“It’s not an insult. Marrying down goes against the instinct of most women of our class. I cannot promise you perfect happiness: It doesn’t exist. We’ll find each other and our life together unsatisfactory at times. There will be days when you’ll envy the new Mrs. Somerset and wish you’d chosen differently. And I don’t know whether you’ve depth and wisdom enough to get past the inevitable second thoughts that will arise—possibly again and again.”
She shook her head in exasperation. “You are literally pushing me back into the arms of my fiancé. Do you have anything to say for yourself, any enticement for me at all? Would it be nothing but doom and gloom if I were to marry you?”
“Enticements: Hmm.” His thumb indented her lower lip. “Well, many symphonic concerts, to start. And that is something you will not get from Mr. Somerset—I don’t think his mind leans much toward matters of the flesh.”
“Perhaps mine does not either, after Henry Franklin.”
He tilted his head toward her and licked her where his thumb had been, and it felt like a lick between her thighs. Her exhalation was startled—and plainly pleasured.
“Are you sure about that?” he murmured.
She chuckled, to let out some of the tension building in her body. “Perhaps not. But I don’t think a marriage can be based on carnal desires alone. What else do you have to offer me?”
He kissed her on the lips. “A respect for your mind.” He kissed her again. “As much freedom as I would give myself.” He kissed her one more time. “And a surpassing interest in the lovely, fascinating old woman you will become one day.”
Her heart shook at both his kisses and his words. She was suddenly afraid that she might tell him right this moment that she’d forsake all for him. She turned around and left running.
Stuart drank steadily. He hadn’t moved since she left, except to replenish his glass again and again.
He’d always disdained the numbness that came from a bottle—his mother in a drunken stupor in Torquay had been one of his least cherished memories—but today that numbness couldn’t come fast enough. How many glasses had he downed? Five? Seven? Why, then, when he breathed, did it still feel as if his lungs had been punctured?
The doorbell rang. The glass slipped from his hand and broke at his feet.
How long had she been gone? How did one keep track of time in Hell? He might have been in the study for days already, drinking himself into a state. But his servants hadn’t returned to gaze aghast upon him yet, so it couldn’t have been too long.
He reached for another glass and poured it half full. The doorbell rang again. He almost dropped the glass again.
Was it her? And what would he do if it was her? Banishing her once had cost him everything he had. He had not honor, righteousness, or strength enough to do it again. He had not even enough rage left—the bleakness in his head had drained him of the mental vigor required for the care and feeding of anger.
He raised the glass and tossed back its contents. He wouldn’t answer the door. She needed to understand that it wasn’t some passing consternation on his part that had led to her exile, but a carefully considered decision of principle. There was no place for her in his life. There had never been any place for her in his life. Why couldn’t she see it? Why couldn’t she leave him alone so that his insides could die in peace?
He crossed the room, tripping and nearly falling on the shard-strewn carpet, to stare at the clock on the mantel—he could no longer make out the hands on his watch. The second hand of the mantel clock moved at the speed of a crippled snail. It crawled. It shuffled. He could swear at one point it took a nap. Bright-eyed infants could have grown up, married, and aged into witless dotards in the time it took to circumnavigate the clock; hell, dynasties could have risen and collapsed.
There now, he made it through one minute without rushing out to open the door for her—he no longer needed to grip the mantel so tightly. He’d make it through another minute, and then another. She would get the point eventually, that his mind was firmly made up, that nothing could dissuade him from his set course.
The bell clanged again. His heart seized. He spun around—and fell, onto a splinter of agony. He got to his feet, pulled a piece of glass from his knee, and ran. He banged his shoulder on the doorjamb of the study, banged his other shoulder on the longcase clock, and almost smacked his face into the door.
Just remember, close the door before you kiss her.
He yanked open the door, then slammed it shut in the next instant, his heart as shattered as the broken glasses in his study.
It was not her, but Mrs. Abercromby, who must have forgotten her keys. And he had just put the lie to all his principles, every last one of them.
Chapter Twenty