Page 85 of Bookshop Cinderella

“Oh.” The wind out of her sails, she couldn’t think of what to say next. And when he took her hands in both of his, she began to think he was in earnest, deadly earnest, and deep inside, she started to shake, feeling a fear that had nothing to do with her reputation.

“The truth is,” he said, “ever since we danced for the first time—maybe even before that, if I’m honest—I’ve had a passionate desire for you. I tried to deny it, I tried to snuff it out, but the more I tried to fight it, the deeper and more ardent it became. And that afternoon at Idyll Hour made me realize I was fighting a losing battle.”

She couldn’t help thinking of another moment at Idyll Hour, one not nearly as romantic. Their conversation about his late wife.

It was passion and desire, infatuation and lust. Is that love?

“What are you saying?” she asked, pulling her hands from his. “Are you...are you saying you’re in love with me?”

Even as she said it,she told herself it was absurd.

But then, to her amazement, he nodded. “Yes.”

Her fear, instead of dissipating, only deepened, squeezing her heart like a fist, twisting her stomach into knots. She didn’t believe him. How could she? “You don’t mean it,” she said, shaking her head in violent denial. “You can’t possibly be in love with me. You’ve only known me two months.”

We’d only known each other two months when we wed.

“Yes, well,” he said, his voice barely discernible past the roar in her ears, “I have come to accept I’m the sort that falls in love fast.”

“In two months?” she countered, her words hard and brittle to her own ears as she gave a voice to the fear within her. “About the same amount of time you knew your wife before you married her, so you told me.”

He frowned, looking suddenly wary. “Yes, but it’s not the same.”

To her, it sounded just the same. “How is this different?”

“Because it is. I’m ten years older, for one thing.”

“And the fact that you are older has made you wiser?”

“God, I hope so. And not only me. You’re not a seventeen-year-old girl. We both know what we feel.”

She did know. Like him, she felt passion, a passion he’d ignited, one she hoped would fade once she returned to the world where she belonged. But now, looking at him, facing a proposal of marriage, something she’d never even considered, she suddenly dared to wonder what it would be like to have not just his passion, but his love.

The moment that thought went through her head, another followed, one bornof her innate caution and common sense. She’d not only be his love, she’d also be his wife, his duchess.

Evie tried to imagine it—tried to see herself mistress of his enormous estates, wearing a tiara on her head as she blundered her way through balls and parties and banquets like a moth in lamplight, crashing at every turn into the ton’s hostility for daring to marry above her station. She’d endure their disapproval of her low birth, while trying to comply with their rigid rules of conduct. She’d feel like a fraud, and she’d certainly be a joke.

And he’d realize it, too, soon enough. The tittering ridicule and the veiled insults—she could probably handle them, for it was nothing she hadn’t endured before. But what she could not endure was watching the passion he felt for her slowly wither away and die in the face of her obvious inadequacies. He would be embarrassed by her, ashamed of her. That, she could not bear.

Rebecca, she appreciated, had probably felt the same.

“Whatwefeel?” she echoed, forcing a cool acidity into her voice. “You presume a great deal about my feelings.”

Hurt shimmered across his face, hurting her, too. But when he spoke, his voice was as cool as hers had been. “Do I?” he countered. “You came to my room last night, if you recall. You gave yourself to me. Are you saying you don’t feel what I feel?”

Deny it, she told herself.Lie. Tell him what you felt was sated by a single night. You wanted him, you had him, and that’s the end of the story. Drive him away, now, before you start to believe in fairy tales.

“You said that what you felt for your first wife was passion and desire,” she said instead. “Infatuation and lust. That rather sums up what brought us together last night, doesn’t it? You said,” she went on as he opened his mouth to reply, “marrying Rebecca was a mistake that ruined both your lives. Yet, here you are, ready to make that mistake again?”

“Damn it, Evie, stop throwing my first marriage in my face.”

He was angry now, just as she’d intended, but she took no satisfaction in her success, for spurning him was already becoming agony. “Why not?” she cried. “Because it isn’t relevant?”

“Well, it isn’t,” he shot back. “Not now. Given what’s being said, we have to marry, and the sooner the better.”

She sucked in her breath, drawing back at the reminder of the stark choice he was laying before her. “So, you want to rush me, push me into marriage, just as you did your first wife?”

“No, damn it, that isn’t what I wanted! I’d have preferred a proper courtship, where we spend time together and allow the passionate ardor we feel to deepen into the kind of love that will last a lifetime, where I show you what being a duchess would mean before ever asking you to take it on. The very thing I had vowed not to do was rush you or push you into something you weren’t ready for. But with the printing of this scurrilous story, that choice has been taken away from me, and from you.”

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