Page 59 of His Runaway Duchess

She sighed. “What a compliment,Your Grace. It’s incredible that a charming gentleman such as yourself wasn’t snatched up before now.”

A muscle ticked in his jaw, and Daphne wondered briefly if she’d gone too far. She decided that she didn’t care if she had. The man had made it abundantly clear that he did not care about her, only his reputation.

“It’s clear that you aren’t happy, today,” Edward said abruptly. “My behavior may be to blame. It can’t be changed, but I’m sorry.”

“Can’t be changed, orwon’tbe changed?”

Edward pursed his lips. “A little of both. A bride should never be unhappy on her wedding day. I remember when Jane and I married, she smiled all day and talked incessantly about it for weeks. She was happy that day. So happy.”

There was a faintly distant expression on his face, tinged with something like regret.

A lump had formed in Daphne’s throat. “I’m sorry.”

He glanced at her. “Sorry? What for?”

She shrugged. “She’s so beautiful and sounds like a wonderful woman. I must be quite the disappointment after her.”

He regarded her for a long moment. “Jane and I were friends,” he said, at last. “There was no romantic love between us. It was a marriage of convenience and practicality, but I was not in love with her, and she was not in love with me. She told me once that she had never been in love, and never cared to be. She found it a troublesome business. We had to produce an heir, of course, but after that…” he trailed off, clearing his throat. “After that, Jane had hinted that she would prefer a cold bed. I respected her choice.”

Daphne felt the color rise to her neck. Had she pushed too much? Ought she to have minded her own business?

Still, this is the most Edward has ever told me about himself.

“She sounds like a decent woman,” Daphne heard herself saying. “It’s a pity she met such a tragic end.”

“Yes, it is,” Edward responded. “But that’s the curse, you see. The Thornbridge curse, attacking the women in my family.”

Daphne frowned, peering up at him, trying to work out whether he was serious or not.

“You don’t believe in curses,” she stated. “And neither do I.”

He shrugged. “You know, when my mother died, it was something of a surprise. She was sturdy and strong, and according to the midwives, the birth had gone remarkably well, for a first baby. They weren’t too concerned. Their focus was on me, as I was smaller and weaker than they had hoped. Mother died quickly in the hours following my birth. My father never recovered.”

Daphne wasn’t entirely sure how to react to this sudden outpouring of feeling. Or was it a realfeeling? Was he not simply stating the facts?

“I’m sorry,” she said. “That must have been difficult.”

“I’m not the only child who lost a parent, and my father is certainly not the only man who lost a beloved wife in childbirth.” His expression tightened, and his gaze was fixed somewhere above the top of Daphne’s head. “There was no reason why we could not have managed it. But we did not, and there’s no changing it now.”

There was a tense silence after that. The music, chatter, and laughter seemed to press in on Daphne’s ears, almost unbearably so. Her bodice was too tight, her head was starting to ache, and yet she still felt the now-familiar tug of desire when she stood too close to Edward. It was baffling and infuriating.

“I decided,” Edward continued, more to himself than anyone, “that Alex would not be treated the same way that I was. It was not his fault that his mother died. If anything, it was mine.”

She swallowed. “I think you’re being a little hard on yourself.”

“I think I’m not hard enough. You have to spin, Daphne.”

A little disconcerted, Daphne allowed herself to be spun in a neat, little circle. The dance resumed. She was getting dizzy. When had all the guests fallen into the same pattern of dancing? She wished she could be back with little Alex again, alone on the dance floor, dancing their own silly, little dance.

“Why won’t you let Alex in the gallery?” she burst out.

Edward sighed. He took so long to respond that she had begun to think she would not get an answer. Then, at last, he spoke.

“For the same reason that I don’t let him eat too much marzipan. At first, I encouraged Alex to go into the gallery and look at Jane’s picture. I wanted him to know about her, to talk about her. I didn’t want her to be forgotten, least of all by her own son. But Alex became… well, a little obsessed. He spent hours in there, looking up at her. He asked constant questions about her, about how she had died, and I soon realized that he fully blamed himself for it. He would say as much—that it was his fault, that if he’d never been born, she wouldn’t have died—and it was entirely too much to hear from a young boy. No child should be held responsible for their parent’s death in that way.”

He added the last part quietly, almost in a whisper.

Daphne’s heart contracted in sadness, and then in horror as she realizedthatshe felt sad for him.

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