“I am an earl and the heir to a dukedom. I can do whatever I damned well please. Give me…give me three weeks.” What the devil was he doing? Weston hadn’t the bloodiest idea. He only knew that he’d do anything, say anything, to keep Evie from leaving Hawkridge Manor. From leavinghim. “Three weeks,” he repeated. “There’s more than half a dozen eligible suitors here. You can have your pick, after I’ve had them weighed up. Any would consider themselves fortunate to marry you.”
She stared at him incredulously. “I told you that I love you. I’ve never said that to a man before. And your response, yoursolution, is to find someone else for me to marry?”
“Isn’t that what you wanted? A wealthy, titled husband.” He felt like he was hanging off the edge of a cliff and grabbing for anything that would prevent him from falling. “I can give you that.”
“You cangiveme a husband,” she sneered. “How charitable of you.”
“It wouldn’t be charity.”
“Then what, precisely, would it be? I have no dowry to offer.”
“Then I’ll provide one.”
Her eyes slowly cooled, like a sheet of ice spreading across a lake. “Why?” she asked. “Why would you do such a thing?”
Because it will keep you here, for just a while longer.
Because when another man marries you, I’ll no longer want you.
Because you’ve driven me absolutely mad, and this is pure insanity.
“Because when I retrieved my family ring, I robbed you and your sisters of the financial means with which to support yourselves. Consider this repayment in kind.”
“Repayment in kind,” she repeated. “You are going to procure me a husband because you stole my mother’s ring.”
When she put itthatway…
“Yes,” he said unabashedly. “Yes, I am.”
“And it won’t bother you?” she asked, studying him closely. “To see me marry someone else?”
Bother him?
It was going to bloody wellkillhim.
But it was better than the alternative.
It had to be.
It had to be, or else everything he’d convinced himself of was a lie.
“No.” Through sheer force of will, he managed to keep his tone detached. Emotionless. Aloof, when he was anything but. “It won’t bother me in the slightest.”
Hurt flashed in her eyes, but she blinked it away, like a speck of unwanted dirt.
“Fine. A rich husband in exchange for a stolen ring. It could be worse, I suppose.” She lifted her chin and even though she was at least six inches shorter than he was, she somehow managed to look down her nose at him. “But you have two weeks, not three. It has come to my attention that my sister is still in London, and I should like to see her sooner rather than later.”
Two weeks.
Fourteen days.
It was both too long…and not nearly long enough.
For an instant, his gaze betrayed him as it slipped to her mouth. If things were different, ifhewere different, he’d snatch her into his arms and kiss her until the embers in the fireplace faded to black and rain poured from the heavens. But the very second she’d admitted that she was in love…withhim…everything had come into sharp, unrelenting focus.
Their attraction towards each other was no longer a harmless dalliance. There were real emotions involved. And if he wasn’t careful, if he wasn’t mindful of his words and his actions, there would be real hurt as well. Something that he was intrinsically cognizant of. For as cold and aloof as he could be, it was never Weston’s intention to cause deliberate harm.
He knew what it felt like, to give love and never experience the sweet warmth of its return. The agony of emptying himself out, again and again, in the hopes that if he just gave more, or earned better marks at school, that his father might finally, finally love him enough to show even the smallest hint of interest in his only son’s wellbeing.
