Unmasking the Duke's Mistress (Gentlemen of Disrepute #1)(50)

‘I am your mistress, for pity’s sake!’

‘And have not other men married their mistresses? What of Mountjoy? Besides. I shall hardly be introducing you as such.’

‘Too many people know of Miss Noir and Mrs Silver.’

‘Maybe, but there is nothing to connect them to Mrs Marlbrook. Rest assured I will take every step to ensure that any such links be taken care of and that your background is nothing but respectable. Are you not the respectable and widowed Mrs Marlbrook recently come to London? They shall think it is a love match.’

Once it really had been a love match. And now… She looked into Dominic’s eyes.

‘We have to do this, Arabella, for Archie’s sake. I have a duty both to my son, Arabella, and to right the wrongs I have dealt you.’

Duty? Her hope, still so new and tender and rising, was crushed. There was no talk of affection, no mention of love.

‘This is about duty and appeasing your own guilt,’ she said. How foolish to have thought it could be anything other.

‘My guilt? It was you that hid Archie from me, Arabella.’ Her eyes widened as his words found their target.

‘What choice did I have? I did what I thought was best for Archie. He is my son.’


‘He is my son, too. Do I not also have the right to do my very best for him, or do you continue to deny me that right?’

She turned away to hide her hurt. ‘Archie looks so like you that everyone will know he is your son. He will be subjected to their gossip.’

‘I care not what they think, Arabella. They may whisper their suppositions, but I am not without power and influence. Besides, unless you mean to keep him hidden for ever they will find out soon enough and I can protect him all the better once we are married—just as I can protect you.’

She knew what he was saying was right, yet she was overwhelmed with a feeling of disappointment and sadness. She should be glad that he had such a care for his son, that he had a sense of honour. And she was. Truly. But she could not help thinking of the first time he had asked her to be his wife, when they had been young and na?ve and in love. Everything was different now. Too much had happened. There could never be any going back. And she hurt to know it.

‘I am unsure, Dominic.’

‘What is the alternative, Arabella? That I keep you here as my mistress with Archie as my bastard? Is that your preference?’

‘No!’

‘Then there is nothing else other than that we wed.’

She could feel the fast hard thump of her heart against her chest. He was asking her to marry him. The man she had loved; the man she loved still. Yet her chest was tight and she felt like weeping.

‘There is another alternative that you have not considered,’ she said slowly and it seemed as if the words did not even come from her own mouth. She felt chilled in even saying them, but they needed to be spoken. ‘I need not be your mistress. My mother and Archie and I could go to the country. If we had a little money, enough for a small cottage, we could live in quiet respectability and you could—’

He grabbed hold of her upper arms and pulled her close to stare down into her face, eyes filled with fury. ‘Is that what you want, Arabella?’

And behind his anger she saw the hurt of the wound she had just inflicted and she could not lie. ‘You know it is not.’ She shook her head and felt the tears prick in her eyes. ‘But this is not about want, is it? As you have already said, this is about duty and what is best for Archie.’

‘And you think it is best to take him away from his father?’

‘You could still visit him and—’

But he did not let her finish. ‘You may choose to marry me, Arabella, or to remain as my mistress. There is no other choice, for I will let neither you nor the boy go. So what is it to be, Arabella? Will you marry me?’

She felt angry and hurt and saddened. Her head knew his proposal made sense. He was offering what was best for Archie. He was offering what any woman in her situation should have jumped at. But her heart… Her heart was saying something else all together.

‘You set it all out so clearly,’ she said. And she remembered what he had said that very first night in the brothel: Whores do as rich men bid. And part of her revolted against both it and his possession of her.

His gaze held hers, waiting for her answer.

‘Yes, Dominic, I will marry you.’ For Archie. Only for Archie.

He gave a nod, and she felt something of the tension in his grip relax.

They looked at one another and there seemed so much anger and tension and sadness between them.

Then he took a small red-leather ring box from his pocket, inside of which was a ring of sparkling diamonds that surrounded a large square sapphire of the clearest, bluest blue.

‘The Arlesford betrothal ring,’ he said and slid the ring on to the third finger of her left hand.

She could not say a word, for she feared that all of what she felt would come tumbling out.

‘I will make the necessary arrangements.’

She nodded.

Dominic bowed, then he left.

It should have been one of the happiest days of her life, but for Arabella it was one of the saddest. Dominic was marrying her not out of love, but for Archie. They were both doing this for Archie. It was the way it had to be. And she should be used to giving herself to a man who did not love her.