Only this one did not. She had found and married the one man in England who had no wish for progeny.
“Not me,” he said evenly, without the faintest doubt or hesitation in his deep voice. “Do not take this as a personal affront, Aurelia,” he quickly said, likely reading her uncertainty to this news in her expression. “I would not want a child with any woman. Any wife. It has nothing to do with you.”
And yet it did.
It had a great deal to do with her now that they had a true marriage. Now that they had a real marriage and she could have children in her future. Yet he was saying it couldn’t happen.
“Oh.” She squared her shoulders and tried not to look affronted. It was a difficult thing. She felt dazed and not quite certain how to respond . . . how to feel.
“Aurelia.” He uttered her name knowingly. “This doesn’t have anything to do with you.” Apparently she couldn’t hide her thoughts entirely.
Nodding numbly, she snatched hold of the rest of her clothes and redressed herself. “I’m your wife. Your decision to never have children impacts me. Does it not?” Even the question fell from her lips tentatively as she looked up at him beneath her lashes.
He winced. “Well. Yes. I gather that it affects you, but I simply don’t wish you to take it as a personal slight.” He studied her, his bigger body reclining casually on her bed. “Are we all right on this? I don’t want to quarrel again.”
She nodded. “Neither do I.” She forced a smile, her mind spinning as though he had not just dropped news so significant that it would alter the course of her life. Mostly dressed, if not fully buttoned up, she hopped to her feet and faced him as her fingers fumbled at her buttons.
He lifted one brow in that maddening way of his, clearly reading that she was still grappling with this. “Considering that we had little choice in our marriage and the fact that we agreed to a strictly platonic relationship, it did not yet occur to me to disclose this.”
A valid point, she supposed, but it did not lessen the ache in her heart. “Well, it matters now, does it not?”
“It’s not something I will reconsider.” He spoke so matter-of-factly. As though they had not just shared the height of intimacy. “This has long been my position. I will not change for you. I never wanted to marry, however, there was no escaping it. But children, family . . . it won’t happen.”
Love.
She heard him quite clearly even without the utterance of the word. He was saying love. Her face burned hot. He would not have it. He would not give it. She would be a fool to expect it from him.
He will never love me.
He wasn’t cruel enough to fling it at her head that he would never love her, but she understood. Now she knew that it would only ever be meaningless when they came together. Tupping. Sex. It wasn’t special. She wasn’t. She had been deluding herself to ever think she was.
She nodded once. “I understand.”
His head angled slightly as he stared at her, as though searching to make certain she understood what he was saying. She arched an eyebrow, crossing her arms in front of her. “I understand,” she repeated, her voice strained and tinny to her ears.
He held her gaze for one long moment, his jaw locked, eyes intense. Finally, he stood up from the bed, towering over her, indifferent to his nudity. Unlike her. She was achingly aware of every glorious inch of him on display. The memory of what it felt like to have all that male warmth surrounding her, against her, inside her, was still fresh.
Even staring at him now, she felt the stirrings of desire. A part of her yearned for him to stay. To lose herself in his arms. For things to be right between them . . . for him to say the words that would make everything right . . . better.