With a savage movement, she tore herself away. She stopped a few feet from him. “I can’t marry you, Matthew,” she said rawly, wringing her hands in wild distress. “It wouldn’t be fair.”
He frowned as he absorbed her refusal. “Are you afraid of my madness?”
“No! No, never think that,” she said frantically. How could he imagine that was why she denied him? “You’re not mad. You were sick. Now you’re cured.”
With a slight stagger, he rose to his feet. He was even thinner than he’d been when she first saw him. Knowing his uncle, she guessed Matthew had been chained since she left. He needed rest and sustenance and a chance at happiness, not this fraught encounter with a former lover.
Automatically she reached to help him but he drew apart with a trace of hauteur. “You told me you loved me. Was that a lie?” Then the brief coolness evaporated and his voice cracked. “Have your feelings changed, Grace? Because as God is my witness, mine haven’t. I love you. I will always love you.”
“Stop! For pity’s sake, stop!” she cried out, lifting one shaking hand in his direction to keep him away, although he hadn’t touched her. She saw so clearly that they had no future together. Why couldn’t he see it?
He looked even more bewildered. Her chest constricted with guilty anguish. This should be the most joyous day of his life and she ruined it. Her father was right. She shouldn’t have come here. It was cruel and self-indulgent.
“Do you love me, Grace?” he asked with the stark honesty that always reached right to her marrow.
She wrapped her arms around herself to stop her convulsive trembling. She’d known this time had to come, she’d known from the first time she kissed him. But the reality was so much more painful than her painful imaginings.
“Grace?”
He wasn’t hiding behind pride. She owed him equal honesty. “Yes, I do love you.” Perhaps she was unwise to tell him but she couldn’t lie.
“Then why?”
Kermonde rounded the corner of the house and stopped as he observed Grace and the marquess together. “Sheene, I can delay no longer. His Majesty awaits.”
Matthew didn’t shift his gaze from her face as he replied. “A minute’s patience, sir.”
In other circumstances, Grace would have laughed at the well-bred surprise on Kermonde’s face. Dukes weren’t used to people telling them to hold their peace.
“A minute then.” It was clear Kermonde meant sixty seconds precisely. At least he moved far enough off to give them an illusion of solitude although not far enough to let them think he meant to wait much longer.
Matthew’s eyes were unwavering. “Tell me, Grace.”
She sucked in a shaky breath. She was right about this. She knew she was right about this. He was so intelligent, surely she could make him understand too.
“You haven’t seen anything of the world. You think you love me but…” She lowered her voice so the duke wouldn’t hear. “I’m the first woman you’ve bedded. I’m almost the only woman you’ve seen in eleven years. Anyone would mistake the significance of his feelings. You want to make promises. You’re a decent man. But when you resume your rightful position, you’ll regret any commitment. You’ll regret it even more when you fall in love with the woman fit to stand at your side.”
He was genuinely angry now. “Unlike the Earl of Wyndhurst’s daughter.”
She flinched at his sarcasm then lifted her chin and faced him down. “Unlike the poor widow Grace Paget who was your mistress.”
He drew himself up and spoke in a low growl. “So you think I’m too stupid to know what I feel and too weak to keep any vows.”
“No, never that. But what we shared was part of your captivity. It’s time to start life as a free man. I can have no role in that life.”
“You are that life,” he said with a snap.
“Lord Sheene,” Kermonde called. “I insist we leave.”
“Are you coming?” Matthew extended his arm as he’d extended it so often when she’d shared his imprisonment.
She shook her head. “I promised my father there would be no scandal. For his sake, no hint must emerge that you and I have been lovers. You go with Kermonde and I go home to Marlow Hall in Yorkshire.”
“Then I’ll come to you after I’ve met the king.”
“No. You have to stay in London and prove your sanity publicly. You have to take your place as Marquess of Sheene. You must make it clear there’s no taint of madness.” Then the harshest words of all. And still harsher because they were true. “It’s over, Matthew. There is nothing more between us. We part here and now.”
Still he refused to surrender. She’d been right to call him a fighter. “That’s not good enough.”