“I know,” he said. “But I’m here anyway.”
Propping a pillow behind her back, she settled against the wall. “Why would someone want to hurt me?” Her voice had lost its bite—now it was small, uncertain, shaken.
Dominic’s jaw tensed. “That’s what I intend to find out.”
“But the footman is gone, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” Dominic responded. “But I’ll find him. And when I do, he will answer for what he’s done to you.”
Without another word, Dorothea reached for the glass and took a small sip. The taste was sharp and sour—like drinking vinegar laced with bitterness. She coughed as she set it back down.
“That is vile,” she muttered.
“It’s meant to be,” he said. “It’s for your own good.”
She stared at the glass, then back at him. “Don’t pretend you care what happens to me.”
“I do care.”
She narrowed her eyes. “That’s difficult to believe, considering you’re trying to annul our marriage.”
Dominic exhaled and returned to the chair beside her, rubbing a hand along his jaw. “That decision wasn’t as simple as you believe.”
She turned her face away. “If the annulment is granted, I’ll be ruined in the eyes of theton.And if it isn’t, I’ll be trapped in a marriage with a man who doesn’t want me.”
“I do want you,” he said, almost too quickly. “And that’s the problem.”
Dorothea turned to face him again, her brows raised in disbelief. “Pardon me if I don’t follow that logic.”
Dominic leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. His voice dropped to a murmur. “I care about you, Dorothea. More than I should. More than I dare to admit. But I’m not the man you think I am. I’m not sure I ever was.”
She searched his face for the sincerity, confusion, and heartache swirling in her chest. “I thought I knew you. I thought… I was falling for a man who might one day love me in return.”
She caught herself, clamping her mouth shut, but the damage had been done.
Silence stretched between them.
Dominic’s expression shifted—pain, guilt, longing, all in the flicker of a blink.
“You were,” he said softly. “But I lost that man somewhere along the way.”
Dorothea didn’t speak again. She simply looked at him—truly looked at him—and realized for the first time that the distance between them was not just emotional. It was haunted. Wounded.
And she didn’t know if love would be enough to bridge it.
Dominic suddenly pushed back from the chair as if the weight of their conversation had become too much to bear. Hestrode across the room and came to a halt before the hearth, bracing both hands on the edge of the mantel.
His voice, when it came, was low and raw. “I want the annulment because I do not want you bound to me. Not out of guilt. Not out of duty. I see the light in your eyes, and I fear I will smother it. You deserve a man who will love you freely, openly. A man who hasn’t been hollowed out by everything he’s seen and done.”
“And you couldn’t be that man?”
He flinched. “It is better that I not be tied to anyone. It’s safer for everyone.”
Dorothea watched him, her heart twisting. “Don’t you require an heir?” she asked, gently probing.
He turned his face away from her. “As I told you, I don’t want children.”
She swung her legs over the side of the bed and rose to her feet. With purposeful steps, she walked towards him and came to a stop just a breath away.
