“How can you just sit there and talk with such a calm voice? Are you not excited? Are you not sorrowful?”
“I am patient,” Harold said slowly. “I am patient, and I am sorry. But I will not weep if that is what you wish. I wept my last tears a long time ago.”
Elizabeth breathed heavily and composed herself, summoning her inner-calm. “Leave me now, if you if would,” she said. “Please, I wish to spend this night alone.”
“Very well,” he said, rising. “I will see you on the morrow.”
Elizabeth waited for the door to close behind him and then threw herself onto the bed, feelings twisting through her like gnarled branches.
*****
Elizabeth woke in the middle of the night with a feeling of almost overwhelming dread. Like every woman, she had heard horror stories about men using them and then ruining them. To some men, she knew, using a woman was just a sport, something to be done and then laughed about afterwards. You didn’t need to take a woman’s feelings into consideration when you were a certain kind of mind. You merely did what you wanted and damned the consequences. Elizabeth had to hope that Harold was not a man like that. If he was, she was already ruined. She had already crossed a line. Perhaps there is a land where a woman can kiss whomever she wants, but it is not this one.
She tried to reclaim sleep, but it wouldn’t come. She walked to the desk and lit a candle, and hunched over a French novel about a woman who is stolen from a small town and carried to Paris, where she learns how to become a proper lady. Only at the end was the small town French woman rumbled, when she failed to read a piece of Greek script. She was thrown aside by the man who had stolen her and was forced to return to her town, disgraced.
Elizabeth closed the book. The sun was rising. She fell into bed and closed her eyes. From pure exhaustion, she was able to sleep for a few hours.
She woke to a knocking at the door. The Duke wanted her to join him for breakfast. Part of Elizabeth wanted to scream: I’m not coming to breakfast. In fact, I’m going home this very minute! But the pull of the Duke was strong. Harold was a man who was extremely well-suited to her, despite his dishonesty. And as much as she hated to admit her weakness, she wanted to see him again. She wanted to look into his eyes and have him look back into hers. She wanted to feel his hand on her leg. God help her, she was attracted to this man.
She dressed in a simple gown and walked to the breakfast room like a woman walking to the gallows. She was doomed by her own attraction to him, she realized. But if she was doomed, so was he. And she knew one thing: if she had to, if it really came down to it, she could completely shut off her emotions and sever her ties with this man. Dishonor or no dishonor, Elizabeth could do it if she had to.
Harold looked anxious upon her entry. He nearly jumped out of his chair and rushed around the table to pull Elizabeth’s chair out for her. Elizabeth gratefully sat and waited for breakfast to be served. They ate a simple meal of bread and meat, and then the Duke leaned forward on his elbows and stared at Elizabeth. “I am sorry for my dishonesty,” he said. “Truly, I am.”
“If you are lying about this, what else are you lying about? That is what worries me the most. We have not known each other for very long. What secrets am I to discover after we have married?”
“You can ask me anything, and I will answer honestly. But the King’s direction is the only secret I have that pertains directly to you.”
“I will judge that,” Elizabeth said. “For example, have you been with a woman before?”
“Yes,” Harold said, looking down at the table.
“How many?”
“Six.”
“Six!”
“How is that possible?”
Harold shrugged. “I have travelled, Elizabeth. But they were always flings, over within a day and never thought of again. I want to marry you, to make you my wife, and to serve you well. That is the truth of it.”
She looked into his eyes and tried to gauge if he was being dishonest or not. As far as she could tell, his feelings were sincere, but how was one to know? For all she knew, he had used these same exact lines on the other six women. But there was the lust, as well, that was calling out even now, as she looked at him. How she wanted to touch him more, and have him touch her more. How she wanted to go further than a kiss…
Stop it, she told herself. Stop thinking like this. It is not proper! You are a lady!
But thoughts of that kind were not so easily extinguished. “I would have some proof that you really wish to marry me,” she said slowly.
“How am I to prove it to you?”
Elizabeth shrugged. “I do not know. But that is that I require.”
“If I can prove that I am sincere, will you marry me?”
“Yes,” she said, far too quickly. She laughed at her own eagerness. “Yes,” she repeated. “If you can prove it.”
The Duke nodded and then rang the service bell. The freckle-faced girl Elizabeth had seen around the Castle walked in. “Katherine,” Harold said.