“That is right. You are. Perhaps you should remember where a woman?—”
Her jaw dropped. He had not just said that. Where her place is?
“Who are you?” she asked. “Do you hear yourself? ‘A woman’s place’? I’ll tell you where a woman’s place isnot—in a fencing outfit, sparring with a man who thoroughly enjoyed it. And yet you didn’t seem to mind. In fact, you enjoyed it. I see you watching me when I practice in the gardens. A woman’s place is not wherever you think it ought to be when I’m outside fencing.”
He raised his hands. “I beg your pardon. I did not mean it. You know me. You know that’s not who I am?—”
“Do I?” she said, voice sharp. “Because it seems I don’t know you at all, Nathaniel. I thought I did. But you… You’ve changed. You’re not the man you used to be.”
He looked down and dragged a hand across his face.
“Why do you always do this?” she asked, her voice tight.
“Do what?” he fired back.
“Walk away. Push me away.” She paused, choosing her next words carefully. She hadn’t meant to say this—at least not now—but eventually, she would have to. They were married, after all, bound together whether they liked it or not. “I know that I matter to you. I know I was more than a distraction. I saw it in your eyes. I felt it in your breath the night we almost kissed. That’s what brought us here. That’s why we’re married.”
“I already told you?—”
“Do you really mean to say it meant nothing?” she interrupted. “That it was all in my head?”
“Was what in your head?” he asked, avoiding her gaze.
“That there was something between us. That I wasn’t just a burden. An obligation you didn’t want and were trying to dispatch as quickly as possible.”
“No, Evelyn. But what does it matter now?” he said, gesturing broadly. “You have everything you wanted. Your pre-marriage freedom. Your precious dower house. Access to your funds. What more could you want?”
“That isn’t everything I ever wanted,” she said quietly. “Yes, I wanted to be free of the obligations my father forced on me. But not like this. Not to live beside you while we ignore each other. Not to pretend that… that nothing ever existed between us.”
“Was there?” he asked, tilting his head slightly.
“I thought there was,” she said, crossing her arms.
“If you believe there was, I won’t take that belief from you. But if you think there wasn’t… I cannot change that either.”
“So I was mistaken?” she asked. “I threw away my chance at something real for a moment that wasn’t real at all? What was it then? Why were you looking at me that way? Why did you come so close, as if you were going to kiss me? You were so close I could smell the peppermint comforts you’d been sucking on.”
“I doubt that.”
“Peppermint,” she repeated flatly.
He pressed his lips together. “Lucky guess.”
“No. You suck peppermint comforts when you’re nervous or upset.”
“I didn’t know you knew me that well.”
“I thought I did,” she said. “I thought I’d come to understand you. But you vex me.”
“I vex you?” he asked, arching a brow. “How?—”
“You know how,” she snapped. “You’ve done it since the day we met. Starting construction outside my bedchamber so I couldn’t read, trying to chase me out of the house. Setting me up with those horrid suitors?—”
“That was all for your own good. If you hadn’t been living here, there wouldn’t have been a scandal, and we wouldn’t be married.”
“So I was just an obligation,” she said. “Tell me, once and for all, that’s all it was. That you’re pushing me away because you can’t stand me. Because you think I ruined your life.”
His eyes widened, and he threw up his hands. “Iruined your life! Halston was right—I was never meant to be Duke. I was the unwanted spare. My uncle tried desperately to have a legitimate heir, and until he failed, I was nothing but dirt beneath his boots. I was never meant for this life. Not to be a duke. Not to be a husband.”
