The Duke Identity (Game of Dukes #1)(59)

She was working herself into a fine rage, and she didn’t care. “By not believing in me. By treating me like all the men in my life do: like I am nothing more than a nuisance!”

“If you stopped acting like one, you wouldn’t be treated like one,” he said acidly.

That was it. She could take no more. All the hurts of a lifetime came rushing to the fore, blasting her composure to smithereens.

“Do you think I want to have to break my word? I state my reasoning, but no one listens to me. Not my father, grandfather, and not you. No one gives a damn what I think and feel. No one sees me for who I am. Me, Tessa.” She jabbed a finger at herself. “A woman, yes, but one who has a mind and heart of her own. Who cannot just stand by and twiddle her thumbs while the man she loves heads into danger alone. Do you know what it’s like fretting over your safety? When I have no idea where you are or what you’re doing or what peril you might be facing—oof.”

Her words were lost as Bennett hooked her around the waist with one arm, yanking her forward. Stunned, she found herself on his lap. His arms tightened like steel bands around her.

“What on earth?” she sputtered.

“Be quiet,” he said.

Oh no, he didn’t. “Do not tell me to be quiet—”

“Fine. But if you keep talking, you’ll miss my apology.”

She quieted. Stared at him.

His expression was still taut, tense, but his eyes…they were no longer shuttered. Emotion glittered in them like raw diamonds trapped in rock. Her breath held.

“You’re not a nuisance,” he said roughly. “The reason I’m keeping you out of this is because I don’t want you to get hurt. I want to protect you.”

“And I want to protect you.” Since she’d shown her cards, she might as well double down. The truth flowed molten in her veins; there was no holding it back. “I’ve fallen in love with you, Bennett,” she said with calm conviction. “I don’t expect you to return those feelings, and it’s all right that you don’t. Truly. My love is a gift. But I’m telling you how I feel because that is why I broke my promise tonight. Because I cannot watch the man I love go into battle alone. I am not that woman. And I’ll never be.”

“Tessa—”

She had to finish this before she lost courage. “It was my mistake to try to be other than who I am. You see, I thought if I could be more pleasing, more biddable, more in the usual mold, you might...like me.” Although embarrassment scorched her cheeks, she held his gaze. “But the truth is I’ll always be me. I’m sorry I betrayed your trust, but I can’t betray myself either. If that means that you no longer wish to continue our…affair,”—she forced herself to go on—“then so be it.”

She was trembling from head to toe. Heat pressed behind her eyeballs; somehow, she found the strength to hold them back. To hold onto the pieces of herself that might fly apart if she didn’t.

“You will never be in the usual mold, Tessa.”

His blunt words hit her like a mallet. Pain spread through her like a crack in porcelain, and she could feel the tears welling. She struggled to free herself from his hold, yet his arms trapped her.

“Let me go,” she said in a muffled voice.

“I can’t,” he murmured in her ear, “though God knows I’ve tried. I do like you, sprite, precisely because you’re different and rare. I’ve never met anyone like you, and I know that if I wandered this earth for fifty years more, I still never would.”

The words sunk in.

She tipped her head back to look at him, breathing, “You like me? Truly?”

“Christ.” Tenderly, he thumbed away a tear that slipped free. “How could you not know that?”

“I know you like me in a ph-physical sense,” she stammered, “but I wasn’t sure about the rest. After all, I played those tricks on you. And flirted with the duke. And tonight you said I wasn’t deserving of your trust, made you a dupe—”

“Sweeting, I don’t like you putting yourself in danger. I was angry, and, out of that anger, I spoke unfairly.” He hesitated. “I’ve been lied to before, and I don’t react well to it.”

His words rang a bell. That night in the billiards room, he’d also mentioned his anger being triggered by something that had happened in his past.

Tentatively, she said, “Who lied to you?”

When he remained silent, she said in a rush, “I don’t mean to pry. Well, I do, I suppose, but only because I want to understand you. So I can do better,” she said earnestly. “Be better.”

“You don’t need to be anything but you, Tessa. I’m the one who needs to do better.”

His words were a balm to her hurts.

“You don’t need to be anything but you either,” she said softly. “Although if you wish to talk about it…I’m listening.”

Just when she thought he wouldn’t take her up on the offer, he spoke.

“I courted a woman once. I was in love with her, and she led me to believe she returned those feelings. I trusted her, wanted to marry her, but she betrayed my trust,” he said flatly. “She’d never had any intention of marrying me, and by the time I realized she was using me as a means to an end, she’d destroyed my good name and the future I’d planned.”