"Don't I?" Eveline's smile was sad and knowing. "Tell me I'm wrong, then. Tell me you haven't spent years cultivating distance from everyone around you. Tell me you don't pride yourself on needing no one, on being above the messy emotions that govern lesser mortals. Tell me you haven't built your entire life around control and order and the careful maintenance of your ducal dignity."
Adrian wanted to protest, but the words died in his throat. Because she wasright. Everything she said was true. He had built walls around himself so high and so strong that he'd forgotten what lay beyond them.
"I could change," he said, and heard the desperation in his own voice.
"Could you?" Eveline asked gently. "Could you really? Because change requires recognition that something needs changing. And you, Your Grace, see nothing wrong with your life as it is. You're not offering me marriage because you want me as your wife. You're offering it because honour demands it, because scandal threatens your peaceful existence, because it's the proper thing to do."
"That's not..." Adrian stopped, frustrated by his inability to articulate what he felt. How could he explain that she had already changed him? That his peaceful existence had become a prison from the moment she'd entered it? That honor and duty were just words he was using to mask a deeper, more terrifying truth?
"I need you," he said suddenly, the words torn from somewhere deep inside. "Is that what you want to hear? That my life makes less sense without you in it? That I find myself looking for you in every room, listening for your voice, thinking of things to tell you? That the thought of you facing censure alone makes me want to challenge every gossip in London to a duel?"
Eveline's eyes widened slightly, but she said nothing.
Adrian continued, unable to stop now that he'd started. "I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to... feel things properly. I've spent so long avoiding entanglements that I don't know how to be entangled. But I know that when you smile at something you're reading, I want to know what it is. I know that when you quote Ovid, I want to quote him back. I know that when you're hurt, I want to fix it, even when I'm the cause."
"Adrian," she said softly, and there was something in her voice that might have been pain.
"Marry me," he said again, but this time it came out as a plea rather than a declaration. "Not because society demands it, not because of duty or honour or any of those cold reasons. Marry me because... because I don't know how to be without you anymore."
For a moment, he thought she might yield. Something shifted in her expression, a softening around her eyes. But then she shook her head slowly.
"No," she said simply.
The word fell between them with terrible finality. Adrian felt her words driving the air from his lungs.
"No?" he repeated foolishly.
"No," she confirmed. "I will not marry you, Your Grace. Not for duty, not for honour, not even for whatever tangled feelings you think you have. I have spent my entire adult life avoiding the trap of a loveless marriage, and I will not enter one now, no matter how elevated the cage."
"It wouldn't be loveless," Adrian protested.
"Wouldn't it?" Eveline's smile was infinitely sad. "You speak of need, of attachment, of not knowing how to be without me. But love? Love requires more than need. It requires trust, respect, a willingness to see the other person as theytruly are rather than as you wish them to be. And you... you see me as a problem to be solved, a scandal to be contained, a disruption to be integrated into your orderly existence."
"That's not true," Adrian said, but even as he spoke, he wondered. Had he ever really seen her clearly?
"I would rather be ruined than pitied," Eveline continued, her voice growing stronger despite the fever flush on her cheeks. "I would rather face society's censure with my integrity intact than accept a proposal born of obligation. I have my work, my friends, my books. That is enough. It has always been enough."
"And what of your position?" Adrian asked, grasping at practicalities. "The scandal..."
"Will fade," she interrupted. "Oh, not entirely. I'll never be received in polite society again, but then, I never truly was to begin with. I'll find other employment, perhaps outside London. There are always families in need of governesses or companions, positions where a slight scandal might be overlooked in favour of education and competence."
The thought of her leaving London, of disappearing into some country household where he'd never see her again, made something clench painfully in Adrian's chest.
"I won't allow it," he said without thinking.
Fire flashed in Eveline's eyes. "Allow?" she repeated dangerously. "And there is my proof. The truth at last. You won't allow it. As if you have any say in my choices. As if your desires supersede my own. This is exactly why I cannot marry you, Adrian. Because for all your talk of feelings and need, you still see me as subject to your will."
Adrian realized his mistake immediately. "I didn't mean..."
"Yes, you did," Eveline said wearily. "You meant exactly what you said. You cannot conceive of a world where I make my own choices, face my own consequences, live my own life. In your mind, I am already yours to protect, to provide for, to command. And that, Your Grace, is why I must refuse you."
She swayed on her feet, the fever and emotional toll clearly exhausting her. "Please go," she said softly. "There's nothing more to say."
Adrian stood frozen, torn between the urge to argue further and the recognition that he had already done enough damage. Every word he'd spoken had only confirmed her worst assumptions about him. He had come here to save her and had instead proven that he was exactly what she'd accused him of being—a man so accustomed to control that he couldn't conceive of relinquishing it, even for love.
Love.The word echoed in his mind, mocking and terrible. Was that what this was? This desperate need, this inability to imagine his life without her, this rage at a world that would punish her for their shared moment of weakness? If it was love, it was a poor, stunted thing, twisted by years of emotional isolation and rigid self-control.
"Eveline," he said one last time, not sure what he was asking for.
