Page 77 of An Affair with the Viscount (Necessary Arrangements 5)

Jo licked her lips. “Richard… It is who I am. I can’t give up everything for my life with you. What if I asked you to give up your title, would you?”

“You and I both know that isn’t possible.” His answer was immediate, dismissive.

“But what if it was? If you could give up your title, would you?”

“This is useless contemplation.” Richard raked a hand through his hair, pacing like a tiger in her tiny cage.

“What if you could pass it on to Adam? Would you hang it up and travel with me?” she insisted.

“And what would I be then?” he finally barked.

“And what would I?”

“You’ll be a viscountess, my wife!” He stepped toward her again, reaching for her.

She gave him a pitying look. “I would not be the same person you claim to have fallen in love with. What will I have left if I give up everything for you?”

“You’ll have me.”

Jo swallowed back the lump in her throat. “And what will you have left to love? What will be left of me?”

He tugged on his cravat nervously. “Then what do you want? You don’t want to be my mistress, and you don’t want to be a viscountess. What the devil do you want then?”

Tears pricked at the back of her eyes. “I want to live in a world where it is not shameful to love me for who I am.”

“There is no shame in who you are,” he growled.

“Isn’t there? Then how come you can’t accept me as I am?”

“I can, but others won’t.”

She stared at him. Silently forcing him to acknowledge the contradictions in his words. He stared back.

They stood like that for one long moment before Jo finally broke their connection. She looked away, her gaze falling to the wooden box of things Mick had broken earlier with his fall. She walked toward it silently and picked up a crown she’d used for a game back in the Vane estate.

Their first meeting.

“It’s like the game we played with the king and a peasant,” she finally said as she walked back to him. “You are trying so hard to catch me and still hold on to your crown… But you’ll have to choose. And I think we both know that you’re not about to lose that crown.” She handed the crown to him and he took it, his eyes glassy.

He rotated the crown in his hands. “So you’d rather be with him.” He tipped his head toward the broken box. “Under the thumbs of men like him, then with me?”

“It has nothing to do with him and everything to do with me.”

Richard nodded. “If your… work—this life—is more important to you than I, then perhaps you’re mistaken in your affections.” His voice was hoarse.

She paused, watching him as he stood, his spine straight, his hair swept back. A perfect viscount.

“Then we are both fools.”

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