“You barely had a glass,” he said, the softness of his voice snagging at her heart.
She refused to look at him, her eyes blurring in her determination to keep her focus on the meadow. “You must have been watching me closely if you know that.”
“There does not need to be animosity between us, Valeria.” He sighed heavily, mirroring her crossed arms and resting chin. “I know I said that my debt to you was paid, and you said I owed you nothing, but I still want to help you, however I can. You have become…”
Her heart stopped altogether, her breath trapped somewhere between her lungs and her mouth, while a sudden warmth beetled upward from her chest to her cheeks.I have become what, Duncan? What am I to you?
She wished she had some manner of emotional tamping rod to shove down the traitorous hope that tried to rise with the feverish warmth. He was only going to disappoint her; she could sense it in the air, crackling like a storm was rolling in. Yet, for all of her attempts to tamp down her hope, it had transformed into black powder, ready to ignite against all the warnings.
“You have become a responsibility,” he said, unleashing the first bolt of disheartenment. “Goodness, that sounded cold. I apologize; I do not know how else to explain it. I feel I have a… duty to see your ambition fulfilled. Is that better, perhaps?”
Not in the slightest…
“You think my ambition is to be married?” she blurted out instead, her tone edged with bitterness.
He glanced over at her. “I am mistaken?”
“Even before my debut, my ambition was never marriage. I respect those who seek it with their whole heart, and dream of nothing but being wives and mothers, but… that has never been me.”
She had removed the stopper on a shaken bottle of pent-up resentment and frustration, and could not, for the life of her, jam it back in again. “To me, marriage was meant to be a complement to life, not life itself. It was not important to me.”
He continued to stare at her. “But that has changed…”
It was not a question.
“Actually—no, I do not think it has,” she replied fervently, shaking her head in dismay. “I think my opinion of it is exactly what it has always been. I daresay I do not want to marry at all. If I had any choice in the matter, I would not.”
“What would you do instead?” he asked quietly, as though he fearedhemight stopper the outpouring of honesty if he spoke too loud.
“I would spend my days taking care of my father, tending the gardens, reading my books, learning how to cook, becoming as much of a scholar as a lady is allowed to be, and then… in an ideal world, I would inherit, becoming a viscountess in my own right, and passing that along to a cousin when my time came.”She shrugged, the fantasy bittersweet. “I would not even need all of Skeffington, if I could just have a corner of it.”
The scent of lavender drifted across the meadow, greeting her senses in a relaxing wave. She inhaled deeply and closed her eyes, letting that exquisite aroma conjure a vision of the life she craved: a cottage in among the oak trees in the southernmost corner of Skeffington’s grounds, where a stream babbled, and apple trees weighed heavy with fruit in the summer.
She imagined a kitchen garden, perhaps a goat or a cow, a flock of hens, utterly content with a place to call her own, that required no husband or immense fortune to keep it.
“But… fate has decided otherwise,” she murmured, the vision shattering. “I do not want to marry, but I must. Society is always talking about the great weight that sons carry upon their shoulders, but no one ever considers the daughters. How, more often than one might think, it falls onhershoulders to keep a household afloat. And… I am in a position where I am drowning and desperately trying to swim, all at once.”
All of a sudden, Duncan’s arms were around her, pulling her away from the fence and into a gentle embrace. It had none of the urgency of their drawing room dances, his movements slow as if he did not want to startle her, yet she was still breathless as she peered up at him, confused by the gesture.
He smiled at her and cradled the back of her neck, holding her tighter until her body gave in, relaxing into his embrace. She had not known just how much she needed someone to hold her untilthat moment, nor how the strength of him could make her feel so safe, when he was a danger to her scheme.
For a moment, it was as if she could block out the future and the rest of the world if she just stayed there, within the tight circle of his muscular arms, her head against his sturdy chest.
“What are you asking, Valery?” he asked in a breathy whisper, using the name she reserved solely for those closest to her.
She pulled back slightly, frowning up at him. “I… am not asking anything.”
But she heard it as she spoke, the urgent plea beneath the torrent of anxiety and panic that she had just spilled out into the air between them. She was asking the thing she would never dare to say out loud, the question he had already answered when he had not kissed her.
You need a duchess, I need a husband, and… you keep popping into my head whenever I think of a man who could make me happy, while saving everything else that I hold dear…
Her throat closed, holding back a fresh tide of impassioned words. He had not offered, and she would not beg.
“Valery…” His head dipped, his fingertips skimming a lock of hair behind her ear. “Iwantto help you…”
He bent his head further, his lips a moment away from grazing hers. Her neck arched back slightly, eager to feel that sweet press, but as her eyes met his, she faltered. There was a strange gleam in his eyes—a shine of something like remorse. And as she noticed it, naming the emotion, feeling the sting of it in her chest, she realized that there was a ‘but’ missing from Duncan’s sentence.
I want to help you, but…
