“You say that with the same passion that our family butler announces dinner is served.”
“It is widely acknowledged that you are a beauty—unusual in your features, even exotic, but attractive, all the same.”
“Attractive. I’ve moved from lovely to merely attractive? I can imagine the love poetry you would write to me—’Your eyes could have been compared to the stars but now they look like two pebbles in the village garden.’ ”
To his credit, a hint of a smile lifted his lips. “I don’t write poetry. You need not worry about being compared to garden pebbles by me.”
“Reassuring.” Her breathing had returned to normal; her heartbeat had steadied. The room around her no longer held horrors.
She’d faced the worst, she realized. She looked to Roman. “I’ve always feared that someday I would have to atone for that night. I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t taken the blame. You understood the price I would have had to pay.”
He bowed, acknowledging her remark.
“And it means a great deal to me to see you faring so well,” she continued. “An earldom is not enough of a reward for what you did for me.”
The words sounded pretty to her ears. They were kind, benevolent, humble. “However—” She kept her voice gentle. “—I cannot accept your offer of marriage.” If his informing her they would marry could be considered an “offer.”
And then, because he of all people deserved an explanation, she said, “It is not you, my lord. I don’t wish to marry anyone.”
There, she’d said it aloud. Her secret.
“Then why are you here this evening?” he said.
“Must you always challenge everything I say?” she countered.
“Apparently.”
Leonie made a sound of frustration. “I’m here for the same reason everyone is—my parents. They have been plotting for me to marry well since I was in the cradle. It is the only thing the two of them can agree upon. They wouldn’t hear me if I told them what I wanted. Fortunately, last year, I was jilted by a duke. That has made me ‘used’ goods in some people’s eyes.” She thought of Camberly. “Of course, my parents might still try to make me a duchess and then I would be forced to suffer through it all until he was bored with me.”
“Suffer?”
Leonie met his quizzical gaze. “Youknowwhat I mean. That man thing.”
“That ‘man thing’?” he repeated. “No, I don’t understand. And how can you wish to suffer through life?”
She blew out her breath in exasperation. “Idon’twish to suffer through life. Which is the reason I don’t wish to marry. I want somethingmorefrom my life.” And she wanted to be in control of what that was.
He considered her a moment. “So, you would marry Camberly?”
Leonie crossed her arms. “I suppose I would. Then I’d be a duchess.”
“Is that what you want from your life?”
“It is what my parents wish.”
“Camberly has a man thing.”
His statement caught her off guard. “What?” Was he mocking her?
He appeared completely serious, even as he said, “You said you didn’t want a man thing and I pointed out that Camberly has a man thing. At least, I believe he does. I don’t know that for a fact, however, most men have a man thing.”
“More’s the pity,” she snapped.
“Yes, but you said you were open to a ducal man thing, but how do you know an earl man thing wouldn’t be better?”
“Because one belongs to a duke.”
“But what if the duke doesn’t know what to do with his man thing? Is that what you meant by suffering through life?”
