Page 68 of The Truth About Love and Dukes

He shook his head, waving aside sympathy. “It was a long time ago. It doesn’t matter now.”

She frowned, puzzled. “If it doesn’t matter, then why tell me? What does it have to do with us . . . with our situation?”

That, of course, was the tricky part, the sordid part. He did not attempt to coat it with sugar. “She was the daughter of a shopkeeper at Cambridge, a tobacconist. I fell for her, utterly and completely, the first time I ever saw her over a counter, before I even knew her name. I do not pretend that my intentions were honorable; indeed, they were not. I was the son of a duke, we were not suited at all, and I knew it, but I was determined to have her. The problem for me was that she was a virtuous, innocent girl, and I was wild with passion, oblivious to reason—Irene, why the devil are you smiling?”

“Because I’m so very glad you are telling me this.”

“Glad? Good God, why?”

“Well, to be honest, Henry, you play your cards far too close to your chest for my liking.”

Since he felt as if he must be emanating lust twenty-four hours a day for all the world to see, the knowledge that he wasn’t was rather a relief. “I am not the most open of men, I grant you.”

“That’s putting it mildly. Most of the time, I’ve no idea at all what you’re thinking or feeling.”

“Given the things I’m thinking about you,” he muttered, his gaze sliding away, “that is probably a good thing.”

“No, it isn’t. And that’s why I’m glad. The idea that you would trust me with such personal information, particularly in light of my profession . . . it is . . . quite astonishing.” She paused, laughing a little. “Extraordinary, really. I’m honored that you trust me to that extent, and I promise you, I shan’t tell anyone.”

“Of course you won’t. I mean, I know that.” He shifted his weight, keenly uncomfortable, and looked at her again. “But given the situation, and what is between us, it’s necessary for you to know my history.”

“Why? Because you think that history is repeating—” She broke off, her eyes going wide again. “Good Lord, Henry, you’re not thinking of marrying me, are you? You’re not . . . are you falling in love with me?”

“It isn’t love, Irene. At least, not the sort that would make for companionable marriage. That’s what I’m trying—badly, I admit—to explain. You are only the second woman I have ever met for whom my feelings have been too strong to be denied.” He gave a humorless laugh. “I have a penchant, it seems, for women who are not suited to my life, and it is a life I cannot change. I want you, yes. I want to kiss you, lay my hands on you as I did last night, ravish you, and bed you, and—forgive me if I presume too much—if I am near you for much longer, that might happen. If it does, I will have ruined you, just as I—” He stopped, for even now, over a decade later, it hurt to say it. “As I ruined her. We would then have to marry.”

“I don’t see why—”

“And yet,” he interrupted, feeling like the lowest cad a man could be, “I would do it. At this moment, I am so vulnerable where you are concerned, so weak, that if you agreed to do it, I would marry you, just so that I could have you. Yes, I would make that exact mistake all over again.”

“I see,” she said, her voice cool, hot gold sparks in her eyes. “So marriage to me would be a mistake?”

He did not want to argue. Normally, he did not shy from battle with her, but today, he had no stomach for it. “I know that I always manage to say the wrong thing with you, and I don’t know precisely why that is, but either way, do you not also think it would be a mistake for us to marry? Putting it another way, would you want to marry me? Join your life forever with mine? Be my duchess?”

The appalled look on her face told him with brutal clarity the answer he already knew. “God, no.”

Despite the fact that he had expected no other answer, he was a bit nettled by such an emphatically negative reaction to a position that thousands of other women would jump through fire to attain.

“I’m not a tobacconist’s daughter, granted,” she went on, “but I’m not society, and I’ve no desire to be.”

“Just so,” he said, still nettled.

“I’d no longer be able to demonstrate for women’s rights.”

“My duchess could certainly not march in the streets, if that is what you mean. And our family is political. We have always supported the Tories, but none of the parties advocate suffrage—”

“Well, there you are! I won’t give up fighting for the vote, Henry. Never. And I’d have to give up Society Snippets, something I cannot ever imagine doing. I love my work, far more than I could ever enjoy being a duchess. Not that I really know what duchesses do, exactly, other than go to Ascot and hold dinner parties, and I only know that because we report on those sorts of doings all the time. But I know enough to know I should hate being a duchess, and I should make an utter mess of it and be bored silly, and—”

“We seem to be in agreement, then,” he said, mustering his dignity in the face of this withering assessment of what being his duchess would be like. He also attempted to accept with grace the humbling fact that she’d prefer to run a scandal sheet rag than be his wife. But then, he’d known that all along. From the beginning, that particular fact was one of the things he found so damnably attractive about her. “And that leaves us nowhere, as I’ve been trying to explain.”

“There is another choice, one it’s clear you haven’t thought of. We could have an affair.”

It was his turn to be appalled. “We can’t do that.”

Much to his consternation, she gave a laugh. “Why not? It isn’t a sin, what we feel.”

“Isn’t it? Find a vicar who agrees with you, and I’ll concede the point.”

“What I mean is that I don’t regard it as a sin, regardless of doctrine. Do you?”

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