Page 102 of The Devil's Accidental Duchess
“What do you want?” she asked crisply, recovering.
He moved closer. “I came to tell you that I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? For what?” She turned her gaze away. It was too hard to look at him, knowing she might have to leave before tomorrow.
He came closer still. “I am sorry for making you doubt me. I am sorry for being cruel. I am sorry for not… thinking of the future but wallowing in the past. I am sorry for hurting you, for thinking I had any right to deny you your dreams when, in truth, they are my dreams too.”
A lump formed in her throat while confusion swirled in her mind. What did that mean? What were his dreams?
“You haven’t been cruel,” she said, frowning.
“I have, in ways I didn’t understand,” he countered. “I was cruel to ask you to marry me while taking away your opportunity to be a mother.”
She cleared her throat. “With respect, you wereforcedinto an engagement with me.”
“And I have never been gladder for any twist of fate,” he said as he stopped in front of her and lowered himself slowly to his knees. “Still, I should not have asked you to give up the idea of children when this is my chance to prove that I do not carry my father’s demons in my blood.”
Selina couldn’t yet bring herself to look at him, in case he was some figment of her imagination saying exactly what she had been hoping to hear. Maybe she had dozed off and was now dreaming. The wake-up would be excruciating, if so.
“My sister, coarse and uncouth though she is, made me realize what an idiot I was being,” he continued. “She painted a picture of Ashbrook Manor as a happy place, filled with our children, our laughter, our love, our joy. Yours and mine.”
Selina could see it, too. Children playing in those immaculate gardens, causing chaos in the hallways and rooms, climbing into bed with her and Philip of a morning to begin the day together as a family.
It was that very vision that had made his refusal so painful.
Our love…
The words fizzed in her mind, a warm thought that tingled all the way to her heart.
“I cannot lose you, Selina,” he said softly, his hand coming to rest on her thigh. “I love you, and I would fight a thousand battles to keep you, even if they are just wars in my mind, waged against a dead man.”
She looked at him at last, her breath catching. “You love me? Truly?”
“I do,” he replied, with such certainty that her feelings felt set in fated stone. “I love you, and I never want to lose you or what we might build together here in this manor. I want the dream of us, my love, and a family of our own—children who shall never know a single moment of cruelty.”
Her heart ached for him, knowing what he had endured. It was a wonder that he had notturned out like his father or that war had not turned him cold and cruel. Indeed, from their first meeting, he had not been the cold and callous man that Lizzy had insisted he was.
Rather than wearing his scars on the outside, he wore them on the inside, and she desperately wished to be the one to help heal them.
But she could not let him think that he had won her over so easily.
“How can I possibly trust you?” she said, shaking her head.
“Because I ran to you when you were in danger, and I would do the same thing over and over if I had to,” he replied. “But keeping you safe is not enough. I want to keep you happy. Because I love you, and that means I will never hurt you or let you down again, not if I can help it. I want a future with you, my love, with as many children as your heart desires.”
Her breath stuttered. “What… changed your mind?”
She knew Lizzy was part of it, of course, but that could not be everything. He was certainly not the kind of person who listened to his sister much.
“What changed my mind?” he echoed with a smile, his hand sliding up her thigh, her hip, the curve of her waist, his arm curving around her. “You, my love. You.”
He pulled her to him, and his mouth found hers in a fierce, fervent kiss that she couldn’t help but return.
Her arms wrapped around his neck, and his powerful body shifted between her thighs as he pulled her closer, bringing her to the edge of the armchair.
In that moment, she forgave him entirely.
