Her gaze remained on the table a moment before she turned to face him. “You shamed me, Simon. In front of a man whose opinion I value.”
Taken aback by her visible anger, he straightened himself. “Would you have rather I lied to him?’
“Of course not,” she snapped. “I would have preferred it if you’d told him your intentions toward me are none of his business. I would have liked it better, in fact, if you’d asked him to bugger off instead of announcing that I am not and never will be good enough for you to marry.”
“Ida.” He stared at her, dumbfounded. “I realize it must have embarrassed you to have the subject aired as it was, but you cannot be surprised by my position.”
“Of course not. You are an earl and what am I? Nothing, it would seem.”
His own temper flared. “You know that’s not true.”
“Do I?”
Something in her voice chilled the blood in his veins. He grabbed her hand. “You mean the world to me, Ida.”
She stilled, her hand paused in mid-air as she reached for the teapot, before she took a deep breath and continued her motion. “No. I don’t. You may think I do, but you’re wrong.”
He stared at her while she filled two cups. His heart was slamming against his chest and the back of his neck had begun to itch. “How can you say that after what we’ve been through together, after what we’ve shared?”
“Perhaps because I’m not blind.” She added some milk and a spoonful of sugar to his cup. “And I have no wish to be.”
“What the hell are you saying?”
She took a slow sip of her tea. “You’ve always prided yourself on your reputation. Your choice of clothes alone suggests a desire to upstage other men. And while I’ll agree that you’ve started caring less about other people’s opinions this past week, I believe you’ll eventually realize that I was a brief diversion from the life you’ve always wanted for yourself.”
He stared at her, dumbfounded. “Do you truly think me that shallow?”
“Simon, I—”
“The last three weeks I’ve spent with you have been more important to me than all the years that came before. You’ve opened my eyes to a future I never thought possible – one in which I can be happy with the woman of my own choosing. Ida, I’m not the man I was when we first met, and while it’s true that my style of dress may suggest a certain degree of vanity and self-importance, you cannot fault my appreciation for well-tailored waistcoats cut from silk damask or shirts with cuffs trimmed with Belgian lace. It really wouldn’t be fair.”
To his relief she smiled, alleviating some of the tension her previous comments had stirred in his gut. “You’re right.”
He drank his tea for a moment while letting her words hang between them. It still felt as though she had her doubts, which meant there was more to be said. “It’s important to me that you know how deeply I care about you. Moving forward, there are sure to be days when you’ll question my loyalty because of something someone might say. So I need to be sure you’ll trust me and won’t ever again second guess the affection I have for you.”
Her lips parted, ever so slightly. She held his gaze, frowned just enough to make him uneasy. “Simon…” She let out a short sigh and looked at him as his mother once had when he’d told her he wanted to try his hand at sculpture. “Where exactly do you see us heading?”
A cold, prickly sensation washed over his skin. He stared at her with a dreadful foreboding of change. “You’re my mistress, Ida. Do you think I’ll promptly drop you once we finish our investigation?” He squeezed her hand. “I could never do that. Not when I want you to be the woman with whom I share my days and nights. I want you to bear my children, to grow old with you, and—”
“Simon.” She curled her fingers gently around his. “I gave you my innocence because I knew in my heart that no other man would ever compare to you. It was what I wanted – a gift to both of us and a chance for me to take something for myself as well, if only a memory. But I am not your mistress, Simon, and I never will be.”
A whirring sound filled his ears. What she said made no sense. He shook his head. “We have been living together for nearly a month. I’ve bedded you several times, kissed you a dozen more. If that doesn’t make you my mistress, what does?”
“A formal agreement, I expect. But no such thing exists between us and I will never allow it to.”
“Then what the hell have we been doing?” he asked as he snatched his hand away from hers.
“Enjoying each other’s company for as long as possible, without the need for a permanent commitment.”
“No. I won’t accept that. We’re more to each other than a passing bit of bed sport. My God.” He raked his fingers through his hair in frustration. “Do you honestly think I’d have claimed you as my own if I hadn’t been willing to build a future with you?”
She looked at him with the sort of patience that made him want to smash something. “You will eventually marry because you have to, at which point I may be too old to start a family of my own.”
“For Christ’s sake, woman,” he practically exploded, “you could already be carrying my child!”
“Yes. I know.”
How could she be so calm, so composed?
