“My life is here now, Rowarth,” she said. “Flattered as I am by your proposal, I believe that it would be a mistake to try to re-create what we had.”
He had gone very still. There was a hard, determined light in his eyes. “Last night you told me that you loved me.”
Had she? She had no recollection of it at all, but during their impassioned lovemaking it would have been fatally easy to pour out all the feelings she had harbored for him during those five long, lonely years.
“Did I say that?” She forced lightness into her tone, making the entire experience sound no more than a pleasant tumble rather than something that had touched her soul. “A figure of speech, my dear. I certainly enjoyed it—”
He looked as though he was going to argue. He looked as though he did not believe her. Her defenses felt perilously weak. One word from him and she might falter. She moved to put a stop to it before it had started.
“I believe a gentleman can accept a refusal with good grace?”
Now he looked really angry. “If you wish to put it like that…” He bit the words out. “You tie my hands, madam. I will say no more.”
He leaped from the bed, magnificently unconcerned about his nudity, and gathered up his clothes, throwing them on haphazardly with swift, angry movements before wrenching open the door. Then he looked back.
“Farewell, Eve,” he said.
She heard his furious steps on the stairs, heard also Joan’s startled squeak as they met in the shop doorway and heard the door slam behind him. She lay still and forced herself not to watch him walk away from her because she knew that if she did she would change her mind and run after him and that was the one thing she could not permit herself to do.
It had been the most damnably miserable day. No matter that the sun poured down from a cloudless sky and the pavements of Fortune’s Folly bustled with people shopping, taking the waters or walking on Fortune Row. Eve was unhappy and Joan shook her head over her and brought her endless cups of tea for solace.
“I told you so,” Joan said. “No good ever comes from tangling with handsome gentlemen.”
“I am not tangled,” Eve snapped. “He has gone.”
Business was improving. A young lady had called by that morning. Miss Alice Lister had brought in a footstool to sell with an enormous, vulgar coat of arms on it.
“I’m afraid my mother embroidered it,” she said sadly. “She will sew our family crest on anything that doesn’t move away fast enough. Please, could you get rid it for me? I truly cannot bear to look at it.”
Eve had chatted with her and had smiled and sorted out the stock that had come in over the past few days and the time had dragged, the hands of the clock edging around so slowly into a future that now seemed colorless and gray. She had sent Rowarth away again because it was the only thing that she could do, for his sake and her own. Now all she had to do was forget him for a second time; no easy matter when she ached for him with every particle of her being.
At three-thirty the doorbell clanged again. Eve had been dealing with the accounts—hateful job—while Joan was in the village. She came out into the shop in time to hear the key turn in the lock and the shutters rattle closed.
“What on earth—”
Rowarth.
Impossible.
He was standing just inside the door. He had the key in his hand. Shaking, Eve moved several of the counter items at random. “I thought you had gone,” she said foolishly, since he was standing right before her.
“I’ve come to claim something I lost.” He sounded confident, authoritative, the humor lurking just below the surface. Eve’s heart leaped and she tried to quell its insistent beat.
“This is a pawnbroker’s shop,” she said, “not a lost property office.”
Rowarth smiled. Her stomach dipped. “I appreciate that. And there is another difficulty, too, I fear. I cannot pay you. What I want is beyond price. You have to give it to me freely.”
“That isn’t the way that I do business.”
“It is now. I want your love. Your hand in marriage.”
“My love?” Her voice sounded squeaky as a rusty gate. “Marriage? Rowarth, I told you this morning—”
“You told me that your words of love meant nothing. I think that you lied. I think you sent me away because you are afraid to take the risk.”
Eve stared at him, unwilling, unable to lie again. That morning it had been painful enough. “I cannot be held to anything I said in the throes of passion. It was so blissful I probably would have said anything…”
Rowarth smiled again, devastating, wicked. She felt light-headed, dizzy with love for him. “Eve…” He shook his head. “Take the risk. I love you—you make me happy, a better man. I hope I make you happy, too. So we will wed.”
The blunt male logic of it made it sound so simple.
Eve’s throat closed with tears. How to dissuade him now? He had come several steps closer. There was a smile in his eyes and a confidence about him that said he knew now how this would end. She could not hurt him again, could not lie.
