Page 68 of Bookshop Cinderella

“When?”

She made a face. “When you called him a pigeon.”

Max laughed, his eyes creasing at the corners in that devastatingly attractive way. “I’d apologize for my bluntness, but I can’t, because I’m not sorry. He wasn’t worthy of you.”

“I know. My father couldn’t see it. To the day he died, he always hoped Rory and I would make a match of it.”

“In heaven’s name, why?”

“He wanted me to be settled. You see, Rory’s father owned the confectionery next door, and both our fathers thought it a suitable match. But afterRory’s father died, Rory sold the shop to Anna’s husband, and returned to Germany, and that was that. My father died not long after that.” She paused, considering. “I’ve always been very fond of Rory, and when he came back, I started to wonder if it could be more than that. You see—”

She broke off and looked down. “It’s amazing how easy it is to deceive yourself when you’re lonely,” she confessed, her voice low. “It’s not easy to be alone, day after day. Heavens,” she added, laughing a little, pride impelling her to lift her head. “That sounds terribly weak, doesn’t it?”

“No, Evie,” he said gently, “that doesn’t sound weak at all. It sounds human. We all need more than ourselves to be happy.”

“Well, either way, what I felt for Rory wasn’t anything like what you felt for your wife. I admit, it was rather fun to dream about him and wonder what it would be like to kiss him, but—”

A smothered sound came from his throat, interrupting her. “Sorry,” he said, giving a cough and patting his chest. “You were saying?”

“What I felt for him was never a mad passion. In a way, I wish it had been.” She paused, then added softly, “I envy you that.”

“Envy me?” He stared at her as if she were a candidate for Bedlam. “For God’s sake, what I felt was nothing to envy, believe me,” he muttered, looking away. “Love like that is torture, if you want the truth.”

“Yes, perhapsit is, but to feel that way about someone, to be so carried away by passion that nothing else matters...I’ve never felt that in my life.” She paused, then added softly, “I think it would be wonderful to feel like that.”

“Only until reality sets in,” he said grimly. He looked at her again, his dark blue eyes hard and opaque. “For Rebecca and me, that happened less than a year after the honeymoon.”

“Within a year? Is that all?”

“Maybe less. We came from completely different backgrounds. Her father was wealthy, but she was born in a tent in a mining camp in Denver, Colorado. Whereas I...” He paused, gesturing to their surroundings. “Well, you see for yourself where I come from. Rebecca’s father was a widowed, hard-bitten miner who happened to strike it rich. They moved to New York when she was sixteen so that she could enter society, but even New York society was difficult for her. She was very New Money, you see. Marrying me and coming here, as you might guess, was an enormous shock. She had no idea how to navigate my world, and she was painfully ill-suited to being a duchess. She encountered a great deal of opposition and ridicule in society, and she had no idea how to overcome it. My mother was still alive then and tried to assist her, but she, too, disapproved of the match, and she found it hard to hide her feelings, so she was of little help. Rebecca felt everyone’s disapproval of her, and it cut deep. It wasn’t long before she came to hate the life she was expected to lead here.”

“Couldn’t you help her?”

“God knows, I tried. I fought hard to gain her acceptance, I called in every favor of every friend and relation, did my best to guide her, but despite my best efforts, society simply would not accept her. The aristocracy can be breathtakingly cruel.”

“Yes,” she agreed, hearing the tinge of bitterness in her own voice. “Yes, it can.”

“Making things worse, she thought everything about being a duchess was shallow and pointless. The longer she was here, the more contempt she had for the world she’d married into and the title she had assumed, and it wasn’t long before she found it intolerable.”

Those words banished any idle speculations she might have had about what being a duchess would be like for someone from her class of life. It would be hell. “Her feeling was understandable, wasn’t it, given society’s treatment of her?”

“Of course, but as I said, that’s a sword that cuts both ways. My circle of acquaintance sensed her animosity and reacted by reciprocating in kind. The invitations slowly trickled away, then stopped coming altogether, leaving her feeling even more isolated and alone, and I felt the same. Any of the passion we felt in the beginning was gone by our first anniversary, and by our second, we were two strangers living in the same house with nothing in common, not even a shared vision of the future. If we’d had children, that might have made a difference, but—”

He broke off and the hardness in his face faltered, showing pain. “It’s difficult to have children when your wife shuts her bedroom door to you. She blamed me, you see, for all of it, and she wasn’t wrong.”

Evie studied his handsome, pain-ravaged countenance. “I doubt that,” she said softly.

He shook his head. “I appreciate your show of faith, but it’s true. Rebecca had doubts about marrying me, you see. She refused me twice, saying she didn’t want my life. I was so carried away by my ardor that I would not accept her refusal, and I used every scrap of charm I possessed to persuade her to marry me. I spent that summer wearing her down, and I finally succeeded, but it was no victory in the end. A week after our second anniversary, she left me flat and returned to America. The scandal sheets got hold of it straightaway, and they reported her desertion of me with great glee. We tried to say she’d just gone home for a visit, but no one believed it. Everyone knew she’d left me.”

“That must have been humiliating.”

His mouth tightened. “Yes, it was. Not only for me, but everyone in my family. But I could endure that. The worst part was that the dukedom itself was in jeopardy. I haven’t a single male relation who can inherit. If I don’t have a son, the title forfeits to the crown.”

“You and your wife couldn’t reconcile?”

“I had no choice but to try, and I wrote and told her so. Divorce would have required a bill in parliament, which is a messy business and ruinous for all concerned. And because I need an heir, permanent separation was an unacceptable option. But...”

“But what?” she prompted when he paused.

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