“I do,” he said. “I would be sorry later tonight when all my guests had left if I had not spoken the words to you.”
He lifted one hand and set the backs of his fingers lightly against her cheek She did not jerk back as he expected her to do. He watched her swallow.
“Let me kiss you,” he said softly.
“No.” Her eyes slipped to his neckcloth.
He withdrew his hand with the greatest reluctance.
“Marry me,” he said.
“No.” She looked into his eyes again. “When will you stop asking?”
“When you say yes,” he said, “or when your eyes tell me that you want me to go out of your life forever.”
“Oh, my eyes, my eyes,” she said, annoyed now. “You see in them what you wish to see.”
“No,” he said. “I see what is there, Katherine.”
He hoped he was not deluding himself. He did not believe he was.
“I want to go back to the drawing room,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “Any longer alone together would be improper. Come, then.”
She had not pulled away from his touch, though she had refused to allow him to kiss her. She had refused his marriage offer, but there was sadness in her eyes.
Almost a look of yearning.
Was he deluding himself? he wondered again. He did not believe so.
For two whole days she dared not venture outside. Perhaps it was as well that the weather was chilly and damp, with occasional squalls of drizzling rain. But even indoors she did not feel safe. She found herself glancing through the windows far more often than she wished, watching for his arrival so that she might escape upstairs in time to avoid him.
Though she was not sure that would be possible. Her aunts were in a flutter, even Aunt Hetty.
“He is showing a remarkable preference for you, Kate,” she said.
“He has little choice,” Kate said. “This part of the country is not abounding in women of my age.”
“But he obviously made his choice before coming here,” Aunt Hetty said. “He made it five years ago and has been constant to it ever since. Fidelity in a man is a quality to covet.”
“But he did not choose me five years ago,” Kate said, wondering why she was allowing herself to be drawn into an argument. “I was forced upon him. He offered out of a sense of honor.”
“I do not believe you were forced upon him, dear,” Aunt Martha said. “He went after you, did he not? Why would he have done that if he did not love you?”
Kate had no answer beyond the obvious one, that the Marquess of Ashendon was incapable of love.
“And now he has come after you again,” Aunt Martha said with a sigh.
“I believe it altogether possible that he will make you a formal offer very soon, Kate,” Aunt Hetty said. “You would do well to think seriously about accepting it. This is no life for you. Sometimes I feel your loneliness.”
That was unfair. She had never complained, even at the start. She had always tried to be cheerful, until she had no longer had to make the effort. Cheerfulness had become a part of her.
“I refused him in his library the other evening after Aunt Martha left us alone,” she said.
“Oh, Kate, dear,” Aunt Martha said in mild reproach.
“I hate him," Kate said, realizing that she must sound like a petulant girl.
