Page 75 of A Virgin to Tempt the Duke

“I am not angry with you.” She withdrew her hand from his at last, gently, with a finality that hurt more than if she’d snatched it away. “You have been honest with me. The fault is entirely my own.”

“You had every reason,” he said, low and miserable, though he could not have said what he meant by it, only that it felt unbearable to let her believe the wanting had been hers alone.

She looked at him then, something flickering across her face too quickly for him to name it before she mastered it again.

“Don’t,” she said quietly. “Please don’t say things like that and then tell me in the same breath that nothing can come of them. It is not kind, Frederick, even if you don’t intend it unkindly.”

He had no answer to that. He sat with the truth of it lodged somewhere beneath his ribs, knowing she was right and hating himself considerably for the knowing. He ran his hands through his hair and stifled a curse.

Maintain your control, damn it.

“Goodnight, Frederick.” Anna reached for the door handle before he could move to assist her, before he could find any words at all to keep her those last few seconds longer.

She stepped down onto the pavement with her chin lifted and her spine very straight, every inch the composed lady she had been raised to be, betrayed only by the faint unsteadiness of her hand as she gathered her skirts.

“Anna.” He came to the door after her, one hand braced against the frame. “Let me at least see you to your door?—”

“That won’t be necessary.” She did not turn around. “Thank you for tonight. Goodnight, Your Grace.”

She climbed the steps without looking back, and a moment later the door of her townhouse opened. She was swallowed into the warm light of the front hall, and the door closed, leaving Frederick standing alone on the cold pavement with his coat missing. It was forgotten, still, about her soft shoulders.

He was hit with an unmistakable, sinking certainty.

I have just done something I am going to regret, and for a very long time.

He did not, in the end, find a hackney back to the ball, not at first. Instead, he sat in the quiet dark street outside her house for longer than he could account for.

He looked up at the window, and after a moment a light appeared in it. He saw a candle carried by some unseen hand, throwing a warm square of gold out onto the cold street below.

He sat out on the street, watching it with the helplessness of a man who knows he has no right to be where he is and cannot make himself leave.

She is going to find someone else.The thought arrived with the flat, pitiless quality of simple fact.

She came to London for exactly that purpose, and she will succeed at it, because she succeeds at everything she puts her mind to. In fact, by this time next year she will be in some other man’s house with some other man’s name, and I will have givenher up for a principle I cannot even defend to myself at eleven o’clock on a cold street with her light in my eyes and the smell of her hair still on my collar.

The candle in the window moved, carried away into some inner room, and the square of gold disappeared, and the street went dark again.

Frederick looked at the blank window for a moment longer.

Then, he walked off in search of a hackney to take him home.

CHAPTER 28

There is always a ball. Or a garden party. Or a card evening. Or a breakfast… that stretches without end… It is exhausting!

June arrived in London with more invitations than hours, and more noise than content. Anna would have much preferred a hot cup of chamomile tea, an overstuffed settee, and a good book, yet Anna attended it all. She danced when she was asked and smiled at what was said to her. She was surprised to find her card was full, if not her heart.

This is exactly what I have come to London to do,she reminded herself repeatedly as she prepared for that evening’s musicale.A certain grumpy duke’s haunting fixture at nearly every outing does wonders to strengthen my resolve.

His presence was a looming reminder of what happened, and more cruelly, of what would never happen again. She would see him at Rachel’s side, then most conveniently deep in conversation with someone else whenever Anna approached.

Not once did he look at her, at least not that she could see, and certainly not the way he had in the dark of that carriage three weeks ago. Anna wondered if she had imagined the whole thing, but the feeling of his tongue was still too fresh, too real.

She shuddered at the memory as she grabbed a pin to tame a loose curl.

Yes, I suppose he excised the whole thing with a surgeon’s precision, which is,she supposed as she held the pin in front of her,entirely his prerogative.

His history with women was a secret to the ton, but she had heard bits from Rachel. He had always been discreet. He had favored widows, women whose social footing was too sure to be damaged by a quiet dalliance. Anna thought in theory to have suited that pattern admirably, and that he had withdrawn anyway was the part she could not quite resolve.