Simon stared at her while the dream he’d built in his head came crashing down around him. It felt like a fist had reached inside his chest and grabbed hold of his lungs. He couldn’t breathe. “And what then?”
“The child would be illegitimate. If it’s a boy, he will not be able to inherit, so he would have no role to play with regard to the Fielding title.”
“But I would want to know him. Or her. I’d want to help secure their education and make sure they’re all right. That you are well taken care of.” The panic inside him kept growing and expanding. “Ida, you must reconsider. I beg you.”
She was very quiet – terrifyingly so. And then she finally said, “Naturally, if there is a child, I will not wish to deny them any opportunities. So of course, I will accept your help. I will even encourage you to have an active role in their lives. But as their mother, I will also do whatever I must to protect them.” She gave him a hard and determined look. “I will not remain in this house and allow the world to point fingers at them. I will not have them raised with the shameful belief that they aren’t good enough.”
“You will leave Town?” How could she and everything he wanted be slipping between his fingers like this?
She took another sip of her tea. “It’s all hypothetical, isn’t it? There’s a reasonable chance that I’ve not conceived. But yes, I will eventually leave Town. It has always been my intention to do so. And besides, to remain here indefinitely would be difficult.”
He latched onto that final statement with every remaining hope he possessed. “Why?”
A powerful mixture of anger and sadness stared back at him. “Why do you think?”
Simon’s heart made a loud thud. He was out of his chair in the next instant and pulling her out of hers. His mouth met hers with all the desperation he felt. Bone deep relief shuddered through him the moment she yielded and kissed him back.
“You don’t have to stay here in Town,” he told her as he held her close against his chest. “I can buy a nice cottage somewhere far away from Society, and I can come visit. We can even live there together for part of the year.”
“And your wife?”
He started in response to her question. “My wife?”
“The woman you’ll pledge yourself to before one and all,” she clarified. “I do believe she might object.”
“No such woman even exists right now.”
“But she will. Won’t she?” When he didn’t respond, she raised her chin. “Be honest with me, Simon. It’s the least you can do.”
“I need a son, preferably two. So yes. I will be required to marry a lady of breeding at some point but—”
“Stop.”
“It would be a marriage of convenience, Ida. Nothing more. All she would be to me is a…a…”
“A broodmare?” Ida snorted with obvious disgust. “I think the only one for whom any of this would be convenient is you, Simon. I certainly want no part of it.”
He drew a shuddering breath. “Ida. I…”
She waited for him to say more, but he couldn’t. The words were a muddled mess stuck in his throat. Her eyes glistened as she averted her gaze. A couple of tears pooled against her lashes.
“We have no future together,” she finally said, “and perhaps it would be best for us to stop pretending otherwise.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think we ought to stop sleeping together.”
It was damned hard not to flinch in response to her words. He was losing her just as surely as he’d lost Gabriella. Only this time, his heart was at stake. “Don’t do this.”
“I have to, sooner or later. Postponing the inevitable will not make it any easier to bear. Quite the opposite, I fear.
“We’ll figure out something,” he said out of sheer desperation.
A miserable smile pulled at her lips. “I don’t want to be your dirty little secret – the woman you sneak off to see behind your wife’s back. I want the sort of marriage my parents shared, and if that can’t be with you, then I’ll have to find somebody else.”
“No.” He’d be damned if he’d let another man near her.
She was his. She had to be. He just had to figure out how.
