“A pleasant evening,” he said. Selina did not look at him. Her elegant profile was thrown into perfect relief by the orange fire in the sky. Malcolm traced it with his eyes, waiting.
He had learned that she would speak to him, eventually, if he waited long enough. She would say something worth hearing.
“The doctor says there is no real danger. Aunt Ursula must rest until the bruising fades. He prescribed a poultice.”
“I imagine she was not pleased to be instructed to rest.”
Selina ducked her head, not quite managing to hide her smile. “No.” She turned to him, her face half shadowed, half aglow with the gorgeous sunset. Her eyes were wide, their habitual mask fallen away.
She was radiant. She was always radiant, of course, or he would never have noticed her. Malcolm could not deny that he was a shallow man in many ways, enamoured of beautiful things.
But the beauty of Selina opening her heart to him was a far purer, more perfect one than any physical perfection he had admired before.
“Can you forgive me for the way I spoke to you earlier?”
He smiled wryly. “Only if you forgive me for driving my phaeton into a ditch to force entry into Lady Aldershot’s house.”
Selina extended her hand. “Friends?”
He took it, felt its softness and warmth, and held it steady for a moment. “Can we really be friends, my lady?”
Her fingers stilled in his hand. “Because of the Twynham election?”
“That, too.” He gave her hand a single, solemn shake, and let her go. “May I take you out for a drive tomorrow? If my carriage is repaired in time?”
“No.”
He hadn’t been expecting that, so unequivocal and sudden. Percy raised his head in Selina’s lap, sensing the discordant note in the air.
“Why not?”
The mask descended. “That’s what courting couples do.”
“I know. That’s why I asked you.” He flexed his fingers in his lap, cold and empty without her hand. “We must stop dancing around the question, Selina. One of us has to be honest. Would you like me to speak to your brother first? I’d have thought you could do without his permission, but if it would make you happier –”
“I do not wish to be courted.” The words were flat, final. The ring of command in them would have put a queen to shame.
Well, Malcolm could play at that game. “And I wish to court you. So there it is. One of us will have our way.” He jutted out his chin as she stared at him, shocked into silence. “I am not accustomed to losing.”
“I am.” Blast. She could snuff out her anger like a candle, leaving nothing but softness and smoke behind. Leaving him feeling like a brute for challenging her. “I have lost a great many things. The thought of losing even one more fills me with such horror…” She glanced toward the house, her eyes seeking out the yellow glow in the window upstairs. “Take Aunt Ursula. She is old. She grows more frail every day. Well, I am the same. Not outside, perhaps, but in my heart. Could I recover from the loss of her, the way I did from the loss of my parents? Could I recover from the loss of a lover today, as I recovered from Jeffrey?” She shook her head, weary and sad. “I loved them, all three of them, with a half-grown, childlike love. It would be different today. It would be dreadful. I told you that I felt Jeffrey’s death like a severed limb. What if the next loss tears out my heart?”
Malcolm reached out, his hand trailing lightly down her shoulder. The glow of sunset had faded, the radiant light changing to the cool blue of night, but she was just as devastating. Just as proud, just as lovely, just as unreachable. “What if I offered you something different?” he asked. “Hardly anyone in my position marries for love. As Duchess of Caversham you would be the foremost woman in the country. I can offer you my wealth, my influence. The life you deserve. Does it not hold the faintest appeal? Is it not worth the risk of developing…” He smiled, though he did not feel like it. “A little unwanted tenderness?”
Selina did not answer. Malcolm reluctantly left off his fingertip exploration of her slender arm. “Besides,” he said, through a mouth that was growing dry. “You have made it perfectly clear that you all but despise me. I should have thought the risk of falling in love was minimal at best.”
“Don’t sound so bitter about it, Caversham.” Her lips twisted into an ironic smile. “I think you know that I would not hate you nearly as much if you did not make me feel things I hate to feel. Things I thought I had set aside forever.”
Hope surged, wild and unlooked-for, in Malcolm’s chest. He had not realised how much the hopelessness of his pursuit of Selina had oppressed him until that moment, when it seemed that the weight might finally be lifted.
“I have never lost a loved one,” he said, the confession spilling out of him, as though by opening his heart he could ensnare hers. “I don’t think I can really understand it. The fear, the pain.”
He had taken her by surprise. She studied him carefully, as though she thought he might be lying. Her wilful lips pressed together, tempting him to coax them open again.
With his mouth on hers, she would not find it so easy to deny him. Icicles could melt.
But he owed her something first. A secret of his own.
“Your mother?” Selina asked. “Surely you loved her?”
“Died in childbirth. Father never spoke of her.”
“And him?”
“Ah. The eighth Duke of Caversham.” Malcolm rubbed his hands against his thighs, beginning to feel the night-time chill. “You must have heard of him. They called him the Lion Duke.”
“He was a great man.
