‘You love me? Oh, Eden, I knew, I sensed it. I am so sorry I did not seem to trust you—I was afraid. I love you so much, please forgive me.’
He sat back, taking her hands tight in his. ‘It gave me the excuse I needed. Maude, I had to tell you, last night, tell you that whatever it was between us had to end. That I could not—’ He broke off, closed his eyes and continued. ‘I could not love you.’
‘But you do?’ Puzzled, she stared at him, cold apprehension touching the edge of her burgeoning happiness. ‘Do you mean you did not realise you loved me until I almost died?’
‘No. I knew I loved you, I have known that for days. But I know I should not, and I must not. Maude, this cannot be. It was bad enough, loving you, but I knew it would be worse if we both knew.’
‘I don’t understand.’ But she did. Eden did not think he was good enough for her. ‘I am old enough to marry without consent, if that is what it takes. Eden, no one can stop us.’
‘I can,’ he said grimly. ‘Do I need to remind you that I am illegitimate, in trade and I have a shocking reputation?’
‘And most of the men whom I know had a shocking reputation, until they were married,’ she protested hotly. ‘I love you Eden; if that means I have to put up with some snubs and a shorter list of invitations, well, to hell with them! They aren’t people I want to know in any case.’ She looked at his face, set in stubborn lines of absolute determination. ‘Eden, kiss me and then tell me you don’t want to marry me.’
‘Of course I want to marry you,’ he retorted. ‘I want to live the rest of my life with you. Damn it, Maude. Don’t look at me like that. I am trying to do the right thing, not drag you down, cut you off from your friends.’
His kiss was hard, fierce, angry. It made no concession to the fact that she was ill or frail and it spoke more strongly than he ever could of just how he felt for her.
Maude pulled him down to lie with her on the big bed, opening her mouth to him, inciting him to deepen the kiss. His tongue slipped into the moist warmth of her mouth, taking, claiming, and she groaned against the impact, scrabbling to push away the bedclothes so she could feel the length of his body against hers.
She could feel him trying to resist and yet he helped her, his big hand coming up to cup her breast through the thin nightgown, his thumb fretting at the nipple until she writhed against him. The heat was pooling deep in her belly, wanton, excited, and Maude pushed her hips against the hardness of his pelvis. And then he rolled away from her to sit on the edge of the bed, his head bowed, his hands raking into his hair.
‘No! Maude, let me retain what glimmerings of honour I possess, what pride I can salvage from this. It would be wrong of me to seek to wed you, I would be blamed, and rightly, for taking you away from everything that is your life and your birthright.’
Shaken, Maude pulled her nightgown into some kind of order. She had lost him and she should be sobbing her heart out, but oddly she was angry, furiously angry.
‘Your pride?’ she demanded. ‘You would stand on your pride and break my heart? You would sacrifice what we are and what we could have because of your damned pride? You would end the lives of the children we would have together before they are even conceived? For pride? Where is the honour in that—or do you truly not have any? You had a hard start in life and you rose above it to become the man I admire and love, but you wear your bitterness like a badge to warn people away in case they hurt you. You did not disbelieve in love—you are afraid of it.’
Eden swung round, his face stark. ‘Maude—’
‘Go away. I don’t want you here. You saved my life and I thank you for it. I will love you until I die, but I never want to see you again if you can throw that away for pride.’
He got to his feet, slowly, as though it hurt him to move. ‘Maude, I want only to do what is best for you.’
‘What you, in your arrogance, think is best,’ she retorted. ‘You admired my intelligence, I thought. Well, you do not admire it enough to allow me to use it, or my independence, it seems. Goodbye, Eden.’
The door slammed behind him, every iota of his cold control gone, taking her hopes and dreams and future with him.
Eden spent the next twenty-four hours in a sort of blind fury of shock. By sheer will he got the Unicorn functioning again, Doggett’s funeral arranged and his widow and family cared for and then, alone in his bedchamber, he let himself recall Maude’s words.
Pride and honour. He had thought them the same thing, but it seemed she did not. She loved him, wanted to marry him, to have his children. He did not deserve her, he knew that, listening again and again to her words in his head.
Gradually something like hope began to penetrate the darkness. If he could marry her without making her give up everything that made her life what it was—her loves, her loyalties—then he could marry her with honour. Doggedly Eden set himself to work out exactly what Maude would need if she were to marry him and to keep everything of her present life that she valued.
First, he must believe what she told him—a few snubs would not hurt her. But her friends meant a great deal to her and the closest of those, the dearest, were the Ravenhursts. If he married Maude, then the hope of keeping his parentage secret would vanish under the pressure of society’s intense curiosity. The Ravenhursts would hate the revelations about their aunt and Maude would know she had contributed to that. And they, surely, would never forgive him for the blow to their family and what he was doing to Maude.
And she adored her father. To give Maude what she wanted, what she deserved, he was going to have to sacrifice his pride and lay himself open to the risk of hurt and rejection, the loss of the dream of friends and family he had not ever dared to acknowledge he needed. And he had to learn to forgive. Hope, and her words, must be enough to make this work. He had thought himself able to organise anything—well, now was the time to prove it. Eden pulled paper and pen towards
him and began to write.
Promptly at eleven the next morning he walked up the steps to the Earl of Pangbourne’s front door. Maude, he knew, was still at the Standons’ house. Jessica, bless her, was keeping him up to date with little notes reporting that Maude was physically stronger and was out of bed. But she is so quiet, Jessica wrote that morning. So very still.
‘Mr Hurst, to see his lordship. He is expecting me.’ The Templeton’s butler bowed him in, took his hat and gloves and then hesitated.
‘My name is Rainbow, sir. We are all very fond of Lady Maude,’ he said stiffly. ‘His lordship tells me that you saved her life.’
‘Yes, but it was my fault she was in danger in the first place,’ Eden confessed, wondering at a butler of this superiority unbending to make personal comments.
‘I’m sure it will not happen again,’ Rainbow remarked, taking Eden aback. ‘His lordship is in the study, if you will follow me, sir.’