I raised my chin and continued on my wild tangent. As much as I needed him to explain what was happening, I also needed him to look at me with some sense of normalcy. I wouldn’t agree to marry him if our marriage made him this agitated. “I’m certain you would have been able to sleep quite soundly if you’d refused a simpler request.”
He had turned to resume his pacing, but at my words, he stopped and spun back to me expelling a lungful of air. “I would have given you a chicken, Anna.”
“It would have been easy to give me a chicken and easier to refuse. My point is that wasnotwhat I asked for.”
He strode toward me, his eyes imploring. When he stopped, he was close enough for me to reach out and touch him. Suddenly, the drawing room seemed excessively small. “Can we please stop speaking of chickens?”
I was instantly mollified. “Yes, David.”
“I want to give you anything you ask for. No. More thanwant, I think Ineedto give you anything you ask for.”
A nervous laugh escaped my throat. “Because I was nice to you when you were a child?”
“No.” He reached a hand toward my face but then pulled it back. “Not because of that.”
I swallowed. My heart was suddenly pounding. “Why, then?”
His chest rose and fell, and he looked at me as if I were a small bird perched and ready to fly off if he were to move too quickly. I felt like a bird ready to fly to him. “Because, my dear Anna, you are the single most important person in my life, save my brother and sister. In truth, it feels as though you are theonlyperson in my life, save my siblings. I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want you to leave, to find a position as a governess or live off the kindness of others. And I definitely don’t want you to marry some eager inferior lout because financially you must. I would do anything to help you, Anna. Anything.”
“Even marry me when you would rather not?” I asked, my voice cracking.
He sighed heavily, his eyes searching mine for something I didn’t know if I had. “As it turns out, because of all the reasons I just listed,especiallythat.”
“Oh.” My heartbeat, which had somehow managed to increase its pace with each of his words, seemed to stop. He’d just admitted he didn’t want to marry me. That hadn’t changed. “I can’t rob you ofa future with someone you want to marry, no matter how dire my circumstances.”
He shook his head, and a deep sadness filled his eyes. “You won’t be robbing me of anything. I decided years ago I would never marry. You are the only woman who could make me change my mind. But, Anna—” He swallowed and put his hand on the back of his neck. “There will come a time when you will need to leave, and we have to make certain you can. If we marry, it will be so you can pay off Mr. Green and have enough of your inheritance to live off of.”
He wanted me to leave? Even after marrying him? “I can’t simply marry you, take my money, and leave. The courts would know.”
“No, and I selfishly don’t want you to. I want you to be my wife and live with you as long as I possibly can. You have to leave the cottage today, and I want you to move into my home not as my fiancée, as we’d originally planned, but as my wife. Today.”
There it was again. Today. We’d barely had any time together. What was the rush? Mama and I had to leave the cottage, but David had already initiated a plan for that.
“Why such urgency? And if I marry you, I will not leave you. Why should I? I want to be your wife, David. I thought I made that clear enough last night.”
His eyes found mine for a split second, and then he looked away. “Marrying quickly is the best way to keep our marriage quiet. I will not have my father know of it.” He took my hand in his and held my gaze. “You must know my life is complicated. You knew me when I was young; you saw how I was treated. I’m doing much better now, but bringing you into my family could tip the very delicate balance we have.” David leaned forward until his forehead was pressed into mine. His touch was so intimately familiar that I gasped. He didn’t seem to notice. “My father would see you as a pawn. A means to gain the upper hand with his children, and I wouldneverexpose you or any other woman to that.”
“I’m not going to run away because of your father.”
David’s grip on my fingers tightened, and he pulled away from my forehead to look me in the eyes. “I cannot have him near you. If he finds out about us, I won’t hold you to the marriage. I’ll find you somewhere to go.” His voice was like steel. “I promise.”
He was promising all the wrong things.
I swallowed the hurt as I remembered the boy I’d thought had come from a poor tenant family when all along, he’d been the son of a viscount. The way Lord Murphy had injured David’s dog Charlotte and how he’d treated his own footman the one time I’d seen him. What exactly had Lord Murphy put David through? Even now, without being here, he was controlling what kind of marriage his son was to have.
“I’m not scared of your father.” That wasn’t completely true, but it was true enough. I wasn’t so scared of him that I would leave David behind if I had to face him.
“Anna. This is my one condition. I will marry you, but I won’t tie you to a man like him. Our marriage must be one that can be dissolved at a moment’s notice. And that moment will be when he learns about you. Because the second he does, he will come to Tate Hall, and he will torment us.” His eyes were firm and his voice like steel. This was something he was not going to retreat from, no matter how much I tried. Which meant I needed to decide whether or not to accept his condition.
“And if this happens years from now? What if we have children? Would you turn them away also?”
“We won’t. We can’t. I’m not offering you that kind of marriage.”
Heat rose to my face. “What are you saying?” David was as confusing as ever, and this was something I refused to be confused about. “Is ours to be ...”
“We won’t be sharing a bed,” he said bluntly. If I expected him to blush or be embarrassed by our conversation, I was wrong. Heonly held my eyes steady. “We can’t have any impediments when you leave.”
Impediments.
