The Trouble With Honor (The Cabot Sisters #1)

“Of you,” she admitted.

Something toxic began to brew in George. He suspected this was the moment she would say that she had come to realize that theirs was not a relationship she could maintain, not with an urgent need to find an offer for her hand. He stepped back. “Go on, then, say it. Don’t let maidenly angst stand in your way.”

“I love you,” she said.

Stunned, George gaped at her.

“Are you shocked?” she asked, smiling at someone who passed by. “Well, I do, Easton, I love you so, with all my heart,” she said, stacking her hands and pressing them against her breast. “What am I to do? I’m not supposed to love you, but I do. I don’t want you to seduce anyone but me. I want you all for myself. I want you.”

He had never desired to hear those words more, and yet he had never wanted so desperately not to hear them. “What you think you want is impossible,” he said brusquely. “How many times must I tell you so?”

Her eyes widened with surprise. And then narrowed with anger. “Why must every blessed thing with you be so impossible?”

“Because it is,” he snapped, feeling inexplicably, inexcusably angry with her. He was feeling the same thing, had been feeling for days that rusty, unfamiliar crank of love in his chest, and it made him furious. As much as he loved her, he wouldn’t taint her with the rumors that swirled about him. Worse, he had nothing. He had less than nothing now, thanks to his missing ship. He could offer this bright star in his galaxy nothing.

“But I thought... You admitted to affection for me. You missed me.”

He could see unshed tears beginning to glisten in her eyes. It was a rare glimpse of innocence from this young woman, and for some reason it made George even angrier. She was naive in ways he could not begin to fathom, and he’d allowed it, had encouraged it, had taken innocence from her. “It is time you accepted life for what it is, Honor. You can’t recast it to meet your whims.”

She looked truly wounded by that. “A whim? Do you think I want to love you?” she asked, heedless of anyone around now. “Do you think that it eases my life in any way?”

George’s heart constricted, squeezed by so many emotions, so many things he didn’t want to feel. He gazed into the beautiful face, into the eyes of a daughter of the Quality, who had been trained to high-step into salons and advantageous matches just as surely as he was trained to not desire them. She had been trained to seek fortune and, more important, standing.

She could not love a man like him. It was impossible.

Her naive ideas of love and noble sacrifices would fade with time.

But then Honor surprised him yet again. It was almost as if she could feel the doubts raging through him. She put her hand on his arm and said, “I do love you, George. I know you don’t believe me, but I love you in a way I never believed was possible. I beg you, tell me the truth. Tell me you feel the same. Please.”

A flash of panic and an age-old ache swept through him. He peeled her fingers from his hand and stepped back. “I beg your pardon, Miss Cabot, but I cannot possibly tell you what is not true.” George did the only thing he could do—he turned away and walked. Fled, really. He looked wildly at the crowd in that hall and felt the walls closing in, pushing the air from the room. He stalked from the reception, out into the cold gray day.

He did not look back. He didn’t have to. The image of the hurt in her eyes was forever burned into his memory.

And because George left in such a fashion, a prisoner of his birth and his experiences, because he believed that the vicar was a good match for her, and that he was the worst match for her, because he took himself to Southwark and gambled and drank the remainder of the day, trying desperately to block her words from his ears, her image from his eyes, he did not hear the Earl of Beckington had died until well into the following afternoon.





CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

DEATH HAD CREPT in when the Beckington household had least expected it. The earl had been at breakfast that morning, smiling as the girls talked about their plans for the day, and reminding Augustine, when he grew impatient with Mercy, that she was a girl yet.

A congenial Augustine had agreed and had turned the talk to the reception for Lord Stapleton that afternoon, pondering who might attend. Honor had wondered aloud if Grace was still abed after an evening spent at the Chatham residence. The earl had said she must be exhausted, having endured the unending stream of words from Lady Chatham.