hadn’t room for any long-term intimate connection. I was too busy searching for some dramatic challenge that would make everything else disappear. I both longed for—and feared—another strike that would change everything.”
He fingered the slip of hair at her throat.
“Then, I saw you. You had on a hideous green dress. A coarse apron. An unappealing cap with a drooping fringe. You’d tucked up your skirts, ready to plunge into the hedge, only, being the chivalrous man I am, I saved you the trouble.”
Her gaze softened.
“You were right. I loved Penelope. I loved her so deeply that my life changed. But I’ve never felt like this—like I’ve lived thousands and thousands of lifetimes, and that the point of every one of them was to find you.”
“You truly wish to wed me, and intend to accept Annis into your home?”
He nodded.
“I’m not a suitable duchess.”
“I won’t tell you I don’t care what other people think—I do. Everyone should...”
She frowned.
“...But only if those ‘others’ are trusted, respected friends who know you well and who are motivated by a desire for your happiness.”
“Ashbey. Ithwick.”
He nodded. “And Alicia. And Pen. And my godfather.”
“Your godfather?”
