But he couldn’t. He couldn’t let himself have that.
This was supposed to be a business arrangement, nothing more. He had allowed it to go much too far.
He stepped back from her, putting even more space between the two of them. “Don’t ask me that,” he said, doing his best to remove all emotion from his voice, hoping that he sounded cold and dispassionate.
She stared at him. “Edward…”
“You know better than to ask me that,” he told her firmly. “How many times, Lydia? How many times must we discuss this? Do you think I enjoy breaking your heart? Do you think it’s fun for me to have these conversations over and over?”
“You just told me that things had changed,” she protested. “It would be foolish of me not to try to discover what that change encompasses.”
“Well, I can tell you right now what it doesn’t encompass,” he said. “You and I willneverbe anything more than friends. Even friendship was a lot to ask for, but you pushed. You had to have more than what I was willing to give. I indulged you, and that was a mistake.”
“You can’t say everything was a mistake!” she protested. “I know it wasn’t. You and I have enjoyed getting to know one another, Edward. That much has been real.”
“The fact that we’ve been enjoying ourselves doesn’t mean we weren’t making mistakes,” he said, looking away from her. He couldn’t face the heartbreak in her expression. “Lydia, I told you from the start. You knew all along what this marriage was and what it could never be. Please, don’t make me feel now as if you were misled, because you weren’t. You always knew.”
“But you could change your mind,” she protested. “We could both change, Edward. It really doesn’t have to be like that. You can’t tell me that you don’t feel anything for me. I can tell you do. No one could kiss me like that if they just didn’t care at all. I know you care.”
“Of course I care.” He wouldn’t lie to her about that. “I care about you as a friend and a member of my household. And I only want good things for you. That much is true. That doesn’t mean I’m in love. I will never be in love.”
“But we had such a good day,” she argued, her eyes filling with tears. “Out on the horses, learning more about one another—was none of that real?”
“It was all real. But it was nothing I couldn’t have shared with a brother or a business acquaintance. Only this kiss, and it was a mistake. I shouldn’t have done it, but I got carried away by being in the presence of such a beautiful lady. You should take it as a compliment, Lydia, that I found you so impossible to resist despite my best efforts.”
“You don’t have to resist me,” she whispered. “You can have me. You can have all of me—whatever you want. We can be husband and wife to one another,truly.”
He had to put a stop to this. It was too awful. The hope in her eyes was so persistent, and he needed it to be extinguished because the longer it stayed alive there, the harder it would be when she finally accepted that nothing was going to happen between the two of them.
“Enough,” he snapped, tightening his expression and stepping even further away from her. “I’m not going to go on indulging this, Lydia. I have been very understanding with you since all this began, you know. You wanted a friendship—something I never planned on—and I did my best to accommodate that.”
“I thought you wanted it too,” she whispered, and he hated that he was hurting her.
“I don’t want it if it’s going to lead to this kind of confusion,” he said. “I don’t want to have to explain to you every couple of days that we’re not going to have a romantic relationship. If that’s not something you can keep track of on your own, we need to take a step back from one another.”
“Edward, why are you resisting this?” she asked. “You can’t tell me now that you only mean us to be friends. A friend would not have kissed me the way you just did. Tell me the truth. You want more.”
“I don’t want it,” he argued. “I’ve never wanted it. And I have always been perfectly honest with you about that, Lydia. It’s not my fault if you’re confused now. I’m sorry you feel that way, but you must understand I can’t take responsibility for it.”
She shook her head. “Maybe weshouldtake a step back from one another,” she suggested, and her voice was dark. “Maybe I was wrong about you.”
That shouldn’t have hurt as much as it did.
“Meaning what, exactly?”
“Meaning that I thought you were a different sort of man. I understood that it was hard for you to let me in. I respected that about you. I knew it was going to take time. But I thought that, given that time, we might find a way to one another. I didn’t know exactly what it would look like, and I was willing to put in the work to find out. Now, I think you always intended to do all you could to keep us apart.”
“Have I ever said otherwise?” he asked.
“No,” she said sadly. “I suppose you haven’t. But I did want to believe you were… different.”
“I’m not different,” he told her. “I am the man I’ve always told you I was. You shouldn’t believe anything else of me, even if you would prefer to.”
“Then you’re right,” she said. “We ought to keep our distance from one another.”
“Did you only ask to befriend me in hopes it might turn into something more?”
“No,” she mumbled. “I wasn’t hoping for that. I wasn’t even thinking of that. I believed you when I said friendship was all we would ever have.”
