"To make a point." His gray gaze remained steady, resolute. "To prove to you, once and for all, that life with me would be a living hell."
The music swelled as she gestured over the edge of the balcony. "That's not life. I don't need those people." She swallowed hard. "I need you, Tris."
"You don't."
"I do. But I cannot ruin my family's good name." Here she was, in the most beautiful dress she'd ever owned, and she'd never felt more wretched in her life. "I don't know what I can do."
"You can go back down there and find another man."
"I tried, damn you."
He looked startled at her language, or perhaps at the fact that she'd been pushed to it. A long silence stretched between them, and the music from below failed to fill it. Despite his stated resolve, she watched his gaze rake her form, then focus on his cameo. The steel in his eyes softened.
She moved closer and laid a gloved hand against his blue-and-white patterned waistcoat. "I think I'm in love with you," she confessed quietly.
The steel hardened again as he stepped back. "Think is the operative word. You cannot be in love with me."
"I know my feelings, Tris."
"You don't."
She fisted the hand that had fallen from his chest. "Stop telling me what I do and don't feel."
"Stop pretending you can change our circumstances by wishing."
"I know I cannot." She heard tears in her voice and cursed herself for them. "But I cannot change my feelings, either."
He sighed, a sigh burdened with age-old memories. "I've thought I was in love before, too. But it was never more than an illusion, and I won't make such an error again. Neither will you, once I leave and you come to your senses. Day after tomorrow, Alexandra, you'll wake up free of me."
She'd never be free of him, not in her heart. "Will you tell me about the ladies you loved?" she asked carefully.
He turned to stare blindly over the dancers. "There was a girl in Oxford who wouldn't wait for me when I had to leave. And a girl in Jamaica who wouldn't come back with me to England." His fingers gripped the rail. "More recently, there was a woman named Leticia. Miss Leticia Armstrong."
When he stopped there, she laid a hand over his on the rail. "What happened?"
"She's the daughter of a local baron. I met her around the time I inherited, when everything in my life seemed charmed. She seemed charming, too, and I was certain she returned my feelings. In fact, she swore her undying love. I asked her to wed me, and she accepted happily enough. But then scandal broke out, and when I suggested her reputation might suffer should she stand by my side, she readily agreed and fled."
Leticia. She must have been the woman who had taught him to waltz. Although Alexandra supposed she should be grateful for that, instead she hated Leticia—and the others—for hurting him. For turning him into a cynical man who refused to believe in love.
She studied his shadowed profile—so like the portrait she'd done of him years ago. Except his jaw looked harder, and his heart had hardened, too. "Leticia never loved you, or she'd have stayed with you. Perhaps she loved who you were—a marquess. She loved the life she imagined you'd give her. But when that life was threatened, her love disappeared. It wasn't true love."
"And neither was my love for her. Or the others. Each time, it dissipated easily enough. As will yours. You'll make a nice life for yourself—with another man." He finally turned to look at her, but it wasn't to offer hope. "I won't marry, Alexandra. Not you or anyone else."
She'd heard that from him before—too many times before—but he couldn't fool her any longer. While she understood that he didn't want to be responsible for a wife being ostracized by society, she also knew he didn't want to open himself up for more hurt. She knew he wanted her, in a physical sense, at least—he'd admitted as much more than once. But those three women had damaged him more than he'd admit. He'd built a wall around himself.
She wished she could figure out how to scale it, even as she knew that, for her sisters' sakes, she couldn't.
Unless…
"What if you're proven innocent?" she asked, stunned that she hadn't considered this angle before. Should he be exonerated, society would welcome him—and his wife—with open arms. "Did you ever search for the real killer?"
He looked defeated before he even opened his mouth. "I'm not convinced there was a killer—my uncle hadn't been himself since his family was lost. Men often die in their beds naturally, from hidden illnesses or a broken heart. He was ill—a mild chill, we all thought, though it might have been something more serious. But yes, I tried to find a culprit. And no, I'm not going to reopen the investigation now."
"Why not? Perhaps we can find new evidence."
"We?" Something like panic filled his eyes. "Stay out of this, Alexandra."
"But I could help—"
"No. No, you cannot." Below, the musicians struck up a waltz. "The matter is closed and has been for years. No one murdered my uncle. Forget it. Dance with me instead."
He pulled her into his arms, and they started moving together to the music, twirling across the wide, empty balcony. She found herself buffeted with emotions: frustration that he flatly refused to try to clear his name, sadness that they would probably never dance together again, happiness at finding herself this close to him if only for the space of a dance.
He drew her even closer, much closer than he had during their lesson. She felt his hard chest against her soft bosom, and her breasts seemed to ache in response. His large hand rested on her back, pressing her
