In an instant, he was in front of her again, his hands on her arms. “Irene—”
“And you wonder why I refuse to consider marrying you?” she choked.
His head turned a fraction, almost as if she had slapped him, and it was a long moment before he spoke. “If we continue as we are, the time will come when you will not have a choice. When we are caught, your name will be dragged through the mud. Your competitors will reveal all the lurid details of our affair to everyone in my world and yours. What then, Irene?”
“That hasn’t happened!”
“But it will. It is, I fear, inevitable. That is what I am trying to make you see. At that point, circumstances will force your hand. You can refuse me, live in shame, and leave me to endure all my life the knowledge that I have dishonored you and sent you down the road to ruin. Or you could then marry me, and both of us would have to live with the fact that you were forced to do so by circumstances. You would resent it, that resentment would grow, and whatever you feel for me would eventually turn to ashes.”
“You are talking of your late wife now, not of me.”
“I am talking about the inevitable course of a love affair that is not conducted in honorable fashion!” He gripped her arms when she tried to turn away. “Listen to me, Irene. If you chose to marry me now, freely, of your own will and consent, without waiting for circumstances to force you, then it would be different.”
“Would it?” she cut in. “You talk of my free choice, yet you work to influence me with the dictates of your conscience. I know you think I ought to feel the same shame that you do, but though it is perhaps a flaw in my character, Henry, I do not feel shame. You talk of my consent, yet you do not ask me what I want. You talk of honor and duty, and obligation, because those are important to you, but you never ask what is important to me.”
He took a deep breath and let it out. “I don’t ask because . . .” He paused, his hands sliding away from her shoulders. “I fear the answer would break my heart.”
“Do you have a heart?” she cried. “Forgive me for being skeptical, but I have never seen much evidence of it. And that is the crux of the problem. I want to love you, Henry. And you make it impossible.”
Her voice broke, and to her mortification, she began to cry. He moved to touch her, but she took a step back and his hands fell to his sides.
“I want to love you, and I don’t just mean here in this room. I want to love you because I am in love with you.”
Even as she said it, the pain in her chest shimmered through her entire body, for she knew love did neither of them any good. “And don’t tell me,” she went on fiercely before he could reply, “that what I feel is merely passion, or that I am overwhelmed, or swept away, for what I feel is none of those things. I love you. I know it as surely as I know my name, and yet I can see by your face that you do not believe me.”
“How can I?” he muttered, rubbing his hands over his face as if trying to think. “You say you love me, but you will not marry me and share my life?”
“No, Henry, I won’t. It isn’t because of my work,” she added at once, “for as much as I love what I do, I would give it up if I had to, in order to follow my heart. And it isn’t because I’d be a duchess, for though I don’t relish the prospect, I daresay I could manage the role if it came to it. No, I will not marry you because you cannot bring yourself to attend your own mother’s wedding.”
He stared at her, looking utterly baffled. “What on earth does Mama’s wedding have to do with us?”
“She is your mother, Henry. She needs you, she needs your support, but you withhold it, and for what? You say you do it for other members of the family, but have you asked them if they want to attend?”
“No, because I know what their answer would be.”
“And perhaps your conclusion would be proved correct, but my point is that you have not asked them. In fact, I doubt you even considered their right to be consulted on the subject. And even if you are right in this particular case about what they would decide, did it ever occur to you that as head of the family, your own best action might be to support your mother and attempt to persuade the other members of your family to do the same? Of all the duties you may hold, surely the greatest one must be to show others, by example, what is right. And in this case, that means standing by your mother when she needs you, not turning away from her.”
“Irene,” he began.
“Do you see now why I refuse you? If I married you, what would become of me?” She pressed a hand to her chest. “Me, Irene? What would become of what I think is right? Of what I aspire to and dream of and believe in? Would you ask me what I want, would you consult with me and gain my opinion, or would you simply decide what was best for me?”
She didn’t wait for him to answer. “And what of children? If I marry you, and we have a daughter, what will she be in your world? What of her hopes and dreams? What if she comes to you one day and she says, ‘Papa, I don’t want to do the season and find a husband; I want to go to university and become a doctor and make the world a better place’? What will you tell her?”
“I—” He broke off and swallowed hard. “My position would obligate me to discourage any daughter of mine from such a course.”
“Oh, God, Henry!” Even though she was not surprised by his answer, it infuriated her and deepened her resolve. “With every further thing you say, you cement my conviction that I am right in refusing you. For though I love you, you break my heart with your rigid and uncompromising view of the world. As for what I want, I would happily live in sin as a strumpet and a man’s guilty pleasure, if my only other choice was to be his obligation and his duty. And if all that is not enough reason to refuse you,” she added, choking back tears, “I could never marry a man who desires me but cannot bring himself to love me—a man, in fact, who does not even seem to know what love is!”
With that, Irene stepped back and shut the door in his face, perfectly certain she’d done the right thing, even as she burst into tears and her heart shattered into a thousand pieces.
Chapter 20
The gallery at Ravenwood was a long, wide corridor. One side, lined by a balustrade of intricately carved oak, overlooked the main entrance hall, which was the original castle keep. Along the opposite side, hundreds of images lined the wall, portraits painted in oils and framed in gilt-covered wood. Henry walked along the gallery, passing the faces of the previous Dukes of Torquil, along with their wives and children, and though he glanced at them as he passed, he did not stop until he came to one image in particular.
The face that stared back at him looked like his own—the same black hair, the same gray eyes, the same square jaw. He began to fear that the similarities did not end with looks.
You break my heart with your rigid and uncompromising view of the world.
He thought of his boyhood, and the terror that would strike his heart any time he did something against the rules and had to face his father.