“We cannot marry,” she said defiantly. “I was your mistress. I am unsuitable. Everyone will talk scandal.”
He looked unmoved. “I have had a great deal more women than you have had men, my dear.” He shrugged. “Does the past matter, if we love each other?”
Actually she found it did. She was consumed with jealousy for all those women. She wanted to rip them to shreds.
“If you believe that my past does not matter, you are mistaken,” she said. “No one will receive me.”
He looked regretful. “Some will because of the title. But I know that it is a great deal to ask of you. Do you love me enough to do it?” Then, as she hesitated, knowing she was only making excuses anyway, he added, “Eve, you know that I am no callow youth with unrealistic ideals. I’m old and cynical yet despite that I know that once I have found love—the real thing—I cannot afford to let it go if I am ever to be happy again.”
Eve picked up a cuckoo clock, concentrating fiercely on it. “I cannot. I am illegitimate, and ill-educated—”
He took the clock from her, placed it carefully on the desk and then took her hands, his gaze suddenly intent. “You may recall that we have had this conversation before. I do not care about your parentage or your education. You are loving and generous and warm and the most special woman in the world and I knew it from the moment we first met.”
She could not look at him. She tried to free herself and was held fast.
“Rowarth,” she said again, and she could hear the unsteady note in her voice and cursed herself for it. “How many dukes do you know who married their mistresses?”
He was actually counting. She could see it. “Three,” he said, at last. “Dunston, Glenroth and Shefford. The Duchess of Shefford called herself an actress but we all knew—”
“Rowarth!”
“I beg your pardon.” He sounded genuinely apologetic. “But you are scared, Eve. You are making excuses.”
She was. It was true. She so desperately wanted to accept him and to lay to rest the very last secret between them, yet she knew that if she did she ran the biggest risk of all, that of losing him for good.
“Eve, look at me,” Rowarth said. “Tell me what truly troubles you.”
It was pointless to resist. He was determined and his gentleness undermined every last defense she had.
She let go of her last secret. “I told you that I lost our baby five years ago.” She looked up into his eyes. “What I did not tell you, Rowarth, was that Dr. Culpepper explained that I would never bear more children.” She took a deep, painful breath. “I had not even known I wanted a child but then to be told I could never again bear one…it almost destroyed me.” She covered her face briefly then let her hands fall. She needed to end this. When he had gone she could break down. “But the point is that we cannot wed, Rowarth. We could not then and we cannot now, for I would never be able to give you an heir. That was why I ran
away.”
There, it was out. The painful truth that she had nursed to herself all these years was finally exposed in the light. She had never talked of it with anyone. It was too difficult. The wound had never healed, for the hurt had run too deep. It had scarred over, her defenses imperfect, aching when something reminded her, or when, like now, the barrenness of her future was spread before her in all its sterile detail.
Rowarth’s expression had changed. She had known it would. She could not hit him with such a shocking truth and expect everything to be the same. He would withdraw from her now, free himself and beat a hasty retreat. He would do it charmingly, of course, with expressions of deep regret and commiseration even as he headed for the door, but he would leave her nevertheless.
“Eve, I am so very sorry.”
He sounded sincere. Eve was sure he was. She stifled a strong desire to throw herself into his arms and beg him to make everything right, because of course he could not. No one could. She drew herself up.
“Thank you.” Inexplicably he was still holding her hands and she realized that he had made no move to go. He was watching her, the deepest compassion in his face. She swallowed the enormous lump in her throat.
Why did he not go? She did not want his sympathy. It would be unendurable.
“Thank you,” she said again, very quickly. “But you must see…” She wished she did not have to spell it out. “It would be quite impossible for us—for you. You need an heir for Welburn. I know you love the place very deeply and would want to pass it on to your son. So…”
So why do you not simply go, put an end to this, walk away?
He dropped her hands at last and straightened up. Her body sagged with relief as well as misery.
“I am afraid that I do not.” He sounded terribly polite. Eve felt confused.
“Do not what?”
Unbelievably, there was still a spark of humor in his eyes. Her battered heart lifted to see it before plunging back down again. How could she feel even remotely happy when she was banishing forever the love of her life?
“I am afraid that I do not see why this makes it impossible for us to be together.”
She stared at him, utterly unable to comprehend what she was hearing.
