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She sank down on to the nearest piece of furniture, since her legs suddenly decided to give way.
‘Mistake?’ She shook her head again. ‘You said nothing would have induced you to marry Miss Waverley...’
‘That was not the mistake I was about to make. It was far worse. I had just decided that all women were so untrustworthy that it didn’t matter who I married. I had just decided to walk into the ballroom, ask the first relatively attractive one who batted her eyelashes at me to dance, and, if she didn’t bore me too greatly, to propose to her and get the whole wretched business over and done with.
‘But then you showed me that there are women who have a sense of honour and decency. And that if I married just any woman, I would doom myself, and probably my children, to a lifetime of regret. I decided that I wanted to marry a woman like you, Miss Gibson. A woman who would be loyal, and decent, and honest. Even painfully honest, if she didn’t agree with the way I tend to act as I wish. And before much longer, I didn’t want to just marry a woman like you,’ he bellowed. ‘I wanted only you.’
‘You have always wanted me? Even when I—?’
‘Wore the most ridiculous outfit and made a spectacle of yourself, just to teach me a lesson,’ he agreed gloomily.
‘So then, why are you trying to find ways to get out of it? I have said I will marry you. And I won’t go back on my word.’
‘It isn’t enough. I thought it would be, but it isn’t.’ He turned round and gripped the mantelpiece with both hands, his head bowed as though he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders.
‘Dammit, you must be the only woman in London so innocent that you haven’t noticed how hard I’ve been trying to seduce you. The depths to which I’ve stooped to get you to this point. I wove a sensual web round you, lured you into that room, then reduced you to a state of mindless passion, deliberately, so I could take your virginity that night. Haven’t you realised it yet?’
‘No, I...’ She sat back, stunned. It hadn’t been farewell then, that night. He’d been trying to stop her from ending their relationship in the only way he knew how.
And yet when it came to it, he hadn’t been able to go through with it.
‘Why did you stop, then?’
‘You smiled at me,’ he groaned. ‘You looked so trusting... How could I abuse that trust by robbing you of your right to choose? After you’d shown me how important it was? That was the moment I realised that I didn’t just want to possess you and make you do what I want. I wanted you to...’ He paused. His knuckles went white. ‘I want the impossible. I want you to love me.’
‘Oh, that’s...’ a little sob escaped her throat ‘...that’s wonderful!’
‘What?’ He spun round so quickly that for a moment he lost his balance and had to clutch at the mantelpiece to regain it. ‘What is wonderful?’
‘That you want me so much you were prepared to go to those lengths. That you cared enough about me to put my wishes before your own for once. I know how much that must have cost you.’
‘Yes. You know me for the selfish bastard I am,’ he said bitterly.
‘But if all this is true,’ she said, suddenly puzzled by one glaring inconsistency in his argument, ‘why on earth didn’t you just propose to me in the conventional manner? Why did you have to make it all so complicated?’
‘You wouldn’t have accepted,’ he said with conviction. ‘Why would you? You hadn’t been in town five minutes before you learned of my reputation. How could a girl with such high moral standards stoop to consider an alliance with a serial adulterer?’
She looked thoughtful. ‘It has often occurred to me to wonder why you consider yourself so very bad. You don’t frequent brothels, or keep a string of mistresses, tossing them and their offspring aside once you’ve grown bored, like so many other men of rank. And I have never seen you the worse for drink.’
He grimaced with distaste. ‘I do not like having my wits addled. Drink dulls the senses and makes fools of men I could otherwise respect. Do you think I wish to figure in society as a fool?’ He made a slashing motion with his hand. ‘But like all men of my class I did commence my sexual career in a brothel. It was just that I soon found out I’m too fastidious to frequent such establishments. I graduated to keeping a string of mistresses, though that...’ he snorted in derision ‘...palled swiftly, too. There is something so very mercenary about the arrangement.’
