But no. That wouldn’t happen at all. If he married her, they wouldn’t be able to afford a fashionable life in town. And the whole ton would be too busy marveling at the abject foolishness of the match to even notice their passion.
“We cannot marry. Even if you don’t marry that woman, you can’t take me as a wife.”
“I can and I will.”
“Don’t I have a say in this?”
That finally dimmed the sparkle in his eyes. “But I thought…I love you, Cyn.”
Damn him. How could he say that so simply? How could he look at her with those clear brown eyes and make it true? “You love me as a friend.”
“I love you as a woman. And I’ve never told a woman that before. I’ve never even thought it.”
She couldn’t believe that. Nick must have fallen in and out of love a dozen times over by now. At heart, he’d always been a romantic. Surely he’d loved many women.
The room spiraled around her. Only Nick stayed still, the calm center of this quietly raging storm.
His warm gaze held her captive. “I told you we couldn’t make love un
less we planned to marry.”
“I thought you’d gotten past that foolishness! Nick, listen. Please. Even if you do love me now, it wouldn’t last long once the creditors descended.”
“I’m happy here, with you, with nothing but a kitchen table and a pot of stew between us.”
My God, he looked like himself again. Young and hopeful. Her foolish Nick. The man she’d always loved. “This isn’t real. It’s not. What of your family? Your sister and brother depend on you. Your estates must need improvements. Your family would hate me. They would all hate me, and then you’d hate me too.”
His smile was patently puzzled. “Where do you get these ideas?”
“I’ve lived in a home drowning in debt for more than fifteen years. It is all my family thinks about. Money. Money. Can we afford new dresses? No. But if a new dress will help me find a better husband, can we afford it then? If we sell the carpets, will the neighbors notice? If they notice, will their sons shy away from marriage? But if we don’t sell the carpets, we will lose the horses, and that will be hard to hide.”
“Cyn—”
“There is no room for love when you cannot pay the servants, Nick. Or when your mother cries into her tea every evening. Or when your sister is forced to marry a tradesman and ceases to exist in the eyes of the ton. I’ve been the bane of my stepfather’s existence for years now. I won’t be the bane of yours as well.”
He hadn’t looked away from her during her whole speech, and he didn’t look away now. “I know what it means to sacrifice for my family, Cyn. Believe me, I do. I understand duty and obligation.”
“Then you know that we can’t marry.”
One side of his mouth quirked up. “We shall see.”
“We shall not see.” Tears burned her throat, swelling into a lump too large to swallow.
Nick raised her hand to his lips and brushed his mouth over her fingers.
How could he be such a fool? Such a lovable, awful fool?
Cynthia jerked her hand from his grasp and ran from him and his storybook dreams.
The cold of the floor soaked through her stockings and numbed her feet, but Cynthia kept pacing. It was late, and they faced another early morning, but she couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t even sit down.
After fleeing to her room, she’d cried for a good quarter-hour, but once her tears had dried, her imagination had roused itself.
What if they did marry? Perhaps his estates could be economized to provide more income. Perhaps there was jewelry to be sold. Perhaps there was more than enough income and the family was simply living too extravagantly.
These kinds of thoughts had wound through her head for nearly an hour. She’d even sat down at her little desk and sketched a picture of her and Nick, holding hands, walking down a sunny lane.
How utterly ridiculous.