Page 66 of Dare to Love a Duke
He felt her tensing. “What of it?”
“My mother, she was Catholic and converted to marry my father. I’ve asked her if she regretted her conversion, but she said a Huguenot, Henry IV of France, became a Catholic to rule Paris, and she’d do the same—in reverse—if it meant becoming my father’s wife.”
“And a duchess,” Lucia said drily.
“That, too.” He angled a look at her. “Is your faith very important to you?”
She exhaled. “In Napoli, our lives are intertwined with the church. Like this.” She wove her fingers together. “Like everyone in the city, I always looked forward to the celebrations for the miracle of San Gennaro. There are garlands of flowers, and a procession to the Piazza del Duomo. We all wait to see the miracle of the liquefaction. His blood,” she explained at his questioning gaze. “It turns from dry to liquid, and if it doesn’t, we fear disaster.”
At his silence, she said tartly, “You think, like your countrymen, that we’re backward, and superstitious.”
“Faith is a mysterious thing,” he said slowly. “I wish, sometimes, that I had more of it.”
“My mother would have converted, for my father’s sake.”
He knew now the reason for the sorrow in her voice when she spoke of her mother, and he ached for her.
“Given that choice, between love and faith, which would you pick?” Tom tried to speak lightly, but did not quite succeed.
Her laugh was wry. “As you said, faith is mysterious. Yet it doesn’t ruin a person the way love can.”
The bitterness in her words struck him all the way to the center of his being. The injury to her had been so great, she’d developed thick scar tissue all around her, nearly impenetrable. He hated that she’d been hurt so badly, that no one had been there to protect and care for her. Everyone deserved a champion.
“You sound like a cynical rake,” he said.
“I speak from experience,” she replied flatly.
He mulled this over. “When it comes time for me to marry, I’ll do so dutifully, selecting a suitable woman who finds me tolerable enough to endure my touch and bear me an heir.”
She angled a glance at him. “Sounds calculating and cold.”
“That’s the way of things when you’ve the weight of centuries on your back.” Since his earliest days, he’d known that at some point he’d assume the title and have to put aside his needs, his desires, all for the perpetuation of the title and the forging of alliances. No wonder, then, that he’d done everything he could to indulge his most primal, elemental instincts in the time he’d been given. The marital state was for duty, not the heart.
Passion, desire, and love itself—he’d learn to live without them.
He cast a surreptitious look at Lucia. What would it be like to be forever joined with a woman like her? A woman of fire, who challenged him and demanded a place for herself at the world’s table?
The thought made his heart pound.
No point in indulging such fantasies. Even if she could somehow allow herself to love and be loved, they were divided forever by the structures of society, ridiculous as they were.
“An exalted view,” she said, waving toward the skyline as it stretched up toward the dark sky.
Lights burned on the street and in windows, creating a luminous hillscape.
“From up here,” Tom said thoughtfully, “I’ve noticed things that I have never noticed before. The way the secondhand clothing peddlers’ voices rise and fall as they walk the streets. The clatter of the tinkers’ tools. Footmen stopping in their errands to flirt with maids. In Mayfair, I’m too ensnared in my own concerns to notice the pulse of life, but I can feel it here.”
He lay back fully, his gaze cast skyward.
“I came to this place,” he said quietly, “to the club, because there’s a man of great power pushing me into a partnership I don’t want. It violates my principles—such as they are. I’ve already compromised myself once for him, and the more I do it, the more he’ll demand of me.”
“Then refuse him. You’re a duke. Surely you have more power than he does.”
The scrape of a laugh escaped Tom to hear such a complex relationship reduced to a simple yes or no. “He’s a duke, too, with a greater sphere of influence than I. And if I cross him, or turn away from whatever he offers... he will hurt people I care about.”
“The debate, then, is between what your heart wants and what is best for those you love.” She rested her chin on her knees. “A tangle.”
“It is,” he said wryly, “and a damned one at that.”
