No Good Duke Goes Unpunished (The Rules of Scoundrels #3)(105)

She’d happily live there with him.

The dog sat and sighed, drawing Pippa’s attention. She stroked behind the hound’s ear and received a gentle wag for her troubles.

She imagined Trotula would live there with him, too.

Except they were not invited.

He’d disappeared from her bed on the night of Pandemonium, after claiming her body and soul and ensuring that she loved him quite desperately. For two days, she’d waited for him to return; for two nights, she’d lain in bed, starting at every noise, sure he’d scale the house once more and come to her. Sure he wouldn’t leave her.

Sure he’d change his mind.

He hadn’t.

Instead, he’d left her to think on her own future. Her own choices. Her own heart.

He’d left her to come to the clear, undeniable realization that she was not the one who required saving.

“Two lovely ladies!” Castleton’s happy utterance interrupted Pippa’s thoughts, and she turned toward her handsome, smiling fiancé as Trotula hurried to him, low to the ground, eager for stroking.

It was difficult to spend any time at all with Castleton without smiling oneself. He was a kind man, and good. Fairly handsome, very wealthy, and titled. An aristocratic mother’s dream. Indeed, there were few things more for which a young woman could ask.

Except for love.

And suddenly, that strange, elusive, indefinable word meant everything. So much more than all the rest.

How had she become such a ninny? She, who had never believed in the emotion . . . who had always thought that the ethereal was less valuable, less real than the factual . . . who had always ignored the sentiment—how was it that she stood here, now, in the receiving room of what was to have been her future home, with the man who was to have been her future husband, thinking of love?

Cross had changed her.

Without even trying.

“My lord,” she said, making her way across the room to greet him herself. “I am sorry to come without notice.”

He looked up at her from where he was crouched with Trotula. “No need for notice,” he said. “After all, in less than a week, it will be your home, and I won’t have any notice at all!” He paused. “Though, I suppose this is notice . . . betrothal!”

There it was, her cue.

She had considered any number of ways to begin this particular conversation. The gentle, the diplomatic, the evasive. But as she was Philippa Marbury, she settled for the honest.

“My lord, I cannot marry you.”

His hands did not stop as they worked their way through Trotula’s fur, and for a moment, she thought he might not have heard her. After several long seconds, he stood, and rocked back on his heels, putting his hands in the pockets of his waistcoat.

They stood like that for what seemed like an age, Pippa refusing to hide from him, this kind man who had offered for her even when he could have had better. More normal. This good man who had courted her even when she was the oddest woman in London. “I’m sorry,” she added.

“You do not think we make a good match,” he said.

“I think we would have made a very good match,” she replied. “But everything has gone pear-shaped.”

His brows rose. “Pear-shaped?”

She took a deep breath. “I thought I could . . .” She paused. “I thought I would . . .”

I thought I could simply research marriage. Investigate pleasure. I thought I would not suffer the repercussions.

“Do you require additional time? To consider it? We needn’t have the wedding so soon.”

She’d had more than a year. She’d considered Castleton from every angle. She’d planned her life with him. She’d been ready for it. And in one week . . . one day . . . one minute, it seemed . . . everything had changed.

She shook her head. “I do not require additional time.”

He nodded. “I understand.”

She was willing to wager that he didn’t understand at all.

He continued. “I think we could learn to love each other. I think I could learn to love you.”

It was a kind thing to say. He was a good man.

Before, it had been enough. He had been enough. More than. He’d been willing to be her partner, to let her live the life she desired. To give her marriage. Children. Security. All the things a young woman in 1831 required.

Before.

Before she’d decided that she required more.

She met his warm brown gaze. “Unfortunately, I cannot learn to love you.” His eyes widened, and she realized that she had hurt him with her careless words. She rushed to repair it. “No . . . I don’t mean it in such a way. It’s that . . .”

She did not know what to say. How to repair it.

She stopped, hating the feeling, the way the entire male of the species seemed to make her feel in recent days.

And she told the truth. Again. “I’m sorry, my lord,” and she was. “But the vows . . . I can’t speak them. Not to you.”

His brows rose. “The vows?”

The silly ceremony. The one that had started it all. “Obedience and servitude, honor, sickness, and health . . . all that, I feel I could do.”

Understanding flared in his brown eyes. “I’m amenable to all those.” A small smile played across his lips. “I gather it is the love bit that is the problem?”