More Than a Duke(30)

She furrowed her brow. No, she really didn’t care to hear one bit about this Miss Margaret someone-or-another who’d held his affection.



They studied one another in stony silence. With mention of some faceless young lady, Harry suddenly belonged to another. Anne frowned, regret turning inside her belly. She, for some inexplicable reason, preferred a world in which he was the grinning, teasing gentleman who courted her—if even just to school her on the art of seduction. “What happened?” Did that whispery soft question belong to her?



“She possessed a beauty men waged wars for.”



Anne’s stomach twisted into a thousand pained knots. With her silly gold ringlets, she’d never inspire that level of passion and devotion in him. She blinked. Anyone. She’d meant she would never inspire that level of passion and devotion in anyone.



“She was a baronet’s daughter,” he carried on, and she prayed he remained unaware of the envy sluicing through her. “She had a gentle voice, a clear laugh, and I was captivated the moment I first saw her.” Unlike Anne, who’d nearly driven him to madness since their initial meeting. A hard smile curved his lips. “And men clamored for her. Dueled for her even.”



The scandal. She dug her fingers into her palm so hard she nearly drew blood. “You fought a duel for her,” she whispered. Oh, the fool. She imagined a world with him no longer in it, all for a woman undeserving of his love and loyalty. Agony wrenched her heart.



“I was a callow youth. Just twenty-two years.”



Not so very young. He’d been a man who surely knew his own heart. After all, at twenty, nearly twenty-one years, she very well knew her heart.



“I fought the Marquess of Rutland for the right to the lady’s affection.”



Rutland. Her eyes slid closed. Oh, God. The very same gentleman whose name she’d bandied about to enlist Harry’s aid. What must he think? “I didn’t know,” she whispered.



He waved her off as though her apology was nothing more than a fleck of dust upon his sleeve. “It was long ago. Eight years,” he added. “I was young.” His lips turned up again in that mocking smile. “Young and foolish. We fought to first blood.” He touched one of her golden curls. “You don’t seem surprised by my admission.”



There was the hint of a question in there. She tipped up her chin. “It will take more than mere mention of a duel to scandalize me. My brother-in-law, Aldora’s husband, Michael, he fought a duel as well.” She sighed. She’d never understand the foolish ways men sought to settle disputes. Even with her desire for stability, she ached to know love. But she’d not ask, expect or want any man to risk his life upon a field of honor for her. “You’d have died for her?”



“I would have.” His automatic response gutted her.



Silence fell between them. Pain pulled at her heart as she studied him, considering the story he’d shared. He’d not always been this affable rogue. He’d become this after his heart had been broken. He had risked all for love and in the end… She cocked her head. “What happened?” In the end, neither Harry nor Lord Rutland had earned the lady’s fidelity.



A taunting smile pulled at his lips. “She craved a lofty title and wealth, Anne.”



She frowned. The only word missing from that pronouncement was, too. The manner in which he made that last admission bore an almost accusatory edge, as though he’d judged her and found her as guilty as the woman who’d broken his heart. And Anne loathed being placed in that same, damning category as his past love. She folded her arms and unable to meet his eyes, looked at the expert lines of his immaculately folded white cravat. I am not that woman. I am not that woman.



But aren’t you?



Harry went on, relentless. “She pledged her love, I pledged mine.”



Anne glanced at him once more and wished she hadn’t.



He’d fixed his gaze to the top of her hairline and in that moment she was forgotten to him. His disregard wrenched at her. He continued, driving the daggers of pain all the deeper. “I intended to offer her marriage.” Her heart spasmed. “I arrived with a bouquet of flowers and a silly sonnet in my hand, to speak first with her father.” A cold, humorless chuckle escaped him. “Her father laughed. Why would he accept the hand of an earl for his daughter when she could have a duke?”



Anne drew in a slow, shocked breath under a staggering truth. Even as she craved the stability and security the Duke of Crawford represented, she wanted love. Wanted it more than anything, and knew if she’d secured the heart of a good, kind gentleman who penned her sonnets and loved her with his whole heart, she’d have traded all the titles of duchess in England. She pressed her eyes closed. God help her, she was as imprudent as her mother and terror gripped her at how easily she might allow herself to become an equally shamed creature betrayed by love.