“Which you wanted to return to. You will return to it with me.”
Tears welled in her eyes. She gave her head a small shake. “I can’t. It wouldn’t be fair to you. It wouldn’t be fair to your parents.”
He slapped his hand against the headboard. The sting assured him that he was awake, hadn’t fallen asleep and succumbed to some nightmare. “Explain how marrying the woman I love—more than life—would be unfair to me.”
She dashed at the tears that rolled onto her cheeks. Blinked, blinked, blinked. Cleared her throat. When she once again looked at him, not a tear was to be found. “You’re going to have a difficult enough time being accepted because people know you as a Trewlove, not a Campbell. Ben, I’d just be a liability. No one would look favorably on you if you married the daughter of a traitor.”
“I don’t give a bloody damn. I love you, Thea.”
“I love you. And that’s the reason I can’t marry you.”
He shot out of the bed, crossed over to where his trousers rested on the floor, and jerked them on. He couldn’t have this conversation in the nude. Grabbing his shirt, he tossed it at her. “Put that on.”
Because neither could he have this conversation with her in the nude or in that bloody corset.
Pacing, he fought to gather his thoughts. He heard the bed creak. Glancing over, he saw her sitting on the edge of it and refused to acknowledge how adorable she looked with his shirt swallowing her. “We can make this work.”
“We can’t. You don’t know Society. I do.”
“I’m not going to have a bunch of bloody nobs determine whom I marry.”
She stood up and the hem of his shirt fell to her knees. “What of our children?”
“What of them?” Other than the fact he wanted every one of them to look like her.
“Did you not hear what Chadbourne said the night we bested him? How our children would have suffered because their grandfather was a traitor? As much as I’m loath to admit it, he was correct. I hated him for turning his back on me, but I would have hated him all the more if he hadn’t, if we’d had children and they had to grow up with taunts and unkind barbs. You know what that’s like. You experienced it. You know how much it hurts. I can’t do that to my children.Ourchildren.”
He squeezed his eyes shut. With an almost unbearable ache, he wanted those blonde, blue-eyed girls and those black-haired, dark-eyed boys. He wanted to put them on his shoulders so they could place the star on top of the Christmas tree. He wanted them to have adventures with his nieces and nephew. And any others that came along. He wanted to see his mum cradling one of them in her arms. He wanted them to hear the stories his father had told him tonight. He wanted them to sit on his strong and protective mother’s lap.
Swallowing hard, he opened his eyes, held her gaze, and forced out the words through the knot in his throat. “Then we won’t have children.”
“You’re breaking my heart, Ben.”
“It’s only fair. You’re breaking mine.”
She turned away from him. He heard her release a shaky breath. When she again faced him, he saw standing before him the haughty, arrogant lady who had appeared in the dressmaker’s shop and confronted Lady Jocelyn what seemed eons ago.
“You are a lord. Your first order of business is to provide an heir to inherit the titles and properties you will inherit. Your parents will expect it of you. The Crown will expect itof you. Society will expect it of you. I will expect it of you. Not having children is not a choice you have.”
Bloody damned hell. Bollocks. Through his mind, he ran a few other choice words he’d learned from men working the docks. “We’ll figure something out.”
“We already have,” she said as though she were a queen laying down an edict. “I will not marry you.”
He thought he actually heard his heart crack. He knew he felt it. “When did you make this decision?”
Some of the haughtiness left her. “Last night, while I watched you sleeping.”
He swung his arm out to encompass the entirety of the room. “And all this?”
“Was goodbye.”
Chapter 28
Standing by the fire burning brightly in his mum’s small house, as he waited for his siblings to greet each other, hug their mum, pour themselves a drink, and settle into their favorite spots around the room, Beast reflected on the irony of his life.
For a good long while, as the Beast of Whitechapel, he’d not thought himself deserving of a woman’s love, of a wife and children. He’d worried about the shame he’d bring them because he knew nothing at all about from whence he’d come, a bit self-conscious regarding what he viewed as an imperfection. Because he never expected to marry, it had never bothered him to own a brothel. Through it, he was able to help some attain better lives. Although he’d also known it wouldn’t give a wife cause to boast about her husband’s undertakings. But again, it hadn’t mattered, because he’d envisioned himself with no wife.
Then Thea had come into his life with the strength of a storm that could so easily leave destruction in its wake, and she’d managed to blow away all the reasons he’d thought he wasn’t worthy of her until he’d finally realized that he was. He’d asked for her hand, she’d said yes. He’d never known such satisfaction, such joy.
