Lucian laughed blackly. “Little did I know that I was already too late. Nothing had been written down, and there were no witnesses, apart from the two of us. There was nothing to compel Lysander to honor Grandfather’s wishes. And it turned out that he’d appointed another man to the post before Grandfather was even in the ground.”
Rosalie bristled. “That’s despicable.”
Lucian shrugged. “That’s Lysander. He informed me that the living had already gone to another man, and he would not help me in any way. Oh, and by the way, the moment Grandfather passed, he had cut off the modest allowance Grandfather had been sending meandstopped paying the rent on my rooms. I was already two months in arrears, and I didn’t even realize it. I’d been so busy grieving, I hadn’t bothered to check my bank balance. And suddenly, I could no longer afford to stay in London.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t give up. I begged every friend, distant relation, and casual acquaintance I had to help me find some form of gainful employment. But let’s face it—I had the worst reputation imaginable. I wasn’t a strong candidate for the church or for business. And, with the war over, there was already a surplus of officers. I was running out of options. I tried to call on your father a dozen times, to throw myself on his mercy, but he was always out. I wrote to him, too, sometimes twice a day. But I never received a response.”
Rosalie squeezed his hand. “He mentioned that. He said he was so busy negotiating the Appropriation Act that he didn’t even open your letters until after you had left the country.”
Lucian bit back a curse. “I wish I had known that. After a while, I concluded that his silencewashis answer. He’d told me not to come back if I couldn’t secure the living, after all.My landlord was after me for the unpaid rent. But it happened that one of the school friends I had approached to beg for help finding a living was about to leave for Italy. He kindly offered to let me accompany him. As it was the only offer I had, and as it was becoming clear that I needed to disappear in the dead of the night in order to avoid the horde of debt collectors who would soon be descending upon me, I accepted.”
“I went and found Reeves,” he continued. “That bit was also a lie. There was never any wager between the two of us. I explained that I had begged your father for your hand, and he had refused. Happily, he had yet to place a bet of his own, so he didn’t stand to lose anything. I must have been a pitiable sight indeed, because he immediately pledged to keep what he had witnessed to himself.”
His voice grew gruff as he said, “That just left one more matter to attend to. You. I tried to come up with the kindest approach I possibly?—”
“Kindest?” Rosalie’s pale eyes sparked as if they contained pent-up lightning. “There was nothingkindabout what you did!”
He hung his head. “I know. I’m an idiot. My hope was that you would cry about it for an hour, but then you would conclude that I had never been worthy of you, and that you were well shot of me. I hoped that, by exposing myself as the worst kind of louse, you would thank your lucky stars that I was gone from your life. You would move on. You would find love with someone else. I would be miserable for the rest of my life, because I already knew that you were the only woman on the face of this earth for me. But that was all right, so long as you were happy.” He gave her a sad smile. “All I had to do was be the biggest heel on the face of this earth for the space of ten minutes.”
She huffed. “Well, if that was your goal, you did a fine job.”
He gave her a sad smile. “And yet, I didn’t. I could tell as soon as I saw you again that I had wounded you. I’m so sorry, Rosalie.I know it’s difficult to believe, but I was attempting to do you a kindness.”
Her eyes were full of hurt. “It is never a kindness to take my choices away. I don’t care how unpleasant the thing you think to spare me from might be. I am not a child, Lucian. Ialwayswish to be told, to be given the chance to decide for myself.”
He sighed. “I do know that, but in this one instance, when there was the potential to spare you such a degree of pain, I felt justified. It’s not as if the outcome would have been any different, had I told you the truth.”
She did not respond right away, and when she finally spoke, her voice shook. “I would have gone with you to Gretna Green without a second’s hesitation.”
He absorbed her words like a punch to the heart. It took him a moment—a long one—to regain the ability to speak. “But, Rosalie… This was before I inherited the title. I had nothing. No money, no prospects.” He gave a hopeless laugh. “I was just… some wastrel.”
Her jaw took on a mulish set. “You were the only man who really looked at me, who saw me for who I was. And who actually liked what he saw.”
“But…” Words failed him. It couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t. “Your father disapproved. I know how important he is to you, how close the two of you are. I would never have asked you to put that relationship at risk.”
Her voice was clear and tremulous in its conviction. “I would have chosen you.”
He shook his head. “You were only marrying me because Reeves discovered us together. Because you didn’t have any choice.”
She lifted her chin. “Now, hear this, Lucian Deverell. I am Lady Rosalie de Lacy, and no one ‘forces’ me to doanything. I was marrying you because. I.Wanted. To.” She punctuated eachword with a jab to his chest. “And no one, not even my bear of a father, could have prevented me.”
Another time, Lucian would have smirked and pointed out that she wasn’t Lady Rosalie de Lacy anymore. That she was Rosalie, Lady Valentine. But he found that his head was swimming and the room had gone blurry, and he was entirely too busy trying to stay upright to be capable of speech.
Vaguely, as if from a distance, he heard her saying his name. “Lucian? Lucian, are you all right?”
He blinked, struggling to clear his eyes. “You would have chosen me,” he gasped.
She swam back into focus. Her eyes were blazing. “Yes. I would have.”
He felt like he might cast his accounts all over the Axminster carpet. “We could have been happy these past two years. Instead of…”
Her eyes had an I-told-you-so quality. “Yes.Instead of.”
He buried his face in his hands. “God. I’m such afuckingidiot. I’m so sorry, Rosalie.”
She stroked his back. When he managed to raise his head, she gave him an arch look. “Indeed. And while we are on the subject of your idiocy, why am I only learning all this tonight? Do you haveany ideahow stressful the past two weeks have been for me? Feeling unable to trust the man I was expected to marry? Why did you not tell me at once what really happened?”
His shoulders relaxed a fraction. “Ah. That one, I can explain.”
