“Right,” said William. “I’m off before his dance card fills up and they come after me instead. The gaming room is at the back. You should join me when you’re done with your business whatnot.”
And just like that, he was gone, ducking and weaving his way through the crowd, managing to brush off every woman who tried to hail him. Fiona wished she could follow. Instead, she was left to stand beside Edward as his potential future brides lined up for the opportunity to flatter him.
“Your Grace,” one of the debutantes said with a slight whine in her voice, “surely you don’t mean to keep us all in suspense. At least askoneof us to dance.” The look she gave made it very clear who she thought that “one” should be.
“Actually, I promised Mr. McTavish that I would introduce him to Lord Chester, who is over there. Excuse us.” He bowed to the ladies present, and in a synchronized wavethey curtseyed. Not one of them wobbled, despite the depth of the bend and the weight of the jewels that were proudly displayed.
Edward smiled tightly as he broke through the ring of silk, sighing as more than one lady refused to move, necessitating his brushing close past them.
“How can you stand it?” Fiona whispered to him as they reached open waters.
“They mostly left me alone while I was engaged to Amelia,” he muttered. “It’s been a deuced nightmare since. Every woman wants to be a duchess.” He flushed, grimacing slightly. A muscle ticked along his jaw. “Almost every woman.”
The pain in his tone tugged at her heart, and she had to remind herself that whatever her feelings about his words last night, the reality was he’d decided she wasn’t fit to be a duchess a long time ago. So she tried to put aside the guilt for the cutting things she’d said and focus on the task at hand. Her business deal. But the constant fawning interruptions—by women and men—as they crossed the ballroom set off a jinglejangle of nagging thoughts in her mind.
“How do you know who likes you for you and not your title?” she asked eventually, after Edward had extricated them from yet another bootlicking encounter.
His shoulders stiffened. “I don’t.”
It was as brutal a response as she could receive. They were walking the perimeter of the room. As they passed a cluster of potted palms, she grabbed him by the arm and towed him to privacy behind the giant green leaves.
“I’m sorry,” she said, cupping his cheek with her hand, and she was. She was more than familiar with the inability to trust others, but at the very least she had a good sense of who felt what for her. To not be certain about the very nature of one’s relationships was bleak indeed.
He pulled away and looked up at the ceiling, his head shaking slightly as if arguing with himself. “I’m fairly sure my sister loves me,” he said eventually. “I’m fairly sure my mother doesn’t. Everyone else has a question mark above them. Except you. At least, back then.”
“Because I didn’t know you were a duke.” The world tilted slightly, shifting her view of the past. He hadn’t been mocking her when he hid his identity. He hadn’t been trying to take advantage of her. He had just…
He caught her gaze, his stare burning into her soul. His expression was raw, vulnerable. “The relief I felt when I realized you had no idea I was the duke was visceral—like the burden of the title was this great weight that had suddenly lifted. It was wrong not to tell you. But I saw the opportunity to be known, to be liked, for me, and I latched on to it.”
It had been wrong, and it had caused her incredible harm, but she could understand it. She, too, knew the pain of wanting to be loved—wasn’t that why she’d chased after her father as she had? She took his hand and squeezed it.
“I know you say that you never knew me,” he continued. “But it’s not true. You’re the only one who ever has.” His voice cracked as he spoke and the look in his eyes was so bleak, so desolate, so hurting, that it was all she could do not to wrap him in her arms. Instead, she tightened her squeeze and his fingers wrapped around hers as though they were a lifeline.
He had loved her, and if she truly looked at all the evidence—the way he tried to make her smile even when she was furious with him, the way he cared for her even when that meant being an overbearing arse, the way he’d crumbled at her words last night—it was possible that he still did. And yet he’d kept himself away from her.
“How do you live your life like that?”
He answered the question he thought she’d asked. “I don’t have a choice.” He pulled away from her, disentangling their hands and stepping back, once more putting on the mantle of the lord. “I can’t not be the duke, and that comes with certain expectations I must live up to. To do otherwise would subject my family to the worst kind of gossipmongering. I won’t put them through what my father did.”
And there was the crux of why they could never be together. He couldn’t join her in her world without abdicating his responsibilities to his family, his tenants, and the people who relied on good men to enact change from the top. She couldn’t join him in his world without giving up the essence of who she was and risking Charlotte’s and Will’s happiness.
“I forgive you,” she said. “I can grasp why you did it.”
“And you don’t hate me for it?” he asked, raising a hand to her cheek, stroking it softly with the backs of his fingers.
She shook her head, scared that if she opened her mouth, how she really felt about him would spill out. Scared she’d tell him she loved him, and that would accomplish nothing but hurt. Because it wouldn’t change anything.
He caressed her cheek and she breathed in deeply, leaning into his palm, her heart rate slowing as her senses wallowed in his touch, in the comfort it brought.
She swayed toward him and him toward her. His hand moved from her cheek to the back of her head. But as his fingers brushed the edge of her wig, he pulled back.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
As she raised a hand to her chest to quiet her beating heart, Edward looked around them. Yes, they were obscured by plants. But they were in the middle of a ballroom and the palms would only protect them from a casual glance. It wouldn’t hide them from anyone actively looking for him, and he was the Duke of Wildeforde, the most eligible bachelor in the room. Someone was bound to be looking for him.
He cleared his throat and worked his jaw, tipping his head from side to side as he constructed the façade of the unfeeling duke once more. With a sharp inhale and long exhale, he stepped around the potted palms and back into the maw.
Mortified, she followed.
