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He stepped back, and the cold air swooped in, freezing her chest. “Why couldn’t we?”

“Because…I mustn’t do this.”

She could not bear to hurt him. Could not bear to be hurt. Could not bear to reach for something wild and raw and beautiful, and then have it torn away.

She was saving herself, really. Saving them both. Love was not practical. Love was annihilating. Look what it had done to her father, to love and lose her mother. Look what it had done to Rowden to lose his parents so young. She was shielding them both from further hurt. She was doing the sensible thing.

Sophronia always did the sensible thing.

“Why the hell not?” he growled, his voice rough. He stepped back, but he curled his hands into fists at his sides, as if he wanted to strike something.

That gesture frightened her. Henry had been quick with his cutting words, and he had occasionally delivered a blow, usually the back of his hand across her cheek when he thought she was being pert or obstinate. When she did not want to plan a dinner for fourteen of his friends on the night Aunt Edmons had wanted to go to the theater for her birthday. When Sophronia said she would go to Hungerford to nurse her father through another spell instead of stay and be an ornament on Henry’s arm as he wooed a foreign prince to bank with Hinton’s.

Rowden would not hit her, not intentionally, but there were other ways he could destroy her.

She slid off the desk, looking at the bookcases, the walls, the bare ceiling, anywhere but at his face.

“We should go back. Lily will be looking for me. We have an engagement this afternoon.”

“It is hours until the afternoon.”

This was why she could not tell him her reasons; he would try to argue her out of them. She couldn’t recall one argument she had won with Rowden when they were younger. When he held fast, he always got his way, usually because she caved.

She could not afford to give in this time. And she could not bear to hurt him any more than she already had.

He lagged behind as she readjusted her dress and slipped from the library. He didn’t say a word as he relocked the door and then the gate. She bit back a moan as he linked his hands to help her mount Dulcinea and she had to touch his shoulder.

How she wanted to touch all of him. How she wanted to sink into him, be lost and never found.

They rode in silence back to Clarges Street, and Sophronia could almost hear it, the cracks forming in her heart. But this hurt was the lesser. She was being wise not to pursue this madness. And she had survived with a broken heart before.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Kennet & Avon Canal, in which Rowden was heavily invested, was moving closer to completion. The stretch between Newbury and Kintbury had opened last June to much fanfare and a sixty-foot barge floating into town carrying the band of the 15th Regiment of Dragoons. Rowden had brought Giles along for the ride, watching the boy wave to spectators who had gathered along the route. He’d been touched and amused by his cousin’s childish innocence, and he had suspected even then that Giles had taken up a habit of eating opium.

The Baron hadn’t been interested in investing in the canal, not when Rowden first approached him nor any time thereafter, as the company sought more funds for a project that continually grew in expenses. Lord Denford did not care to sink his money in ventures that would only pay off in the future; he wanted rewards in the much shorter term. Rowden also suspected his lordship had dismissed the opportunity simply because it was his hated nephew who was asking.

The letter Rowden held announced that work on the nine-mile stretch from Kintbury to Hungerford was progressing as planned, the chalk stream of the Kennet across the downs and river meadows providing little obstruction for the necessary locks and bridges. An opening ceremony was anticipated for October in Hungerford, and Rowden, as a principal investor and also a resident of the town, would of course wish to attend, in which case a seat was reserved for him on the triumphal barge. The thought of it made him seasick already.

The opening of the Kintbury branch last June had been one of the few times he’d seen Sophronia since Rowden had moved to London. She’d stood on the canal bridge with her father and both aunts, his and hers, and watched him float by beneath her. Her eyes had never left Rowden’s, not even when several of the Dragoons tried waving at the pretty matron, and he had watched nothing but her.

Giles had headed straight for them when they disembarked, of course, eager to describe the experience to the aunts. They all adjourned to a meal at the Dundas Arms in Kintbury, the new inn built to serve canal traffic and named in honor of the chairman of the canal company. Over a meal of baked trout and fried ruffe, accompanied by wine and cheese, Sophronia had mostly listened and smiled with a remote expression, and her conversation with Rowden had been cautious and guarded.

He later guessed that Sophronia, or rather Henry Hinton, had paid for the meal. Hinton died a few months later, yet Sophronia had never hinted he was ill. Nor had she let a word drop that there was aught amiss in her marital relations, though remarks she had made since then suggested she had not been happy.

Fool. He was the same dundering fool he’d been since he was eighteen, assuming that he was her best option, that Sophronia must want him when he wanted her so badly. Clearly, she was not prepared to conduct a dalliance with him, much less pursue any deeper attachment. There was nothing to hold them back from being together, in the Queen’s Library or anywhere. Yet still she had slid out of his grasp, as slippery as watercress, and gave him no good reason why.

The reason was obvious. He wasn’t enough for her to love him. He wasn’t enough for anyone. She’d chosen a safe life with Henry Hinton over a precarious existence with Rowden. His parents hadn’t loved him enough to take him with on their travels. His uncle clearly detested Rowden, and again the cause could only be to some fault in himself.

Now that she was free and could do as she wished, answering to no one, Sophronia still did not choose to be with him. He must lack something essential, something other people possessed and he did not, a quality so basic and evident he couldn’t even see it.

And if so, there was no reason to linger about, throwing himself in her way and making himself a fool. Rowden slid the letter into a pigeonhole in his desk. He’d decline to answer. He didn’t expect he’d be in Hungerford in October. Sophronia might be in Hungerford, setting up her girls’ school, and he would risk seeing her again as his barge floated by beneath her. Why torment himself with things he could not have? He was older now; damned well time he became wise.

“Your lady friend is in the women’s dining hall,” Bosley reported in his usual sepulchral tones when Rowden descended the stairs to the ground floor. “Your cousin is in one of the private parlors with Mr. Keeling and Mr. Foster. And your other recent female companion,” Bosley added blandly, “is occupied in the ladies’ gambling parlor with a new gentleman of her acquaintance.”

The porter’s slight emphasis on recent told Rowden whom he meant. Bosley kept his preeminent role precisely for his powers of discretion. “Is the gentleman winning?” Rowden asked.

“No, sir, and it seems to be putting him out of temper.”