Anne started at the sudden revelation that for all his coldness and legendary escapades, he really was quite a handsome gentleman. Good, human was indeed preferable to the fire-breathing, jagged toothed dragon she’d made him out to be these past days.
She imagined he hadn’t always been the merciless man who’d threaten to destroy a lady’s reputation; imagined he’d been so very different before Lady Margaret.
One of those familiar hard smiles played at his lips.
She flushed at having been discovered studying him so.
“My lady?” he whispered, an invitation in his words.
Anne wrinkled her nose. Did he truly imagine she would desire him? Oh, the arrogance of men. “I have not called you here for…” She clamped her lips shut, not finishing that bold supposition.
The first flash of amusement flared briefly in his eyes. “Then why am I here?” he asked, that flinty look in place once more.
“Er, yes, well, right.” What could she ever say to a jaded, broken man like Lord Rutland to make him see? She took another breath. “I’ve thought of nothing else since our,” she averted her gaze, “meeting, last evening.”
“Is that what we are to call it?” he mocked, calling her attention back once more.
She gritted her teeth, not rising to his baiting.
He folded his arms across his chest. “And?”
“You’d have me wed Harry for what purpose? So you’ll be free to your Lady Margaret?” A muscle jumped at the corner of his eye, the sole indication she’d been correct in her supposition. “I thought about it a good deal last evening.”
“Undoubtedly,” he said, coolly mocking.
She carried on as though he’d not spoken. “You’d force me to wed Lord Stanhope and there is nothing that would bring me greater happiness than having him as my husband. And I thought about that well into the morning hours. I thought about how very happy I could be.” She held his gaze. “Only, do you know what I realized, my lord?”
“What was that?” the response came as though dragged from him.
“I don’t doubt he’d do the honorable thing and marry me if for no other reason than to save me.” So, in this, she would save him, even at the expense of her own name. “I realized even as I love him, if I allowed you to force us into marriage, the time would come, now or in the future, when he’d grow to resent me. Perhaps even hate me.” She closed her eyes a moment. That she could not bear. “I would forever remind him of the woman he could not have.” She folded her arms across her chest and rubbed warmth back into her limbs. She’d rather have no marriage than the bleak, empty existence her own mother had known. “I’ll not marry him,” she whispered. “Not like this.” And so, not ever.
He froze, unblinking.
Anne slid her gaze to the forgotten pair of spectacles, a splendid gift from a man who would never be anything more than a memory. She wandered over and stooped to retrieve them. “They are beautiful, aren’t they?” she murmured, more to herself. With the delicate spectacle frames in hand, she stood, and carried them over to the window. The slight crack in the brocade curtains cast a narrow stream of sunshine through the opening. It reflected off the metal frames and painted the opposite wall with a magnificent display of shimmering light. She held the gift given her by Harry, up to that streaming ray of sunshine, appreciating the light refracting off the metal. “Do you know, something?”
“What?” he asked, voice gruff. The slight widening of his eyes indicated he’d surprised the both of them with his question.
She gave him a small, gentle smile. “I spent the whole of my life told if I wore spectacles I’d never make a proper match.” She managed a laugh. “So I didn’t wear them because I thought they might detract from my pleasant prettiness.” She shot him a wry look over her shoulder at those words he’d hurled at her last evening, and then returned her attention to her spectacles. “I thought I was protecting myself, only now I think of all those wasted years…not seeing. Yet with these,” she held the slight pair up, “small and so very insignificant…” The muscles of her throat moved up and down with the force of her swallow. “They changed me.” She met his gaze. “They helped me see differently.” The kind of person she was. The kind of person she wanted to be. They’d helped her see more clearly. About everything. “Sometimes one simply needs a little help bringing life more clearly into focus. Don’t you agree, my lord?”