“Imagine what your peers would say?They would think of me as you once did.Provincial, obviously not English.An untitled foreign girl, when you could do so much better among your own kind.”
“I don’t care a fig what my peers say!”
“You should.”She slid her arms into her dress and began to tie the apron front.“Because I care.I care about your future, your happiness, your place in the world.And I won’t be made to feel less than good enough.Nor do I wish to make the same speech I made to you the night we met, and I would have to make it over and over, to prove my place in your world.”
Her voice broke.She would, in fact, be willing to fight for that place as his wife, if only it didn’t mean abandoning her duty to her family.
Closing the distance between them, he gripped her shoulders and stared down into her eyes.“You’re afraid.I understand that.But we can face whatever comes together.”
“No.”She said the single word more firmly this time, even as her heart cracked wider.Letting her gaze trail down to his chest, she was no longer able to meet his eyes.
“No, we can’t.What we just did was beautiful and perfect.I’ll treasure itand youalways.But it doesn’t change the reality of our situations.”
“Then what was the point?”His voice was thick with emotion, gutting her all over again.She wasn’t sure she could handle both of their pain.
“You ought not to have come, Lise, giving me hope only to dash it again.It was cruel.”
She finished dressing, hating that he was angry, that he felt regret.
“Was I selfish?Perhaps.But I’m not sorry.”
“I am.”He pulled on his shirt, his movements jerky.“I’m sorry I climbed that blasted tree.I’m sorry I called out to you like a lovesick fool when I saw you.I ought to have remained hidden and let you turn around and go home.”
Jonathan paced in the small circle of their enclosure the way she imagined a wild tiger from exotic India would behave.
“I misunderstood your twisted feminine reasoning and thus, behaved dishonorably,” he said.“To such an appalling degree that I shall never again be able to consider myself a gentleman.You were a virgin, and I took what you offered anyway.”
He stopped, his hands fisted at his sides.“I swear,” he said softly.“I feel more powerless than I did the entire time I was trapped in that damned wine cellar in Lübeck.You have entirely unmanned me.”
His words were a slap.Reaching for her cloak, Lise shook it violently, hoping to clear it of every last bit of grass while she fought the tears that wanted to resume.She would let them as soon as she was away from him.
After wrapping the deep-blue wool around her shoulders and fastening it at her throat, she dared look at him again.He was standing silently, arms crossed, simply watching her.
But he no longer looked angry.He appeared devastated.And that nearly undid her resolve.
“I will love you until the day I die,” she promised.“But my place is here.I cannot abandon my family.Not even for you.And I hope you will come to forgive me for today’s perceived trickery.”
“So that is all?”His voice was flat.“You’ll stay here and marry some other man eventually?Let him touch you the way I just touched you?Give him the gift you gave me?”
“You sound jealous of someone who doesn’t exist,” she said.The words came out fiercely.“There willneverbe anyone else for me.My heart is yours, completely and forever.I intend to grow old taking care of my parents, helping with Henrik’s children when he has them.I’ll be Aunt Lise, the spinster who lives in the country.”She shook her head.“And on quiet afternoons, I shall walk to this spot and remember the time an English viscount loved me enough to risk everything.”
His expression softened.“Lise, please.”
“Goodbye,” she said, turning quickly because his sad tone was harder to withstand than any of his arguments.
She must leave before her courage failed her, before the sight of his anguished face broke her.She couldn’t look back, no matter that every step away from him felt like dying.
Lise had just slipped through the narrow opening between the boulders when his voice caught up with her.
“What if you’re carrying my child?”
Chapter Twenty
His question stopped the maddening creature in her tracks.Good!He could see Lise’s halted figure at the entrance to the blasted giant’s berries.
Jonathan yanked Henrik’s borrowed shirt over his head with enough force that stitches popped along one shoulder seam.Grabbing his coat off the ground, he shoved his arms into it with more fury than haste.
He didn’t know why her giving up was making him so nettled, but it was.
