Page 56 of A Deal with the Broken Duke
“He can’t love me,” Juliet said again. “And so I don’t want to love him. I don’t want to feel things for someone who will never feel those things in return. I don’t want to give my heart to someone who only thinks of me as a chubby little girl.”
“I don’t think that’s all he thinks of you, Juliet,” Matilda murmured. “And I don’t think you think that either. Not anymore.”
“I don’t know.” Juliet wringed her hands. “I don’t know what I think. A part of me wishes it hadn’t happened, but then, another part of me is overjoyed that it did. I don’t think I would have ever found myself in his arms like that naturally.”
“Of course you would,” Matilda objected. “You’ve danced with him. You dance with him all the time.”
“But that isn’t the same.”
“Why not? What makes it different?”
“I don’t know if I can explain exactly.”
“Try.”
“All right, I’ll try.” Juliet took a sip of her tea and pondered for a moment. “When we’re dancing, it isn’t real,” she said at length. “That’s the best way I can think to describe it. We’re putting on a show. We both know that we’re doing it for the sake of everyone watching. It’s a performance. But what happened at the garden party was different. It would have happened even if no one had been watching.”
She hesitated, unsure of whether she should say the next part, but she had never held back from being honest with her sister.
“The truth is,” Juliet continued. “I think even more might have happened if no one had been watching.”
“You do?”
“He wanted to examine my ankle,” Juliet explained. “To make sure I wasn’t injured. I knew I wasn’t injured. The pain I felt when I fell went away very quickly. I didn’t need to have him look at it in order to know that I was all right. But I would have let him do it anyway if there hadn’t been so many people around. I sort of wanted him to.”
Matilda looked as if she was pondering that. Juliet wondered what her sister was thinking. Did she find it scandalous?
Then Matilda asked, “Do you want to kiss him?”
Heat rushed into Juliet’s face.
“I thought you might,” Matilda murmured. “The way you talk about him, I thought you might feel that way.”
Juliet felt near tears. “I don’t want to feel that way. He’s never been kind to me.”
“Of course he has. You just mean that he hasn’talwaysbeen kind.”
“Yes, that’s what I meant.”
“You know I’ve always thought he was handsome.”
“So, do you want to kiss him?”
“No.” Matilda laughed. “He isn’t for me. But I understand why you do, Juliet. I understand.”
Juliet groaned. She set her teacup down and lay down on her bed, staring up at the ceiling high above her. “What am I going to do?” she asked.
“You might tell him how you feel.”
“You know perfectly well I can’t do that. He isn’t interested in me. And I’m not going to hand him my heart so that he can break it. I want nothing to do with that.”
“If you’re not going to tell the truth about how you feel, are you going to end things with him, then?”
“No,” Juliet replied quickly. “I can’t do that either. As hard as it’s going to be to continue, I still need this courtship. I have to keep going.”
“So you’re just going to keep courting him? Even knowing now that you have feelings he’ll never return?”
“I think I have to. It’s going to be awful, isn’t it?”
