Page 63 of An Unwilling Earl
“Many people admire each other, but they don’t marry. It’s a thin reason to wed.”
“You want me to tell you I love you, but I don’t know if I can. I loved Cora with my whole heart, and when she died I didn’t want to live. It took me a long time to regain my will to live, and I still miss her.”
“Then why marry me?”
He seemed to think about it, and she wondered at a man who asked a woman to marry him but needed to think of a reason.
“Because I like you a lot. I like coming home to find you here every day. I like telling you about my day, and I like hearing about yours. I like that we are comfortable enough together that we can sit in silence or we can talk in depth. But more than that this solution seems right. I truly believe that this is the only way to save you from your aunt.”
She seemed to consider him for a long time.
“I more than like you, Jacob, but I can’t marry someone that doesn’t feel the same way about me.”
She was putting everything on the table now—her feelings and possibly her own life. But she wanted a life like her parents had. She wanted someone who would defy Society and their family and risk everything to be with her. Like her mother had for her father.
“Charlotte.” He reached a hand toward her but let it drop between them.
“Yes, we suit. We get along well. We have similar likes and interests, and we can talk for hours, but that feeling, that pounding of the heart—you lack that. When you kissed me, did you feel anything?”
“Yes.” He closed his eyes. “God, yes.”
“What? What did you feel?”
He opened his eyes and looked deep into hers. “Like I wanted you more than I’ve wanted another woman in a long time. Like if I didn’t have you I would combust.”
Something deep inside of her tightened in an answering need. She wanted to marry this man. She wanted more kissing and much, much more than that. But she wouldn’t compromise her dreams. She wouldn’t settle for a man who didn’t love her as completely and fully as she deserved to be loved.
“Do you feel that you were betraying Cora because you were kissing another woman?”
He seemed to think about that. “I’m not going to lie to you. Yes, I felt guilt, but that is only natural. I loved her completely. I thought she was the only woman for me, but you… You make me question everything I believed before.”
“Marriage is forever, Jacob. That’s a long time to be with someone on a spur-of-the-moment decision.”
“What other solution do you have? I know you, Charlotte. You can’t in good conscience go to America and leave your cousin to continue his killings.”
“You know everything I know. You can go to the police and tell them. You don’t need me anymore.”
“And you will spend the rest of your life hiding in America?”
“I will spend the rest of my life living the life I chose for myself.”
“I can give you a better life. I have an estate in the country now. Armbruster says that I can profit handsomely from it.”
She looked at him in sadness. “Is that what you think of me? That I want riches? An estate? Country living? I want love, Jacob. A love like my mother and father had. Maybe I can find that in America.”
“I would make a good husband. I would take care of you.”
“I want more than to be taken care of.”
Her heart physically hurt. She could say yes, spend a lifetime with this man, and easily fall in love with him, but she would die a little bit each day knowing he didn’t love her the same way she loved him. She would wither away, knowing he still pined for his dead wife.
“The funny thing is,” she said softly, “I would have said yes. If only you felt more for me than a sense of duty.”
Chapter Nineteen
Charlotte tried not to let the soaring ceilings or the luxurious surroundings intimidate her, but it was difficult not to gape. This was where her mother had come from. This was what her mother had walked away from for the love of a man. It was hard to imagine her mother living here, with the grand staircase and the ceiling-high windows that looked out over Hyde Park and the nearly invisible staff who flitted about in their black-and-white uniforms.
She’d always pictured her in the small, bright cottage that Charlotte had grown up in, among the roses in the flower garden that her father had tended until his dying day.
