“Neither did I,” he confessed. “It’s been a wild week, rather.”
“Perhaps I could come down with you and your family. I know you hadn’t wanted me to do that,” she added, hoping like hell she sounded indifferent enough for pride’s sake, “but that was before we . . .” She paused as she watched him go still, but she forced herself to finish. “But that was before. Now, it’s different, surely?”
“Is it?” He turned, and Irene wished suddenly that she had not become more skilled at reading his expressions, for she knew before he spoke what he was going to say. “You can’t come to Hampshire, Irene,” he said gently. “It won’t do.”
She looked down, her heart stinging at the rebuff. “I understand,” she mumbled, though she really didn’t.
In an instant, he was in front of her, putting his hands on her arms. “Look at me.”
Pride forced her to look up even though her eyes, damn it, were stinging.
“It is far, far more difficult to be discreet in the country, particularly in a part of the country where everyone knows me. In London, there are hotels, taxis, and some degree of privacy and anonymity. In my village, there would be none of that. We might be able to sneak off for a bit of time together, but the chances are high that we would be seen. And even if we do not make any attempt to be alone together, I fear—”
He broke off and drew a breath. “I am, as you know, a man who does not show his feelings openly, and I have always found that to be useful talent, but since I met you, Irene, that sort of sangfroid has become harder and harder to maintain. It wears on me. My desire for you has not abated these four days. It has only grown stronger, and I fear that I will not always be on my guard to conceal it. I live every moment with this fear—that someone will look into my face, and see what I feel. That I will one day forget discretion, forget caution, and people will know the true nature of what is between us. Can you say, honestly, that you would always be able to hide the desire you feel for me?”
“No.” It was a difficult thing to admit. “I don’t think I could, not every moment.”
He kissed her, then his hands slid away from her shoulders and he turned away. “In light of that,” he said as he returned to his dressing table and reached for one of his shirt studs, “I suppose it is a good thing that I shall be in the country for the autumn. It will give us both time to get our bearings.”
Irene stared at him in dismay. “The entire autumn?”
His hands stilled. “We’ll have to see,” he said after a moment and resumed fastening shirt studs in place. “I have a great deal to do at Ravenwood, and the other estates as well. I’ll be able to come to town occasionally, but not too often, or it will cause gossip and speculation. I have no reason to be here at this time of year, you see.”
“So where does that leave us?” Even as she asked the question, she knew the answer, and her dismay deepened. “I won’t see much of you at all, will I?”
He picked up his tie and looped it around his neck before he answered. “I’m afraid not,” he said at last. “Not until spring. And even then, we shall have to continue to be as discreet as possible.”
“Of course, but . . .” She paused, the ramifications of the situation truly sinking in for the first time, cutting through the blissful haze that had surrounded her these past four days. “Oh, God, we can’t ever really be seen together in public again, can we?”
He paused, his hands still at his collar. “Do you think we can?” he countered as he finished knotting his tie. “You know, better than anyone,” he said as he reached for his waistcoat and put it on, “how gossip starts, how fast it spreads. You are an unmarried woman, and I an unmarried man. Given how we feel, do you think we can risk ever being seen together, even chaperoned, without causing gossip? People will begin speculating about us. Your competitors may catch the scent of a story and start following you, and we’d be in the devil of a mess.”
She would never, she realized, be able to see his home. She would never be able to sail with him or sit at dinner with him again. She looked over her shoulder at her hotel room and the scattered clothes, remembering the aftermath of their first night together, and she knew, suddenly, what he’d known all along.
“So, this is all we have,” she said, returning her attention to him. “Sneaking in and out of hotel rooms in the season, and perhaps a few times the rest of the year.”
He turned from the mirror and came to stand in front of her again. His hand cupped her face, but she did not look at him. Instead, she stared at his shirt front and the elegant silver stud with the ducal coronet. “Do you remember, Irene,” he murmured, his fingertips caressing her cheek, “what I told you when you first proposed this arrangement?”
“One can’t go back,” she whispered. The moment she said it, everything in her rebelled, anger and frustration flaring up. “God, is there no place for us, other than this?”
“There is. You could marry me.”
Irene stiffened. “We’ve talked about this already.”
“Perhaps we should talk about it again. I know you do not want to give up your work, but as we’ve discussed, you could continue it to some extent, if you were discreet. And though I know you do not want to be a duchess, I’m not sure you’ve considered the job in a very objective light.”
She moved uneasily, not sure she wanted to rehash this topic. “I am not convinced I want to live in your world, Henry. I confess, I’m not all that taken with it.”
“Shall I move into your world instead? A world of scandal sheets and occupations for women and suffragists and middle class terrace houses? Where in that world would I fit? I am a duke, not a clerk at Lloyds. I cannot set aside my position. There is no means of doing so. And even if I could do it, I would not, for there are far more people than the two of us that must be considered. Those people depend upon me, Irene, to be just what I am and who I am and where I am. I cannot leave my world.”
“I know that. I wouldn’t ask it of you.”
“So your question is answered, then. We are now in a place between our worlds, a place of nighttime assignations, of hotel rooms and risk and secrecy, and unless you change your mind and marry me, this is all we have.”
“And that,” she whispered, forcing words out, “is not enough for you, is it?”
“For now, perhaps it is enough. But it cannot last, Irene.”
She looked up, startled, but before she could reply, he went on, “As much as I want you, I do not know how long I can exist here. The strain of it wears on me, even after less than a week, for I feel history repeating itself. I am treating you just as I treated my wife—hiding you away, keeping you as a secret pleasure and an object of shame. It is harder than even I expected, and with every moment that goes by, the guilt of what I am doing weighs on me more heavily.”
