She had done the right thing.
So why did it feel like she had just set fire to the one thing that had ever made her feel truly alive?
CHAPTER TWENTY
Ash read the note again, the one word pressing into his mind like an imprint.
No.
A wry, humorless laugh escaped him. He was not a man accustomed to refusals. Women never turned him away—at least, not until now.
But Clare had.
Clare, who had melted beneath his touch, whispered his name like a prayer, met his passion with her own. He knew the difference between affection and mere indulgence, and what had passed between them had been real.
So why was she walking away?
His fingers tightened around the note, not in anger, but in frustration. He had never needed to chase anyone before, had never wanted to. But this—she—was different.
If she truly wished to sever whatever was between them, he would respect that. He had to. But he needed to know—was that what she truly wanted? Or was she simply afraid? Of scandal, ofgossip, of whatever burden she believed would come from being with him?
He would give her a choice. A moment of honesty, face to face. No demands, no ultimatums. Just a chance to tell him, without hesitation, whether she wished to be free of him.
And if she did?
Then he would walk away.
Because whatever else burned inside him—desire, longing, something perilously close to devotion—one truth mattered above all.
Clare Handleton was not his to claim.
She was only ever his if she wished to be.
But he couldn’t let her go without one more try.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Clare sat across from Ash in Meredith’s drawing room, tension winding between them like an unspoken challenge. The butler had served their tea and, at her insistence, left the door open as he withdrew. Even that felt too much. Too intimate.
“You expect me to believe that you justhappenedto visit your sister when she’s out paying her weekly calls?” she asked, carefully pouring cream into her teacup.
Ash’s own tea sat untouched beside him. He lifted a shoulder in a lazy shrug. “I thought she was no longer making visits in her condition.”
“She has a few more weeks yet,” Clare replied smoothly.
“Ah. I see.” His voice was mild, almost indifferent. But Clare knew better. This was no coincidence.
She should never have come down to the drawing room.
She had refused him at first, had sent the butler back again and again with firm denials. But after Spaulding’s third return—flustered and informing her that Lord Trentham refused to leave—she had relented.
Now, faced with Ash in an otherwise empty house, she knew she had made a mistake.
She stirred her tea vigorously, focusing on the rhythmic clink of the spoon against porcelain, trying desperately to ignore how very good he looked in his casual buckskin breeches, white shirt, and emerald waistcoat. “You might as well say what you came to say.”
Ash leaned forward. “Why won’t you see me again?”
Her fingers tightened around the spoon. “Lower your voice,” she hissed, casting a glance toward the open door.
