Page 24 of The Duke's Price
To his relief, she shook her head. “You did not.”
But his heart sank again when she added, “I do not have that excuse, Perry. I knew you would not force me. We had a bargain, but if I had begged off, you would not have abandoned me. I wanted what we did. I just didn’t expect to feel so dreadful. Such a wretched sinner.” The last four words were almost whispered.
It was rubbish, of course, her holding herself accountable. He knew how to seduce. He’d coaxed any number of women to his bed, some of them at least technically innocent, though he had always steered clear of those who were innocent out of conviction rather than habit or the fear of what people might think.
With Ruth, he had miscalculated badly. Hers wasn’t a temporary discomfort, easily soothed by a tawdry gift and the reassurance that no one would ever know. Hers was a bone deep belief. She felt soiled, and he was responsible.
“It is not your fault, Ruth,” he told her. “I’m not called the Duke of Depravity for nothing. I have been seducing women for twenty-four years, and I am an expert at making a woman’s body my ally in her downfall.”
She shook her head. “You don’t understand.”
“I understand better than you think.” Was he really going to tell her this? He never spoke of it. “I fell in love with my wife, Ruth, if you can believe it. I thought we were a love match for the ages. Then I discovered she loved someone else—someone unsuitable. Her father and my uncle had cooked up the plan of her marrying me, and had promised she could have her lover once she’d given me a son. I caught them together, in her bed, in my own house, and she told me all of it.” Ruth had been lying beside him, staring up at the sky, but part way through his storyshe had come back into his arm, tucking herself into his side with her head on his shoulder.
He hugged her close and continued. “She hated me, she said. She had always hated me. I went straight to London and to bed with one of the women who had been propositioning me since I first came out in Society. And then another and another. And I felt unclean, disgusting, unfit to be near decent people.”
He shuddered. And he had done that to her. To Ruth. To the best woman he had ever met.
But Ruth, of course, was now thinking of him. “Oh Perry. I am so sorry.”
“She died a year later. Measles, of all things. Her lover had them, and passed them on to her. Fortunately, she had little to do with Caspian, which is one of things that make me think he really is mine, and not her lover’s.”
“Caspian is your son,” Ruth commented, making it a statement, but he agreed, as if it had been a question.
“We write to one another, you know. After Mathilda died, I sent him to live with my sister, and she has raised a fine young man. He will be a good duke, I think, when it is his time.”
“How did you heal? How did you feel clean again?”
It was a discomforting question, for he had responded to that sense of wrong by diving into debauchery. Several couplings a night with different women, often two or three at a time. Wild parties where he did things he didn’t want to think about in Ruth’s sane company. Drink. Drugs. Women. Gambling. Crazy life-risking stunts.
“Marry me,” he said, startling himself as much as Ruth. It was a good idea, though. He couldn’t think of any other way to wipe out his crime against her, and besides he wanted to marry her. He really did. He’d not been bored once in days. “Marry me, Ruth. Then what we do together won’t be wrong. Won’t have been wrong. Just a bit previous.”
Ruth stared at him in disbelief. Then she laughed as if he had made a joke and rested her head back down on his shoulder again. “It would serve you right if I took you up on that. Can you imagine? Me, a duchess?”
“I’m serious,” Perry insisted. “It isn’t so bad, you know. Being a duchess. Duchesses, like dukes, make their own rules. You can still be you.”
She was silent. Was she thinking about it, or had she dismissed him out of hand? He shifted so that they were side by side, facing one another. “Think about it, Ruth. I know I am no prize. My past doesn’t bear speaking about. But it is the right thing to do, for us both. You are not made for casual entanglements. I am trying to change… You asked what I did to feel clean again. I didn’t. I threw myself into the muck. But in the past few years, I’ve begun to yearn for something different.”
Her clear-eyed gaze drew out of him thoughts he’d never articulated before. “I thought I was bored. But nothing satisfied. Not for long. Temporary distractions, but the restlessness always returned. But in truth, I was changing. Perhaps I was growing up at long last—my sister always said I needed to. It is why I decided to return to England, to reform my life and get to know my son. I can do it, Ruth. I can be a better man. Marry me?”
She shook her head, slowly. “You don’t mean it, Perry. It is just that you are sorry for me. I won’t marry a man because he pities me.”
She couldn’t be more wrong! It was her strength and resilience, as well as her integrity and kindness that he wanted to make his own. But before he could find the words to explain that, she spoke again.
“I have seen enough marriages, good and bad, that I have promised never to marry where I cannot give my heart. And I cannot give my heart to a man that might well grow bored withme. That probably will grow bored, for what is there about me to compete with the women you have known?”
“Everything,” he insisted. “None of them held my attention beyond the physical. Not like you do.”
Another slow shake of the head. “I wish I could believe you. I am tired, Perry. Let us sleep. Tomorrow, we can talk about this again, if you still wish to do so.”
Perhaps that was best. Give her time to think about it. At least her ‘I wish I could believe you’ showed some desire for him, did it not? “Just know that I mean this, Ruth. I want to marry you.” Should he promise her a lifetime of fidelity? But why should she trust him? As they tidied up the blankets they had been lying on, set the carriage seats up as beds, and saw to the horses, he tried to consider the question logically. Certainly, she was justified in her doubts, given his past.
Even Perry was not certain. He had no doubt he could resist the lures of the harpies, but what if he was faced with a long period of celibacy because she was ill or they were separated either physically or emotionally? He had never tried, which was a lowering thought. On the other hand, surely it was something that he didn’t break his promises? If he promised fidelity—he had a vague notion there was something about that in the wedding vows—he would be faithful.
As they lay down to sleep one on either bench of the carriage, he said, “Ruth, if we marry, I will give my word to be faithful, and you know I keep my word.”
“But will you come to resent me?” she replied.
He had no idea. Would he?
