“Love haseverythingto do with trust. A person cannot decide that they will not fall in love unless they are unwilling to. You are unwilling; you allow me into your bed, but you refuse to let me into your heart. That speaks of a lack of trust.”
He rose, raking a hand through his hair. “And I suppose Joyce was the one to tell you how miserable her marriage made her?”
“She made it plain that a loveless marriage cannot be happy, but is she so wrong? Everyone I know whose marriage is happy is in love!”
“Joyce made a mistake, and she paid for it, but her husband was hardly comparable to me. He despised her, and I admire you. I threw this ball to showcase your talent and demonstrate that I will not let a handful of rumors hurt you. Is that not enough?”
“You were protecting yourself as much as you were protecting me,” she snapped. “Or were you expecting me to fall over with gratitude and forgive the fact that yesterday you told me you would never love me?”
“Did that truly come as such a surprise?” His jaw clenched, and he looked more darkly forbidding than ever, and just asappealing. “I didn’t expect you to fall over yourself, but I didn’t expect you to throw everything you’ve done in my face.”
“The problem with you is that everything is transactional.” She curled her hands into her fists, trying to find her calm, and failing. “This issue is entirely separate from the fact you did this to help me—I said I was grateful, and I meant it.”
“When you first arrived, you told me you would have married me earlier if you’d had the chance.” His chest heaved as he took a single breath. “Are you telling me now that it was a lie?”
The words slid between her ribs, a fatal blow. Because it hadn’t been a lie, not then. But then she hadn’t known what it would be like to come to terms with the fact he would never love her.
Never.
This was her reality—this was her future.
“I thought I could live with it and be satisfied,” she said, “but I can’t, Max. How can I always be satisfied with second best? What happens when you decide you want someone else? You don’t trust me with your heart, so I doubt you’ll trust anyone else, but what about when I get older and you no longer want me in your bed? What then? Will I have to watch as you grow steadily less interested in me?” The thought made her heart clench.
He may not have loved her. But she suspected—she deeply suspected—she had come to love him.
Nothing else could hurt like this.
“No doubt you think I’m being foolish and making a fuss out of nothing,” she said, taking a deep breath. “And no doubt you think your assurances to me now—that you will not stray—will make me feel better. But what is the reassurance of you not straying if you want to? What happens when you inevitably regret marrying me? What happens when this small pool of affection runs dry?” She gestured between them. “I just need to…”
What?
She could hardly escape this marriage now, and until very recently, she hadn’t thought that she might even want to.
“I’m going to sleep in the duchess’s suite tonight, Your Grace.”
If her use of his title hit, he didn’t show it. He just stared at her, his mouth a hard line, and his eyes cold.
She waited for him to call her back, to beg her to understand, or just to tell her that things would not be as she described. But instead, he merely watched her walk away.
The moment she reached the other bedchamber, cold and empty, the fire unmade because the maids had not expected her to sleep there, she lay across the bed and gave way to tears.
CHAPTER 22
“Joyce,” he said once he finally found her in the small sitting room she had claimed for her own. “We need to talk.”
Maxwell was not entirely sure where he had gone wrong, but as two more days passed and Thalia continued to barely acknowledge his existence, he knew where he could lay at least some of the blame.
She glanced up from the fashion plate she had been idly flicking through. “Can it not wait, Maxwell? I have an engagement in half an hour.”
“Your engagement will have to wait.” He closed the door and stared at her. Thalia had mentioned Joyce’s unhappiness, but he had never seen Lady Rivenhall as an unhappy woman so much as one determined to take as much from the world as she could.
Why Christopher had ever fallen in love with her, he didn’t know, but time and life changed people. That much, he could accept.
For Christopher’s sake, he had been civil and understanding, but that stopped now.
“What is this about?” she asked, managing to sound impatient and put-upon in his home, where he clothed and fed her and chaperoned her only daughter into Society as though she was his own.
For Lydia’s sake, he would do it all over again, but enough was enough.
