“I know you took care,” she cut in. “I know you did.”
He nodded. “That doesn’t excuse me. You are no different than the highest-born ladies of this land whose mothers tell them nothing because their mothers told them nothing, and their fathers don’t have the courage to say anything. They all wish to keep them in the dark in ignorance about it. So they’re not tempted to go off and do things as you’ve done to be independent. But I should have sat you down and been blunt.”
She did not bother with could haves or should haves. He’d shared a great deal with her. She would not insist that they now go back over how they could have behaved perfectly. The truth was that she was fairly certain the only way to ensure that she’d never become with child was to abstain from lovemaking altogether. And she couldn’t imagine giving up these last weeks with him. They had been a revelation.
“How can I be independent now?” She lamented softly.
“It hasn’t been stolen entirely from you yet,” he said.
She arched a brow. “Don’t be ludicrous. I have put myself into a position in which I am carrying a man’s child, and I have no income, nor do I have any chance of it. I do not have the skills to gain an income on my own. What man would want me as a courtesan now?”
“You would be surprised,” he said with a groan.
“Truly?” she mocked.
He looked away then and said, “The greatest courtesans of this age have had children with some of the most important men. Mistress after mistress have done so. There have been men who have railed at the fact that their wives could only bear them daughters and their mistresses had sons. It is the strangeness of our society. But no, you are mistaken if you think that you cannot be a courtesan strictly because you have a child.”
He swung his gaze back to hers, and there was something deep in his eyes, something vulnerable as he asked, “But is that truly what you want? For our child to be born out of wedlock in this society?”
She winced.
The word bastard was ignoble and harsh and unfair. She was glad he had not used it.
But others would use that word.
It was not the child’s fault, but the child would bear the stamp of such a label.
And to be the child of a duke and not be able to have all the rewards of it seemed harsh.
But he had not offered for her hand, and if he did, she did not know what she would say, for she had not wanted marriage. The noose of it symbolized in the gold ring that would circle her finger, making her owned by him, frightened her. But it seemed the height of foolishness, a child’s silliness even, to rail or rankle against it when the stakes were so high.
“You are going to have my child, my heir,” he said as if he could read her thoughts. “You should be my duchess.”
“If I am your duchess,” she pointed out as her heart ached, “you are only choosing me because I am having your child, and you will be linking yourself to my brother for eternity. His name will be on your family tree. My blood will be that of your child.Hisblood will be that of your child.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said softly. “The child already has your blood, his blood, my blood. But I don’t actually believe in those things. Despite the fact that my family line stretches back for hundreds of years, I do not believe that the continuity of blood is the most important thing in this world.”
“You don’t?” she queried, shocked at his rough but firm words. “Even as a duke?”
He crossed to her, taking her hands in his as he declared, “I have seen families fall apart in one generation, much like yours, simply because one person has not the character to hold it. And that has nothing to do with blood, Cat. Some strange thing, which none of us can truly understand, can overcome a child. Sometimes it is poor parents or a cruel person in their lives. It is hard to say what makes people so weak. But it is not bloodlines.”
“I often wondered,” she whispered, “if Eton destroyed my brother. The cruelties that can happen there. Perhaps the wrong boys made friends with him. He wasn’t like that when he was a child, you know.”
“It’s very possible,” the duke allowed, stroking his thumb over the back of her hand. “Eton can be a truly terrible place. I was lucky that I did not have to go there. I was raised at home and educated by tutors until I went to Oxford. Still a strange thing for a duke, but I demanded it, and my father had already died when I went. I wanted that education. I wanted to be schooled by men who knew things that I did not, and I recognized that there were men who knew things that I did not even though their blood was supposedly lower than mine.”
She stared up at him, grateful for his hands enfolding hers, for he was singular indeed. “So where does that leave us?” she asked, her throat tightening. “Me asking for you to take pity on me? To marry me, to save my child from disgrace and me, I suppose.”
“Ourchild,” he insisted. “You would not be disgraced, but you know it would be difficult for our child if we do not wed, and it would not be a mercy. It would be a joy.”
“What?” she gasped, trying to make sense of his words.
He lifted a hand and gently cupped her cheek with his broad palm. “I will have to marry eventually and have an heir. You have simply moved my timeline ahead.”
“I am not who you would have picked,” she snapped.
“Perhaps not at first glance,” he said honestly, and she appreciated that honesty.
She was glad he was not trying to trick her or fool her into thinking that he loved her. That she was the perfect example of what a duchess should be.