Page 74 of An Inconvenient Duke

Her slender shoulders sank under an invisible weight, as if the mere thought of why she was doing all this was enough in itself to defeat her.

“Not just wives but daughters, sisters, aunts… So many women! We have no idea how many are suffering in silence and fear. Harriett was one. I suspect that Beatrice is another.” She met his somber gaze, admitting, “I could be one, if I make the same mistake and choose the wrong man to marry. One who hides what he’s really like or who changes after we’re wed.”

He slowly approached her and tilted up her chin with his fingers. The sight of glistening unshed tears of anger and frustration—and pain—stabbed into him.

“Is that why you haven’t married yet,” he asked gently, “because you’re afraid you’ll marry a man who will abuse you?”

“No. But that’s always a risk, though, isn’t it, in a world where men possess all the power and strength, where women have only what men grant them? Every woman who isn’t a fool fears that even just a little when she walks down the aisle. How could she not?”

He held his face inscrutable as he murmured, “The man who marries you would never do that.”

She squeezed shut her eyes. “Oh, how I wish I could believe that!”

“You can,” he assured her, every word a promise. “Because that man is going to be me.”

* * *

Her eyes flew open, and his determined expression nearly undid her. Suddenly, she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak—all she could do was gape at him while the world rose and plunged around her. He couldn’t have actually said…

“Pardon?”

Chuckling at her reaction, he slipped his arms around her waist to tug her against him. His pulse pounded so furiously that she could feel it throbbing into her until she couldn’t tell where his heartbeat ended and hers began.

“I love you.” He said that as simply as if he were commenting upon the weather, completely unaware of the twisting emotions those words sparked inside her. His lips brushed against her temple. “Marry me, Danielle.”

Her hands tightened on his shoulders as she struggled to find her voice to answer. Since she was a girl, she’d dreamt of hearing those words from him, let herself fantasize about what it would be like to have his love—

She’d not divulged the truth a few moments ago.Hewas the reason she’d not yet married. How could she pledge her life to another when she’d already fallen in love with him? But not once in all those years of fantasizing about this moment had she ever imagined this much pain and confusion. Because she knew the truth. He wanted more than marriage. He also wanted the end of Nightingale.

The ultimatum he was unwittingly giving her sliced through her chest like a blade and into her heart that even now pounded with foolish desire to agree, to accept his love, to be his wife…

She summoned every bit of her strength as she stepped out of his arms and whispered the soft challenge, “If you loved me, you wouldn’t ask me to give up Nightingale.” She blinked hard and fast. Damn those tears! “You would help me with it instead.”

His face darkened, his jaw clenched hard. “I willnothelp you into an early grave. For God’s sake, Danielle.”

He started to reach for her, but she stepped back, remaining out of his reach. If he touched her, she wouldn’t have the resolve to resist.

“How many women have you risked your reputation and your life to rescue?” When she began to protest that she hadn’t put herself at risk, he cut her off. “How many?”

She proudly raised her chin. “Ninety-seven.”

“And for every one of them you’ve rescued, there are more—ten, one hundred, one thousand—women you can’t save. What about those women? Why not work to change the lives ofallof them, not just the handful you’re able to help?” This time when he reached for her, he clasped her arms in his hands so she couldn’t retreat. “You can do more for those women by working to save all of them than you ever can risking your life to save one at a time. By speaking out and telling their stories. By using the network to hound MPs and peers to change the laws—to change England for all of them.”

When he slipped his arm around her, the embrace was bittersweet, because what he was suggesting would be the end of all her work. The end of actively helping women escape danger. A slow death by Parliamentary committee.

“There are women who live in fear of being killed every day,” she said, aghast at his suggestion, “and you’re asking me to take part in petticoat politics?”

“I’m asking you,” he corrected slowly and pointedly, reaching up to caress her cheek, “to save yourself by working to save all of them.”

All of them… Horrible memories flooded back of the bruises, cuts, burns, and scars she’d seen on the women Nightingale had rescued. A few of the women refused to admit the truth behind how they’d gotten them, still loyal to their apologetic abusers even at the very end when they were fleeing for their lives. Especially those attacks that weren’t physical, the ones that abused a woman’s mind and soul, done to bring her into submission or just out of sheer cruelty. How could women like those not think she was turning her back on them if she did as he wanted?

Anguish sliced at her insides. “I can’t give up Nightingale.”

“Not give it up. Change its mission.”

“I can’t!”

He didn’t understand how important Nightingale was to her, how he was pushing her into a corner and making her choose between him and the network. He didn’t understand the weight that she carried on her shoulders even now, the remorse over not being able to rescue more women. How did he expect her to turn her back on them just so she could capture her own happiness? The guilt would eat her alive!