After all, the last time he had seen her, she had been running away from him on the garden path.
He had assumed, at the time, that she’d been running from the situation. That it had had nothing to do with him. But maybe it had. Maybe she blamed him for what had happened.
He would apologize. He was sure she would be willing to hear him out, at least. And the offer of marriage ought to help matters. Once Lady Madeleine knew that he intended to stand by her, Thomas was sure she would feel better about everything that had happened. They would be able to move forward from this.
His heart beat faster, and he found himself growing tense in his seat as he waited for her to arrive. He was beginning to feel genuinely excited at the prospect of having a real conversation, for the very first time, with the lady who had saved his life.
CHAPTERTEN
“You’ve got to at least see him,” Uncle Joseph told Madeleine.
“You’re not just asking me to see him. You’re ready to make me marry him.”
“Oh, very well, I am. What of it?”
“What of it? We’re talking about marriage, Uncle Joseph.”
“But don’t you see? This has all worked out better than we could have hoped.” Uncle Joseph was beaming. He looked as if he had just been awarded a prize of some sort. “Why, just last night we were sure your prospects were ruined, and now everything has been solved. The Duke of Westcourt wishes to marry you.”
“Well, I don’t want to marry him!”
“Madeleine!” He grabbed her and pulled her away from the door that led to the sitting room. “You want to be careful. He might hear you, and then where would we be?”
“Back where we were last night, and good riddance to him.”
“What are you talking about?” her uncle cried. “This is nothing but good news, Madeleine.Anyyoung lady would consider this to be good news. A proposal of marriage from a duke is what every young lady dreams of.”
“Well, I don’t dream of it. I never have. And especially not this duke.”
“What do you mean? What’s wrong with this duke?”
“Uncle, I told you. I had the situation managed on my own, and he came and involved himself unnecessarily. There would have been no problem at all last night if he could have left well enough alone!”
Uncle Joseph sighed. “I don’t know why you claim that a group of ladies harassing you isn’t a problem in its own right, Madeleine.”
“It’s a problem I could have managed. I didn’t need his involvement.”
“You should learn to accept help from people. Why do you resist the idea that other people might care about you?”
Madeleine didn’t answer. She had never been able to fully explain this to her uncle. But life had taught her—brutally—what happened when you let people get too close. She loved her uncle, but that was the reason she had never opened up to him about everything she felt. And perhaps that was the reason, too, why she was so reluctant to let anyone help her solve her problems.
Certainly, it was the reason she didn’t want to marry the Duke. He would be putting his life at risk by getting too close to her. But she couldn’t say that. Uncle Joseph would laugh at the notion. He would say it wasn’t a real fear, that it was unfounded, and that she should set that aside and allow him to marry her.
The truth was, she had no choice in the matter, and she knew it. This would be decided without her input. But Madeleine intended to make her feelings known on the subject.
“Very well,” she told her uncle. “I’ll speak to him.”
“And you’ll be kind to him,” her uncle said warningly.
“Of course I’ll be kind. Why wouldn’t I be kind?”
But the moment she walked into the sitting room, all thoughts of kindness fell out of Madeleine’s mind.
She had forgotten, in her thoughts about how reluctant she was to marry him, that he had never gotten a good look at her before. She’d forgotten that he had been unconscious the first time she had seen him and that last night, she had been deliberately keeping to the shadows in hopes of preventing the ladies at the ball from mocking her appearance.
When he saw her, his eyes widened, and he stepped back.
And she should have known. This was how people always reacted the first time they saw her face—the first time they saw the burn scar left behind, stretching from her right cheek down her face to her collarbone in the aftermath of the fire. Even Uncle Joseph had reacted that way the first time he had seen it. Even Madeleine herself felt shocked when she looked at her reflection—she tended to avoid looking glasses for that reason.
