Seven Minutes in Heaven(91)

“You were perfectly clear,” Eugenia said, chin up. She refused to betray any sign of the devastation she felt. The trembling, however, she couldn’t hide: she was shaking slightly from head to foot. “You begged me to stay with you a fortnight.”

“A man does, in the throes of passion.”

That was unforgivable.

But at the same time, she caught a glimpse of something in his eyes. This wasn’t the man who had coaxed her into the water, who had celebrated making love by eating trifle at midnight. This was someone different.

The thought steadied her.

They had made love.

“Our intimacies were not merely the throes of passion,” she said, making up her mind. She had blazed trails by starting her own business; she might as well confound another preconception, to wit, that a woman must not speak of love before a man proposed marriage. She would speak the truth.

Ward said nothing.

“I am in love with you,” Eugenia said, meeting his eyes. “I believe you are in love with me as well.”

Just as the silence grew unbearable, he said, “I am terribly sorry to disappoint you, Eugenia.”

It was as if he taken out a pistol and shot her in the leg. Not a fatal blow, but pain tore through her all the same. The worst of it was that his voice was genuinely regretful.

“I see,” she managed.

He turned away, clearly giving her time to collect herself. Eugenia clenched her hand on the back of the chair with such force that her knuckles turned white with strain.

Standing with his back to her, gazing out the window, Ward cleared his throat. “Even if I felt more for you, I could not keep a mistress in the house with my siblings. I was very wrong to countenance these two weeks.”

Taking a breath felt like inhaling fire.

Felt more for her? He could go to hell.

“I am not your mistress,” she said, fierce and low. “That would imply a financial exchange between us. I have been your guest, and helped with the children with no thought of recompense.”

He turned back and put his hand over hers again. “Forgive me, a lover.”

It was patently obvious to her that he had never considered marriage. He was using the term “lover” as a sop to her feelings. Back in the carriage when he first abducted her, he had offered “courtesies” between friends, never to be mentioned again. Why hadn’t she listened to him?

“Do you mean that you did not think of me as someone to marry,” she asked, shaping the words carefully, “or that you did not think of me as a doxy owing to my giving myself to you with such . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“Such joy,” Ward said, that disconcerting flash of emotion in his eyes again. “We took pleasure in each other, and there’s nothing wrong with that, Eugenia. But the world has intervened, and now we must go our separate ways.”

“I see.”

He hesitated. “Even if I had—if I wished to offer you marriage, I cannot.”

She couldn’t bring herself to answer.

“I must marry someone who will make up for my irregular birth and launch Lizzie into the ton. My wife must be a model of conventional behavior. If I marry, my wife has to be a paragon.”

She swallowed hard. It wasn’t as if his words were surprising.

“In the ancient phrase, she must be a lady to the manner born,” he continued, his hand tightening over hers. “You are all that is ladylike, Eugenia, but there is an incalculable part of being a lady—an instinctual part—that cannot be learned. My stepmother would never have entered that tent, let alone taken a seat among a crowd of guffawing men.”

“To the manner born?” She not only understood society’s manners better than most, but she was born in a manor!

Apparently he had lied when he said that he knew her status. She nearly snapped back a précis of her family tree, but she stopped.

It was irrelevant.

What Ward was really saying was that she wasn’t ladylike enough. That meant he didn’t respect or love her, the Eugenia who started Snowe’s Registry.

If she informed him of her pedigree—that she was not merely gentry, but a peeress, one of the highest in the land—she might be able to convince him that her family’s position in society meant she could successfully launch Lizzie on the marriage market.

But there was no persuading a man to love you, the real you.

Right. She had to push back her hurt and fury, and find the strength to be polite.

“Your sister is eager to learn about the natural world,” she said, withdrawing her hand from under his. “You would do well to encourage her, Ward, no matter how unconventional her studies might seem.”

His face was expressionless, closed off to all feeling. “Thank you for the advice, but I mean to avoid pushing her toward further eccentricities. She’s already talking of opening an emporium and has learned to bellow strings of curses. Ladies don’t curse.”