“But, Rowarth—”
“My darling Eve.” Now, his arms went about her. Now the comfort and the peace she craved was so close but she did not quite dare to reach out to grasp it. He pressed his lips to her hair and spoke softly. “I am sorry for all you have suffered, Eve. I am even more sorry that I was not beside you when you needed me. I cannot imagine what you have been through or what it feels like for you, though I would do anything in my power to take away those memories. Alas, I cannot. But I can promise to devote myself to your future and your happiness always, if only you will let me.”
“But, Rowarth—” Her throat was clogged with tears. She never normally cried and now she was turning into a watering pot. It was infuriating. “The dukedom! Pray, do not be so foolish—”
“My darling Eve,” he said again, his lips moving to brush her ear, making her shiver, “my current heir is my nephew, and he loves Welburn almost as much as I did at his age. I am sure he has been secretly praying that I will never wed so that he can inherit. And I should be glad if he did.”
“Oh!” Eve felt taken aback, almost shocked. “But surely a man wants a son?”
Rowarth was strong enough not to deny it.
“It would have been very special,” he acknowledged, “to have had a son—or a daughter—with you.” For a moment they stood locked together in contemplation of a different future, one that could not be. Then Rowarth’s arms tightened about her.
“But I want you, Eve, more than anything else in the entire world. You are the one who completes me. You are all I need.”
Eve felt his compassion and his tenderness and his love touch her soul, taking away the darkness, and she turned her face up to his.
“I have never loved anyone but you,” she whispered. “I cannot believe this is true. It makes me feel quite giddy.”
She saw a smile curve his sensuous mouth. “My sweet, I have always said that you are a very inexperienced courtesan. To love only one man in your entire life…”
She touched his cheek lightly, lovingly. “And you love me, too.”
“So much that it consumes me,” Rowarth said. “I love you even more than I did five years ago. I had no idea it could be like this.”
“So we may learn about love together.” Her heart unfurled, light banishing the darkness, healing her. A tear escaped from the corner of her eye and Rowarth caught it with one finger and traced the line of her cheek.
“You have worked very hard for all that you have achieved here,” he said, as the cuckoo clock chimed loudly from the desk.
“That’s true. I have.” Eve looked around at the shabby shop and felt a rush of affection for it.
“You once said that you preferred being a pawnbroker to being a duchess.”
“Perhaps I shall have to reconsider.”
“I thought,” Rowarth said, “that you might wish to keep the shop anyway. Perhaps Joan could run it for you?”
“I think that she would like that very much.” Eve pressed her fingers to his lips. “How generous you are to risk offering me a means of escape should I find I really do prefer being a pawnbroker to being a duchess.”
“You will not want to escape.” His arms about her told her that he would never let her go now he had found her again. The happiness swelled within Eve and this time she dared to trust it. “You are arrogant,” she whispered.
He laughed. “So you keep telling me.” His voice changed. “Accept me, Eve. Come away with me.”
Her heart was so light and full of joy she thought she might burst. “I thought that you had a job to do,” she teased. “You have not yet caught Warren Sampson.”
“The other Guardians can do that,” Rowarth said. “Hawkesbury will not rest until he has Sampson behind bars.”
“And what will you be doing meanwhile?” Eve asked, standing on tiptoe to kiss him.
“I shall be on my wedding trip with you.” Rowarth said. He bent his head and his lips met hers. “We can go wherever you wish, my love. Wherever you are is my heart’s home and it always will be.”
If you liked this story, check out the rest of Nicola Cornicks Brides of Fortune series in both print and eBook formats from HQN Books!
THE CONFESSIONS OF A DUCHESS
(June 2009)
THE SCANDALS OF AN INNOCENT
(July 2009)
THE UNDOING OF A LADY
(August 2009)
Plus, don’t forget these other Nicola Cornick titles available now as eBooks!
KIDNAPPED: HIS INNOCENT MISTRESS
THE UNMASKING OF LADY LOVELESS
UNMASKED
THE LAST RAKE IN LONDON
CHRISTMAS WEDDING BELLES
LORD OF SCANDAL
TANGLED DESTINIES
For more information on Nicola Cornick and her books, visit
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“A rising start of the Regency romance arena”
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ISBN: 978-1-4268-3657-2
The Secrets of a Courtesan
Copyright © 2009 by Nicola Cornick
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