Page 80 of The Duke on Her List
“Yes,” Gabriel agreed, a strange tiredness coming over him. “Helena has always known what she wanted.”
“Are we going to give it to her?”
He sighed and raked a hand through his hair. “Perhaps we had better sit down,” he said. “I don’t see any other option but for the two of us to at least have a short conversation. If she hears us talking for a while, if she hears our voices, she may decide that we’ve met with her demands and release us. It’s the best we can do, I think.”
He walked over to a chair and sank into it, and after a moment, Agnes joined him.
It seemed impossible that they would ever get any sort of conversation s tarted. He had no idea where to begin, and it was abundantly clear that Agnes didn’t either. She looked at him, then looked away, and a shiver wracked her frame.
“Agnes,” he said at last. “You know…we don’t have to be enemies.”
She looked up at him again, her eyes narrowed. “Are you going to say that we can be friends?” she asked bitterly. “I hope you’re not going to say that to me, Gabriel.”
“You don’t want to be friends?”
She scoffed and didn’t reply.
He supposed he couldn’t blame her for that response.
“Agnes,” he tried again. “I know that things didn’t exactly end well between the two of us. I know you’re upset with me.”
“You’re upset withme,” she countered. “You’re the one who kissed me and then left.”
“What—Agnes, you told me to go,” he protested. “You’re upset with me for leaving after that kiss? You told me that it was time for our arrangement to come to an end. I was trying to honor what you wanted.”
“You were angry when you left,” she fired back. “Don’t try to tell me otherwise, as though I didn’t see that look on your face. I know you were angry.”
“All right…maybe I was, a bit, in the moment,” he said. “But only…it was such an abrupt ending to everything, that’s all. I was shocked by it. I thought you were cold. I thought that you were sending me off because you’d gotten everything you wanted from me, and…well, to tell you the truth, that hurt.”
Her gaze fell.
For a moment, he thought she might have changed her mindset—that she might have heard him say he had been hurt and decided to be gentle.
But when she lifted her head again, her eyes were flashing. “You can’t say that,” she said. Her voice was tight. “You can’t accuse me of being cold because I was only in it to get what I wanted. You were in it for the same reasons. You only cared about putting on a show of courtship to drive away the people who were trying to work their way into your life. Though, if I’m honest, Gabriel, I’m at a loss now to understand what the point of it all was. How can you claim to have cared about keeping people away from you when at the earliest convenience you’ve turned around and decided to seek a marriage after all?”
Her cheeks were pink. Gabriel couldn’t help staring. Even roused to anger like this, she was beautiful. Even now, he found himself aching to take her in his arms and kiss her again.
If I didn’t know better, I would think that was Helena’s goal in locking us in here together! But it couldn’t be, of course, because she knows nothing of the kiss we shared before.
“I’m not seeking a marriage,” he said, and the moment he spoke the words, they were true. He had allowed himself to believe that he needed to throw his attention into other endeavors, that that was what Helena needed from him. But she didn’t. Of course, she didn’t. She would get through the coming seasons just fine. She was strong and carried herself well.
And it’s Agnes she wants, not some random woman to stand in her place.
And it’s Agnes I want as well.
The realization rendered him silent for a moment. He regarded her, pondering the idea. Was it too foolish a thought, or was there a chance it had merit? Was there any way she could still be his?
“If you’re not seeking a marriage, why did Helena say that you were?” Agnes asked, and there was a slight tremor in her voice.
“Helena knows that I’ve been unhappy,” Gabriel said quietly. “She’s been unhappy too.”
His heart was racing. Suddenly, everything had shifted. Suddenly, he knew exactly what he wanted, and he knew that he was going to name it out loud. Once he did, there would be no going back. Maybe she would be his, or maybe she wouldn’t, but either way, he would have to accept it.
It seemed vitally important that he find the right words to say. But at the same time, he couldn’t begin to fathom what those words might be.
It will come to me. It will have to. My heart knows the words, surely, even if my mind does not…
“Why have you been unhappy?” Agnes asked. “Why has she?”
