The Day of the Duchess (Scandal & Scoundrel #3)(54)

“You can’t cleanse the scandal from them,” he said. “They own it as they own your name. They are—forever—Dangerous Daughters. Just as I am always Hoodwinked Haven.”

She swallowed and looked away. “I never intended for this. I simply thought they would find us and we would marry. And we would be happy.”

He could not contain the humorless laugh at that. “That’s the irony, is it not? That we would have been happy.”

Her eyes went wide. “And why can’t we be? I made a mistake! I love—”

“No.” The word, cold and full of anger, stopped the words. Thank God. How long had he told himself love was not a thing he would ever have? How long had he believed it was not real? And then he’d met Sera, and everything had changed. Everything, and nothing. He crossed the room and poured himself a drink at the sideboard. “Don’t ever say it. Not to me. There is no room for that here. Not anymore.”

“Malcolm,” she said, soft and achingly beautiful, and he refused to face her for fear of what he would find. He did not have to turn. He could hear the sorrow, despite its silence. Christ, he wanted to believe it. He wanted to believe her.

She inhaled, a little sniffle the only hint that he might have upset her. “If you let me go, you shall have . . .” She paused, considering the rest of her words. When she resumed speaking, he heard the truth. “I should like to give you a future, as well. One that might have happiness. Surely you cannot wish for a marriage to punish us both forever.”

“Don’t you see?” he said. “I am the product of this marriage. I watched my parents punish each other for years. My mother the huntress and my father the hunted. And me, the prize in the balance,” he added, ignoring the pain that threaded through him as he spoke. “That is marriage to me. And it seems it will be marriage for me, as well.”

“Then why choose it?” she asked, frustration and confusion in her words. “Why not find another?”

There was no other. Didn’t she see that? This was how it ended, the sins of the father, revisited upon the son. “All marriage is unhappy,” he said. “That’s what you taught me.”

Her eyes went wide. “How?”

There was no reason to lie to her. “When I met you, Sera, I had hope for something different and new. I had hope that we would forge our own path through marriage and destroy what my parents had wrought. I trusted you to help me do it—God knows I’ve no idea how to make a marriage happy. My parents could not stand to be in the same room with each other.”

“Mal,” she said, softly, and he loathed the sympathy in the words. The pity in them. He didn’t want her kindness. He wanted to remember her betrayal. It was easier that way. And then she said, “I don’t want that for my children,” and it did not seem easy at all.

“There shan’t be children.”

She gasped. “What?”

Children were no longer in the cards. They had not been since the afternoon at Highley, when she’d trapped him. He wasn’t interested in bringing another child into the life he had lived. “I’ve cousins. They may have the title.”

“You do not wish for an heir?”

He looked to her then, meeting her beautiful blue eyes, wide and honest. How many times had he been lost in those eyes in the last few weeks? How many times had he believed what he saw in them? “I do not. I’m not interested in a child who is nothing more than a pawn in his parents’ chess match.”

She was silent for a long moment, her throat working as she searched for words. “Is this your way of punishing me?”

He raised a brow. “You wish for children?”

“Of course. They are part of life.”

He imagined them, her children—a line of them with mahogany curls and bright, blue eyes, long frames and wide smiles. She would make beautiful children. They would.

Except they wouldn’t.

He turned away, toward the window that looked out on the rolling estate beyond. “I don’t want any part of that life.” Three months ago, it had been truth. Three days ago, it was a lie.

He did not know what it was today.

“With me,” she clarified. “You don’t want any part of a life with me.”

“No.” It felt like a lie. He had wanted it. He’d intended to marry her—this vibrant, funny, beautiful woman who seemed to know more about joy and love and family than he ever had. And then he’d realized she wasn’t real, and neither was what they had.

“Then why not let me go?”

Because I still want you. “Because this is the bed in which we lie.”

She was silent for a long moment—long enough that he thought to look back at her, even as he refused himself the gift of it. The pain of it. This was the battle they fought.

“What do you wish? Do you wish me to get on my knees? To beg you for my freedom?”

He did turn back at that. “Would you do it?”

Her eyes, cerulean and stunning, slayed him with their shock. She’d meant it as hyperbole. And now, suddenly, it hung between them. “Is that what it would take to win my freedom? To win my sisters’?”

“If it were? Would you beg?” He hated himself for the question.

And then he hated her, when she said, “I would.” She would do anything to be rid of him. And he could not blame her.