Heat crept up his throat. The notion of groveling before Addy’s aunt was most unpleasant, but he would do it if he had no other choice.
He turned to Addy, hating her obvious distress. Her sunshine smile was notably absent, and she looked as if she had been weeping. Knowing he was the cause for her upset made his gut churn.
“You overheard some of the conversation between myself and Aunt Helene,” he said.
Her chin went up. “I heard all of it that I needed to hear.”
“I think not.” Lion thought of the moment he’d heard a sound in the hall during his tête-à-tête with his aunt before dismissing it as nothing. “You heard only the beginning. You left before you heard the most important part.”
“What was that?” she asked, her tone guarded. “That you require a new carriage or that your town house needs to be fitted for electricity? That you must have a new wardrobe?”
“No.” He looked deeply into her eyes, willing her to believe him. “That I’ve fallen in love with you.”
Her lips parted, and she stared at him in silent shock.
It was as he had suspected, then. She had overheard part of his conversation with Aunt Helene, who had been far too concerned about Addy being an heiress.
He reached for her hands, gratified when she didn’t immediately snatch them away, and continued. “What you heard wasn’t wrong. I am woefully impoverished. My estates are in dire need of funds and repair. The carpets are threadbare, I’ve had to sell off priceless paintings to pay the creditors, and my sisters have been wearing outmoded gowns for three years. I spent more than I could afford on tuition for the Académie Clairemont in the hope that they might acquire the éclat necessary to secure good husbands and futures for themselves. We know how that ended.”
Addy bit her lip. “If you still hold me responsible for Lila and Letty being removed from finishing school?—”
“I don’t,” he interrupted gently. “It was easy to blame you before I knew you. I was angry with my sisters and frustrated. I had no notion how to launch them in Society when they were of age, and I was mired by debt from my father and grandfather before him, weighed down by the burden of so much obligation…It was making me miserable, Addy. Until you came along. You with your dazzling smiles and ridiculous radiance, your utter lack of propriety and your stubborn defiance. And Dandy with her happy bouts and loud barks and penchant for eating ears. The both of you have made me happy for the first time in a very long time.”
Addy laughed and hiccupped at the same time, rather proving his point. She was irresistible. Utterly without artifice. And he loved her all the more for it.
“To be fair, Dandy has nevereatenan ear,” Addy pointed out. “She licks them and gives the occasional nibble.”
Dandy, apparently tired of not being fawned upon or gifted cheese, barked and then began having a happy bout, racing from one end of the room to the other, sliding on the hardwood floor and slamming into plaster with her side before turning and running back again in a black blur of uninhibited motion.
“Your dog is mad,” he pointed out.
“She is merely enthusiastic,” Addy defended.
He wanted to kiss her so badly that it was an ache he felt all the way to the soles of his feet. But Lion was acutely aware of her aunt, hovering on the periphery, watching them sternly behind her gold-rimmed spectacles.
“Addy, I don’t care that you’re an heiress. I am a poor man, but I am also a man who is determined. I can sell off more paintings and some of the estates. I am working with my steward to make the farms more efficient and profitable. I will happily eschew your fortune. Your father may keep all his wealth. I don’t want it. All I want is you.”
“But you were agreeing with your aunt,” Addy protested. “I heard you. And you disapprove of me.”
“Aunt Helene, like Uncle Algernon, has good intentions, but she also loves to hear the sound of her own voice. I didn’t care to tell her the details of our private relationship, so I was merelyagreeing. When she pressed the matter, I made my feelings for you clear, however. My greatest regret is that I didn’t tell you first. I should have done so, and I am sorry for that. I should have told you that night, but I…”
Bloody hell.
Lion stopped himself from finishing what he’d been about to say, casting an uneasy glance in her aunt’s direction.
The elder Miss Fox was eyeing him in a considering fashion. “I think I will meander downstairs to take some tea. I’ll be back in half an hour. And if anything untoward occurs while I’m gone or if you make my niece cry again, be forewarned, Your Grace. I’ve been known to blacken a man’s eye in my day.”
Lion didn’t think Aunt Pearl had much of a chance of doing him bodily harm, but he didn’t say so. She was protective of Addy, and that was all that mattered.
He inclined his head. “Thank you.”
She looked to her niece. “Addy, dear?”
Addy nodded. “You may go, Aunt Pearl. I’ll be fine with Li—with His Grace.”
Her aunt’s lips twitched, and she raised a brow. “Half an hour.”
She didn’t say anything else before she quietly quit the room. Dandy, who had finished her happy bout and exhausted herself, now lolled on her side, panting. Lion felt a surge of powerful emotion within his chest, an unrelenting sense of rightness. This was where he was meant to be, with Addy, with Dandy. He knew it to his marrow.
