Page 61 of The Duke on Her List
“I do feel better,” she told him. “The tea is helping, and so is the first. And…you were right to insist that we stay inside today. I’m really not up for the ball.”
“I could tell you weren’t,” he agreed, sipping his own tea. “Why did you get so upset with me when I suggested that we miss it? I can’t imagine you were that anxious to go.”
“Well, no,” she agreed. “I just…thought you would be. I know how important it is to you to show everyone that you’re in a courtship.”
He shrugged. “People are aware of our arrangement by now,” he said. “I do want to keep making appearances, but it isn’t crucial that we show ourselves at every event.”
“But if people are aware,” Agnes said carefully. She needed the answer to this question, but she was also feeling suddenly and strangely fearful of what it was going to be. She didn’t want toaccidentally say anything that would provoke him into ending their arrangement.
I really need to come to a decision about what I want.
That was true—but also, she knew what she wanted.
What she wanted was the entirety of the problem, because what she wanted was for Gabriel to remain in her life as long as he possibly could. And that was a dangerous desire.
She cleared her throat. “If people are aware,” she went on, “then why continue to attend functions with me at all? I mean to say—we’re going to end this thing eventually, aren't we?”
“Yes,” he agreed. “Eventually.”
Was it her imagination, or did he look a little uncomfortable? “Well,” she went on, “why don't we just end it now? I mean, I’m not saying we need to. But you seem determined to press on, and I just…I’d like to understand why you feel that way.”
“It’s difficult, isn't it,” he mused.
“What’s difficult?”
“Understanding each other’s motivations,” he clarified. “I’ve wondered about yours for a while now.”
“What do you mean?” She frowned. “I’ve been clear. My purpose in all of this has been nothing more than to complete the items on my list.”
“Yes,” he said. “And when I agreed to help you with that, I meant it, and I have no regrets about it—but I will admit to feeling some surprise. I was sure after the first item that the list was going to involve things like finding rare books. When you asked to be taken to a gentlemen’s club, I admit I was stunned—but then I thought, perhaps the point of the list is that you wish to experience things that are not open to young ladies of society and good breeding. Maybe you needed my help for that reason. And I could have understood that. But then…”
She watched him, having a feeling of where this was going, unsure of how to feel about it. Her heart raced.
He drew a breath. “As your list went on, I expected the items to become more complex. More difficult. But in a way, they became simpler.”
“You don’t mean to suggest that there was anything simple about that proposal, do you?” she blurted out.
“No,” he said. “But the desire behind it was as simple as they come.”
He narrowed his eyes—not in anger, but in open curiosity.
“Why don’t you wish to marry?”
Her gut clenched. “You aren’t proposing to me again, I hope.” Her voice shook a little as she said it. She wasn’t at all sure that she did hope that.
“No, I’m not,” Gabriel assured her, and Agnes deflated, though whether from relief or disappointment she couldn’t have said. “I’m just wondering. Why was it so important to you to remain unmarried? Because after today—after completing list item number four—I know one thing for certain. It’s not an aversion to romance. If you wanted to dance in the rain, you could have done so at any time, with your friends or on your own. You needed no assistance in achieving that. But that wasn’t what you wanted.” He leaned forward. “You wanted to share a dance with someone. You wanted the connection, and you wanted the romance.”
Agnes was taken aback. For a moment, she forgot to breathe. He was being so intensely forward, so direct about his thoughts—and yet, at the same time, he wasn’t wrong.
She had been disappointed in that dance at first, even though it had been exactly what she had asked for, because it had seemed…rote. As though he was only doing it because it was the next thing on the list. Not at all like the proposal, which had been special precisely because he had made it seem so real that she had been able to believe, for a moment, that someone truly wanted to marry her.
“If those are things you want,” Gabriel went on, “why resist the idea of marriage? You’re lovely. You could have found someone who wanted to marry you, if that was what you wanted. And yousaid no to my proposal. So I do believe that you are unmarried by choice. But you seem to long for a lot of things that would come along with marriage, if you were open to the idea of it. Why aren’t you?”
Agnes bit her lip. It wasn’t the kind of thing she usually spoke openly about. But there were just so few secrets left between herself and Gabriel—what was the point in trying to hide anything anymore?
“My father was a drunk,” she said quietly. “He drove us into debt, and…he drove my mother mad. Literally mad. His behavior was so impossible to predict, and no one ever felt safe in our home, my mother least of all. And she was trapped with him. Reeves and I had hopes of escaping and building lives of our own, but my mother would have been stuck in that house with him for the rest of her life.”
“Would have been?” Gabriel’s voice was quiet and thick with sympathy.
