The slight crack in her voice rent his already failing armor. “Because my blasted siblings spent the past three hours discussing what I need in a wife?”
“And?” She crossed her arms, daring him to say it.
“And it couldn’t have been pleasant to hear, given our history.”
“You mean, given I don’t meet the criteria?”
He ran a hand through his hair. This was his reckoning, the moment he paid the price for his past mistakes. The moment where his selfishness for entwining his heart with hers so long ago finally bore consequences. “I guess. Yes. Given you don’t meet their criteria.”
It was a simple word change.Theirnotthe. And he hoped she’d recognized it. Because if he hadn’t been the duke, if he needed a wife and not a duchess, if he’d been free to follow what he wanted and not what was expected of him, then the whole of her—every quirk, every seeming flaw, every trait that made her entirely unsuitable—would be his only criteria.
But she didn’t notice that small change. Instead, she flung her hands in the air. “And the bar is nae even high! She must be pretty and amiable with no opinions?”
“Fi…” No woman would ever meet the standards she set. No woman would ever take complete hold of his heart the way she had. The bar was impossibly high for whoever it was he eventually married. They would always pale in comparison. It was a cruel and bitter thing to do to a woman. Deep down, it was the reason he couldn’t go through with his engagement to Amelia, and he felt sick that he was about to enter an engagement with a nice enough woman—whichever one he picked—and he’d never be able to give her all of him.
Unaware of the declaration his soul had whispered but his body could not, she shook her hands, as though trying to fling off the memory of their time together.
“Nae,” she said. “Nae, it’sbonny. Now I kenexactlywhy you ended things. And I’m glad ye did, because if that’s what ye need in a wife, then I am most unsuitable for the position.”
“Fi…”
“Nae. It’s fine. Really. Ye can go to bed now and sleep well.” She crossed to the bed where she sat and began to unbuckle her shoes, pulling at the leather with an angry tug. Swearing, she changed hands, resting her still-swollen and wrapped wrist in her lap.
He should’ve done as she said.
He should have closed the door and gone back to his own rooms.
Instead, he stepped forward to stand before her. She didn’t look up from her feet, and perhaps that was a good thing. He probably couldn’t have said the next words if he’d been forced to look her in the eye as he did so.
“I need to marry.” The words cut, like a blade through his skin. He had no wish to take a wife that wasn’t Fiona. But he was a duke. “And I need to marry soon. Before my mother has a hand in it and chooses someone dreadful. Before the gossips start to spread rumors about why the duke has not yet chosen a duchess and produced an heir.”
He had a duty. He’d been irresponsible putting it off this long as it was.
She looked up, flinging her hair over her shoulder. Her green eyes sparked with a hot fury. “Good. You should marry, and Charlotte has the right of it; ye should choose somebody who’s able to manage your dinner parties and flutter about charming yer guests without being a constant risk to yer reputation.”
“I wanted to marry you.” It was probably unfair to say it. They were words that he needed to utter but that she didn’t need to hear. But if this blasted situation had taught him anything, it was that he was more like his father than he’d care to admit. Selfish and greedy. Irresponsible and uncaring of the pain his actions would cause.
“Aye. Ye wanted to marry me. But ye didnae.” She turned her attention back to her boot, struggling to pull it off with her uninjured hand.
He knelt in front of her, taking the heel in his hand.
“It’sfine,” she said, pulling her slipper from his grasp.
“Just let me help.”
She sat stiff as he tugged the first shoe free. Then he pulled at the buckle on the other, keeping his eyes trained on the leather in front of him, because if he had to look at her, he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t cry.
“I would never have married ye anyway.” Her words stung like a reed against his bare back. “Nae once I found out what you were.”Crack.“If ye hadn’t broken it off, I would have.”Crack.
And now the torment of rejection was his to endure. As he sat there on his knees in front of the woman he loved but could not have, he could understand what drove his father to follow his heart somewhere so inadvisable, because the pain of this was almost unbearable. Almost.
Chapter 17
He’d barely slept. He’d wished for the relief of slumber, but when it came, it did so with the same dream repeating over and over. She made love to him and then dismissed him, and he would wake up calling out her name. Every time he succumbed to sleep, he’d been compelled to endure it again.
Which was why forcing himself to smile this morning as he walked toward Charlotte’s drawing room took more effort than usual, because he knew what awaited him, had agreed to it two days ago when Charlotte was outlining her plan to find him a bride, but now it felt as though he were walking into purgatory.
At the other end of the corridor, William appeared. At least Edward wasn’t in it alone.
