She’d had more than a year. She’d considered Castleton from every angle. She’d planned her life with him. She’d been ready for it. And in one week . . . one day . . . one minute, it seemed . . . everything had changed.
She shook her head. “I do not require additional time.”
He nodded. “I understand.”
She was willing to wager that he didn’t understand at all.
He continued. “I think we could learn to love each other. I think I could learn to love you.”
It was a kind thing to say. He was a good man.
Before, it had been enough. He had been enough. More than. He’d been willing to be her partner, to let her live the life she desired. To give her marriage. Children. Security. All the things a young woman in 1831 required.
Before.
Before she’d decided that she required more.
She met his warm brown gaze. “Unfortunately, I cannot learn to love you.” His eyes widened, and she realized that she had hurt him with her careless words. She rushed to repair it. “No . . . I don’t mean it in such a way. It’s that . . .”
She did not know what to say. How to repair it.
She stopped, hating the feeling, the way the entire male of the species seemed to make her feel in recent days.
And she told the truth. Again. “I’m sorry, my lord,” and she was. “But the vows . . . I can’t speak them. Not to you.”
His brows rose. “The vows?”
The silly ceremony. The one that had started it all. “Obedience and servitude, honor, sickness, and health . . . all that, I feel I could do.”
Understanding flared in his brown eyes. “I’m amenable to all those.” A small smile played across his lips. “I gather it is the love bit that is the problem?”
“Forsaking all others,” she said. She could not forsake all others. She wasn’t sure she could ever forsake the only other who mattered. She took a deep breath around the tightness in her chest. “My lord, I am afraid that I have fallen in love—quite accidentally and not at all happily. With another.”
His face softened. “I see,” he said. “Well, that does change things.”
“It does,” she agreed before she changed her mind. “Except, it doesn’t, really. He . . .” She paused. He is marrying another. “. . . The feeling is not reciprocated.”
Castleton’s brow furrowed. “How is that possible?”
“You should not be so quick to defend me, you know. After all, I just ended our engagement. You’re required to dislike me immensely now.”
“But I don’t dislike you. And I shan’t. Such is the risk we take in this modern world.” He paused, stroking Trotula, who leaned against his leg. “If only marriage were still arranged at birth.”
She smiled. “We mourn the past.”
“I would have liked a medieval keep,” he said happily, “and I think you would have made an excellent lady of the castle. Surrounded by hounds. Riding out with a sword on your belt.”
She laughed at the ridiculous image. “Thank you, my lord, though I wonder if the best ladies of the castle were as blind as I.”
He waved to a nearby settee. “Would you like to sit? Shall I have something brought from the kitchens?” He paused, obviously considering what one offered one’s ex-fiancée in such a situation. “Tea? Lemonade?”
She sat. “No, thank you.”
He looked across the room to a crystal decanter. “Scotch?”
She followed his gaze. “I don’t think ladies drink scotch before eleven o’clock.”
“I shan’t tell anyone.” He hesitated. “In fact, I might join you.”
“By all means, my lord . . . I wouldn’t dream of preventing you from having a proper drink.”
He did, pouring a finger of amber liquid into a glass and coming to sit beside her. “Our mothers will be beside themselves when they hear.”
She nodded, realizing that this was the first time they’d conversed about anything serious. Anything other than dogs and weather and country estates. “Mine more than yours, I should think.”
“You’ll be ruined,” he said.
She nodded. “I had considered that.”
It had never mattered to her very much, reputation. For one who was often described as odd and strange, having little in common with others her age or gender, reputation never seemed worth much. It did not buy her friends, or invitations, or respect.
So now, it was not paramount.
“Lady Philippa,” he began after a long moment of silence, “if you’ve . . . er . . . that is . . . if you have need of . . . a-hem.”
She watched him carefully, noting his reddening face as he stumbled over the words. “My lord?” she asked after it seemed as though he might not say more.
He cleared his throat. Tried again. “If you are in a difficult spot,” he blurted out, waving one hand in the general direction of her stomach.
Oh, dear. “I am not.”
She supposed she might be, but that was a bridge she would cross at a later time if necessary. Without Castleton.
He looked immensely relieved. “I am happy to hear that.” Then, after a moment during which they both resumed calm, he added, “I would marry you, anyway, you know.”
She met his gaze, surprised. “You would?”
He nodded. “I would.”