Page 41 of The Scandalous Love of a Duke
Life was full of strange anomalies, forks in roads. Choices that could change lives forever.
‘I think you have. All this time. Am I the reason you have never married, Katherine?’ It was an arrogant thought, but somehow he knew it was true. He remembered her blushes when she had seen him at the wake, particularly when he had spoken of a husband. She had been standing there that day wanting him with a loyalty that had lasted years.
‘No!’ she said again, pulling away more aggressively. He let her go.
He felt lost as she climbed off his lap.
He had thought the ground beneath him hard as rock, he had thought his foundations as solid as granite, built upon the bitter, cold, isolated ground his grandfather had lain inside him. But now he stood on quick sand.
She collected her clothes and began dressing.
He rose, feeling like a fool, unsure what to say. ‘Well, that explains you making this choice of yours.’ That, of course, was the wrong thing to say.
She threw him a sideways look which called him a bastard for his mockery.
But he was not mocking, merely trying to adjust his head to this. He did not believe in romantic love but Katherine clearly did and she thought herself in love with him. What they had done, what they felt here was lust, he did not think there was anything romantic in lust.
But for her…it was more than lust, surely, if she had carried a torch of strong emotion for all these years. Lust was short-lived. He wished suddenly that he understood what people called love between a man and a woman, and that he was capable of it. He also wished he was worthy of receiving it. But such tenderness had been forced out of him long ago.
‘It doesn’t matter.’ He reached out a hand to her, but she knocked it away.
‘It does matter, when your choice to ask me here was made in a moment.’ Ah, so she knew the truth of his affection too then.
‘Well, you said I was bad.’ He laughed, not knowing what else to say or do.
‘I take it back. You are not bad, just spoilt.’ She was half-dressed already and she turned her back to him, wordlessly asking him to re-lace her corset.
‘Spoilt?’ He began pulling at the threads.
‘You have always had everything you want. You wish for it and you get it, John, including me.’
Her accusation stung, and he pulled her corset too tightly and felt her wince. ‘I have not always had everything I want.’
She picked up her dress.
He reached for his own clothing and began dressing too. He had not had a mother for the first ten years of his life. He was hardly spoilt.
He tucked his shirt into the waistband of his trousers, wrapped his cravat about the collar and tied it.
When he thought about it, though, others cared for him, his mother, Mary, his stepfather, Robbie… The error was in himself.Because I do not believe in fanciful nonsense!If ‘love’ was real, his mother would have been there for the first ten years of his life, she would not have been able to leave him.
He slid on his waistcoat. When he turned about, lifting his coat to put it on, he saw she was dressed and standing near the door, wearing the bonnet he had bought, looking beautiful and utterly bereft.
He had hurt her feelings.
‘I should not have come here,’ she said.
He could not breathe.
‘I am just amusement to you.’
‘You are not.’ He crossed the room in an instant and held her hands. ‘Truly, Katherine, I am touched by your commitment to me. I cannot say the same to you. You know it would be a lie if I did. I did not notice you before, but I have seen you now and you are here because I enjoy being with you.’
Her eyes held his, shining with questions she did not speak.
Did she want promises from him, declarations and vows he would never be able to speak? He wasn’t that person. He did not know how to love. But he was willing to let her try and prove to him that it was real for her, that she felt for him what the poets spoke of.
‘Will you meet me again tomorrow, Katherine, here, at the same hour?’
