Guilt nudged her, and she swallowed hard. “No.”
“Why the hell not?”
Face the music, Lola.
“I was afraid if I started explaining why I was leaving, I’d lose my nerve.”
“Nerve? Nerve’s not something I’d say you lack. In fact, I’d say doing what you did took plenty of nerve.”
She heard the bitter edge of his voice, and it hurt deep down, like pressing a bruise. “If I had tried to explain, you wouldn’t have accepted it. You’d have found a way to persuade me to relent, so—” She broke off, took a deep breath, and forced herself to say the rest. “So I made you hate me. That way, I knew you wouldn’t try to come after me.”
“Well, you were right about that,” he muttered. “Is there a single reason I should believe any of this?”
“I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t, but it is the truth.”
His gaze raked over her, a long, hard, searching gaze, and she found herself holding her breath because she had no idea if he’d accept her explanations, but just when she thought this conversation had been a waste of breath, he gave a nod.
“All right, then,” he said abruptly. “I may be an utter fool to think you did any of this for my sake, but I’m choosing to believe you. But,” he added before she could feel any relief, “I still resent you like hell for not being honest with me. I didn’t deserve what you did to me or the way you did it.”
“No,” she agreed, “you didn’t. And though I realize it’s no excuse, I didn’t plan any of it. My only plan was returning to my old life in Paris so that I could consider my future without you around to muddle my thinking. Henry came and told me you intended to propose marriage, and he’d just offered to take me to New York when you showed up, and I knew I had to go. I was ruining your life. Sure as I was that it would be a mistake to marry you, I know that if I’d stayed, eventually you’d have persuaded me to change my mind.”
She bit her lip, looking at him. “You were never very good at taking no for an answer, and I was never very good at resisting you.”
His mouth curved a bit, a wry, one-sided smile. “As I recall, you spent the better part of two years resisting me. Hell, it took a year before you let me into your dressing room.”
She gave him a rueful smile in return. “I kept hoping you’d give up and go away, and yet, I was always hoping you wouldn’t. And you were so good to me, and that was always my weakness.”
His smile vanished. “And yet, as good as I was, you wouldn’t have considered marrying me.”
“No. The truth is...” She paused, and swallowed hard. “I didn’t deserve you. And,” she added, as he opened his mouth to make some sort of gentlemanly protest, “you certainly didn’t deserve to be saddled with me, for I’d have made a horrible peeress. I have no idea what society ladies do all day. Have tea, I suppose, and go to parties, and shop. And pay calls, though what they all find to talk about—” She stopped, took a breath, and cut to the chase. “Marriage doesn’t work for people like us, Denys. People who are as different as we. Like has to marry like.”
“You don’t think love could have overcome our differences?”
Longing twisted her heart, but she forced it ruthlessly away. There was no place here for self-deceit. “No, I don’t.”
“How cynical you are.”
“Why?” she shot back, defensive all of a sudden. “Because I don’t believe in fairy tales?”
“Sometimes fairy tales do come true.”
“And love conquers all?”
“Sometimes.”
She thought of her father hunched over the kitchen table, head in his hands and an empty bottle of whiskey by his elbow. “I don’t think so. Love can be... a terrible thing.”
“Or a wonderful thing.”
“Either way, love didn’t have much to do with it.”
“It had everything to do with it. I loved you, damn it all!”
This was the heart of the matter, and the part of this inevitable conversation she’d been dreading the most. “But that’s just it, Denys,” she said softly. “You didn’t love me. Not really.”
“What? My God, is that what you think? Didn’t I make my feelings plain enough at the time? I was head over ears—”
“You were infatuated with me, yes. You had a passion for me, yes. Had anyone asked, you’d have said of course you were in love with me. In the throes of passion, you often declared that love to me. But passion is all it was. It wasn’t love, not the kind that lasts. How could it have been?” She shook her head. “You didn’t even know me. You still don’t.”
