Page 71 of Her Infuriating Earl
“You cannot go,” he said. “I cannot let you.”
“Cannotletme?” Phoebe’s eyes gleamed with hurt. “I am not bound to anyone, Daniel. I can do as I please, and I shall not stay where it is not healthy for me to stay.”
Daniel took a steadying breath. “Stay for me, Phoebe. I fear that I have loved you from the moment I first trod on your dress and mumbled my way through an apology. I have never been clumsy before I met you, but whenever you are near me, it is as if I lose all control of my faculties. It is a strange thing, for those are the moments when I desire to be the finest version of myself, and I end up… being the worst. I cannot explain it, but I do know, with all the certainty I possess, that I love you and that I cannot—willnot—be without you.”
A tense silence stretched between them, the clock on the mantelpiece the only sound that peppered the unnerving quiet. He searched her face for some hint of hope or reciprocated love, but there was no expression on her face at all. It was entirely blank, her beautiful eyes vacant, her lips slightly parted as though someone had struck her so hard that she had become temporarily dazed.
“I love you,” he repeated, in case she had not heard him the first time.
As those three words left his mouth, it was like something snapped in Phoebe. She came back to life in the blink of an eye, but it was not joy or affection that had jolted her out of her daze. It was something Daniel had not exactly prepared for.
“How dare you,” she hissed, wrenching her hands from his and storming over to the French doors that looked out on the gardens. A cedar tree grew in the lawn beyond, far larger and more majestic than the one in his gardens.
“How dare you!” she repeated, her whole body shaking with an unsettling fury. “All this time, I have tortured myself with guilt for falling in love with the same man as my sister. All this time, I have fought with myself to ensure that Joanna received her happily ever after, instead of pursuing my own. All this time, I have gritted my teeth and endured each insistence that, no matter what I said, you intended to marry Joanna. Now, you free her, and you profess your love tomeas if all you have done to me can be forgiven so easily? As if confessing makes everything right again?”
Daniel bowed his head. “I am a fool, Phoebe. I… had already realized it this morning, before I raced after you. I realized it all the more when I spoke with Olivia, whom you must not blame. Ididforce her to tell me.” His throat tightened, fearful that he had waited too long, and too much had happened between them to overcome. “I understand how cruel I have been, though I was slow to realize that. I thought I was being sensible, but I was being selfish.”
“You kissed me… and then you fled,” Phoebe murmured, her hand clasped to her chest. “You let me believe you had feelings for me, then you shunned me, time and again. Do you know how that feels?”
Daniel hesitated. “I do, to some extent. I felt it when you told me to leave you alone, though I will not pretend to have suffered as you have. However, if you will allow me, I would like to explain myself.” He cleared his dry throat. “Do you remember me telling you that there was no time for me to find someone else?”
“Yes,” she replied stiffly.
Daniel sank down onto the edge of the nearest settee, staring down at the floorboards. He could not look at her if he wanted to get out what needed to be said.
“There is a ‘curse’ in my bloodline, on the male side,” he began. “Of course, it is not actually a curse. It is an inherited sickness. I do not know exactly when it began or how it is inherited, but it has persevered for countless generations, claiming the majority with an earlier death than might be expected. It killed my father. It killed his father, and his father before him, though hisfather lived to be fifty or so. There are instances where it has missed someone in that male bloodline, but they are rare.
“For years, I tried to avoid all of this. I decided a long time ago that I never wished to marry, but that changed when I heard of Evan and Olivia’s marriage. I realized that Iwouldlike a legacy to secure my family’s future, but in order to achieve it, I needed to find a woman who did not love me and would not expect to be loved in return,” he went on, noticing a gnarl in the floorboard. “I thought it would be less painful for that woman if the curse were to claim me, too. So, when Joanna showed an interest in my wealth and seemed eager to enter into a courtship for all the ‘wrong’ reasons, I thought I had found the perfect bride.”
Phoebe sniffed, as though she were crying. “And you could not have told me this the moment I told you to stay away from my sister?”
“I did not know I loved you then. Or rather I had not yet realized it,” he replied. “I suspect everyone else knew before I had admitted it to myself. But my intention was not to hurt anyone—indeed, albeit foolishly, it was the very opposite.”
Phoebe’s voice hitched. “Does any of this matter?”
“What?” His head snapped up, his heart sore, as if she had kicked it. “Of course, this matters. I am trying to explain.”
There were tears in her eyes as he finally looked at her, her usually strong presence diminished, her expression so small and sad that he wanted to leap to the opposite settee and embrace her at once. He knewhehad put those tears in her eyes and made her appear small—it killed him to see it.
“When I heard you say you were going to leave,” he continued, getting to his feet, “it was like a cold bucket of water being poured over me, waking me up. I had thought I could endure it if we saw one another at Westyork whenever you came to visit Olivia. If I knew you were close, where I could ride to you if you were in trouble, that might have been enough. But if you went to Scotland… That is too far from me. I could not bear it.”
Phoebe shrugged.
“I think I realized that the pain of not being near you was as inevitable as the pain I might cause if the curse claims me,” he continued in earnest. “I truly thought I was doing the right thing, protecting you from the kind of sorrow I watched my mother struggle through for years. The Amelia you see now is not the Amelia of that first year after my father’s passing. Back then, just the mention of his name felled her like a tree.”
He hoped he was making sense, but the wounded look on her face told him otherwise. Indeed, she seemed twice as confused and angry as she had been when he made his confession.
“So, you want me to stay just so we can see one another in passing, so I can be reasonably close for no reason whatsoever?” she said, dabbing at her teary eyes. “No. I will not do it. I am thankful for your confession, but you may take it with you. My plan remains unchanged.”
He gaped at her, pausing halfway between the settee and her. “What?”
“Nevertheless, I will say what I must. I cannot leave until I do. I cannot have that regret haunting me.” Phoebe sighed. “That is what you said. You have unburdened yourself, you have passed the burden to me, and now you can depart here without regret. I understand, Daniel.”
He shook his head, wondering how such an intelligent woman could be so oblivious. “That is not what I am trying to say, you infuriating, wonderful, exasperating, tremendous woman!”
“Then whatareyou trying to say?” she retorted, fidgeting. “For as far as I can tell, you are trying to make decisions for me, continuing your streak of arrogance and foolishness—it is not as if we are married. It is not as if I must considerobeyingyour wishes.”
Daniel’s entire being lit up at the mention of marriage, opening up the avenue he had been trying—and failing—to find throughout their conversation.Hehad thought he was being fairly obvious with his words, but she did not appear to agree.
