My Once and Future Duke (The Wagers of Sin #1)(73)

“What do you want to happen?” Eliza prodded, obviously putting Lord Hastings from her mind. “Perhaps he’s the solution to your Grand Plan.”

Sophie sighed. “I doubt it.” Jack felt the weight of his heritage and duty very keenly, and the Dukes of Ware did not marry for affection, as he told her himself. Philip had once said his brother would be sure to marry the most boringly proper woman in London. Would he even imagine marriage to someone like her? It seemed unlikely, not least because he had never mentioned it.

Only once, on that last sunny morning at Alwyn House, had she thought for even a moment he might consider it: he’d snapped that their association needn’t lead to ruin. It had made her hope that he might want more, as she did. But when she cautiously asked what he meant, he turned his back and walked away. The only thing he did was ask if she really wanted it to be over, and with little other choice, she assured him she did.

Obviously she had lied. She wanted more, but Jack held all the say in that. When he agreed that he wouldn’t see her again, that he would pretend they had never been lovers, it told her all she needed to know. She still wanted him enough to overrule her own good sense and carry on an affair that could only end with her heart broken, but she wished he’d made even the smallest attempt to persuade her that he cared for her more deeply than that.

“Do you want him to be?” Eliza squeezed her hand. “If he did propose, would you accept?”

“Yes,” she whispered without thinking. The longing in the word surprised her, but obviously not Eliza, who was nodding.

“You made your plan to find a husband. Why can’t he be it?”

“He’s a duke,” she pointed out again.

“And you’re the granddaughter of a viscount.”

“The disowned granddaughter of a misanthropic viscount,” she corrected. “With scandalous parents and only the fortune I’ve won at the tables. Even if my connection to Makepeace were known, it would do me no good because I’m just as dead to him as my father was.”

“If the duke loves you, he won’t mind,” persisted Eliza.

“And I gamble every night,” Sophie went on. “He dislikes gambling.”

“If you married him, you wouldn’t need to gamble again. Would you give it up?”

She gave a dispirited laugh. Some nights it only felt like she went to Vega’s to pass the time until Jack knocked on her door. She hadn’t even checked her account there in a fortnight, something she’d never overlooked before. “Yes. But—-”

“Sophie.” Eliza pressed her hand again. “If you love him, you must tell him the truth.”

“That I love him?”

“No, about you. No love can flourish and grow without honesty.”

If Sophie had any secret that she kept more hidden than her affair with Jack, it was her history. She pulled free of Eliza’s grip. “Honesty could also be fatal.” She jumped up from her seat and paced to the window. “I fear he doesn’t want more than what we have now. Telling him everything would only confirm that I’m not fit to be a duchess.” Telling him everything might also cause him to reconsider their whole affair, and deep down Sophie feared that most of all. She had already accepted that she would never be a duchess, but now that she had embarked on this doomed, wonderful, secret, passionate affair, she wanted it to last as long as possible.

“Well.” Eliza gave her a sympathetic look. “You know the only way to find out. You must ask him—-after you tell him the truth about yourself.”

Sophie folded her arms and gazed out at the street. Almost unconsciously her brain started asking what the odds were. Jack never asked about her family, but he listened to her stories of her childhood with a fond smile. That boded well. He never said anything against her attendance at Vega’s, possibly because he was there himself every night. That also helped. And, as strange as it seemed, she felt they were equals in their affair. Whatever you will give me, I will take, he’d said. What if she offered him her heart, along with all the rest of her? Perhaps the chances weren’t so negligible after all . . .

There was a rustle of cloth as Eliza came to stand beside her. “When I told you about Hastings, you assured me he couldn’t fail to love me. That’s quite ludicrous for you to say, as you don’t know him at all. Why do you dismiss it so quickly when I suggest the duke might fall in love with you?”

“Because I’m not as sweet as you are.”

“Rubbish,” declared her friend. “You’ve endured more than I have. You’re stronger and more resourceful and cleverer—-”

“No,” she protested.

Eliza nodded stubbornly. “Far more clever, and more beautiful. I’m sure His Grace can see all that just as well as I can. You must give him a chance.”

Sophie made a face, but her brain was being won over by Eliza’s argument. Jack knew what she was—-not every detail, but enough. If she wanted a chance at real happiness with him, she would have to tell him everything. If he recoiled in disgust and stopped coming to her, then she must accept the fact that his feelings weren’t as deep as hers. Perhaps it would be the spur she needed to end things.

But if he didn’t recoil . . .

“Yes,” she said softly. “You’re right.” She took a deep breath and nodded once. “I’ll tell him.”