Page 73 of The Odyssean Duke

“I know that I seem confident,” Evelina said. “Sometimes, I even believe that I am. However, I have only just realized that I have carried these feelings of inadequacy inside me for…a very long time. I think that I have wanted…”

She shook her head, seemingly frustrated by her inability to express exactly what she felt.

“Take your time,” Stephan said softly.

Evelina cast him a grateful look. “I thought that I was unlovable and unwanted. My father was…not a good husband and often an absent father. And the late Earl of Thornwall did not want me. He would not even touch me. I just…I thought that there must be something wrong with me. How could he delight so much in the company of his courtesans and not even wish to touch hisown lawfully wedded wife? But what we did—just a while ago—it taught me that…well, it was different.”

Evelina sighed contentedly, and Stephan’s heart sank like a stone. It would be easy to agree with her. Their congress had been wonderful, and he had thought many times during the act that he was fortunate to have such a lovely and passionate wife. What was hedoing?

Stephan had wanted a wife who would detest his involvement in her life. That was the arrangement they had agreed to. He would marry Evelina, they would produce an heir, and there would be no romantic entanglement, no tender feelings, from either of them.

She keptsmilingat him, though, with a soft look in her eyes. Fondness! Evelina was fond of him, and Stephan knew that he had erred. He had let Evelina become too much of his life.

He had let her put flowers in every room and open the drapes to let in the sunlight. He had let her bring her friends into the parlor and entertain them. He had even let her use his kitchens to bake a cake instead of chastising her about what constituted proper behavior for a duchess.

Stephan should not have let her do any of that, but somehow, his respect for Evelina as a strong and independent woman had blossomed into something far more dangerous. Now, what was he supposed to do?

“You are not unlovable.” The words were strangling him. She was not unwanted because with a sharp and horrifying clarity, he realized that he might find her lovable. “I mean, I was rejected by my entire family; I have only felt as though I belonged at war. If either of us is unlovable, it is me.”

There—he had comforted Evelina and made it apparent that he was not a man that she should ever be fond of.

Is she fond of me?

Stephan could not decide if that possibility was more or less horrifying than his own affection for Evelina. If they loved one another, they might wish to be something more than a marriage of convenience, and that was doomed to fail. Stephan could not possibly manage to keep Evelina’s affections.

“You are not unlovable either,” Evelina said.

Stephan shook his head. “I disagree.”

“Why?” she asked. “There is no shame in admitting that you are a human being with wants and needs. Wanting intimacy is not some weakness.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“I think so. You know…I do want a child, but I wonder if—if maybe—if maybe it was just that I was lonely. I wanted a child to love me unconditionally. Maybe that is because I feared no oneever would, and it was so hard seeing my friends marry and have children of their own, while I was left all alone.”

His chest was tight. Something like panic rose inside him as he looked at her. Evelina was so vulnerable in that moment, expressing things which he had never imagined she would.

“During these past few weeks with you…” she trailed off. “I still want a baby, and I know you need one. But after last night—and waking up beside you—I also wonder if my priorities have changed a little. Maybe yours have, too.”

“Why would you say that?”

“Because you were willing to give me time,” Evelina said, “when I was sick. You kept insisting that we had ample time for me to produce a child, but the truth is that we do not have much time. We never had. There are so many things which might go awry, yet…you have been so attentive to me.”

Stephan inhaled sharply. The words were like a knife to his chest. He knew all of that already, of course, but knowing something and hearing Evelina say it were two entirely different matters.

He could not love her, and she could not love him. Any real affection between them would amount to nothing. Stephan had never fled from danger before; he was dependable in battle. He hadn’t flinched from facing the worst that Napoleon had. Evelina, though?—

She was a foe he didn’t know how to handle. Even thinking of her as afoesent contradictory sensations of guilt and pleasure through him. She was not an enemy of any kind. She was his wife, but this arrangement was only one of convenience. What had gone wrong?

“I—I have to go,” he said.

Stephan needed the time and space to think. He needed to be away from Evelina.

“Go?” she echoed. “But why?”

“Because I—this—this cannot work between us!” Stephan exclaimed, climbing out of the bed. “It simply cannot.”

Evelina furrowed her brow and pursed her lips. “You care for me,” she said. “I know that you do. I—I think I have known for a long time, and it only just occurred to me. But you do.”