Kathryn Smith (15 page)

She put a large leather chair between them. “He’s pressuring you then. He’s trying to force us.” She really shouldn’t be surprised. What surprised her was that Devlin wasn’t angrier about it.

Devlin was offended. He didn’t bother trying to hide it. “No one forces me to do anything. I make my own decisions.”

And was he going to decide to propose to her? To spend the rest of his life with her after such a brief acquaintance?

It struck her then that while they seemed to know so much about each other instinctively, there was very little she knew about him in actuality. She didn’t even know the names of all his brothers, or whether his parents had been happy together.

He slipped between the chair and a table beside it to stand next to her, so close that she could count the whiskers starting to come through on his jaw. He lifted a hand to her cheek. He was so gentle for a man so big.

“I would never try to force you to do anything,” he whispered. “You know that.”

Yes, she did. She wanted to share his bed, wanted to be a part of his life, but was it enough? Was this love? It felt nothing like what she had felt for Carny, yet he seemed to run deeper into her bones than Carny ever did. Devlin made her feel whole and complete, and yet she knew that she could live without him. She didn’t have those feelings that she would simply die without him. Wasn’t that what love was supposed to be?

“Do you love me?” she asked.

He seemed surprised by her question, and he thought about it a lot longer than she thought he should have.

“I don’t know what love is.”

Now
that
was something totally unexpected. “What do you mean you don’t know what love is?”

He ran a hand over his face. “How could I know? My parents didn’t even like each other. To be honest, I don’t think they cared much for me either.”

“That’s ridiculous!” How could a mother not love her child?

There was a starkness in his eyes, a pallor to his cheeks that Blythe didn’t like.

“I’m the result of my father forcing himself upon my mother, Blythe. How could either of them love the reminder of that?”

She stared at him in horror. Not because of what his father did to his mother but because he blamed himself for it—and for whatever hell they put each other through because of it. No child—no man—deserved such a thing.

“I don’t think love really exists,” he admitted. “If it does, I’ve yet to see it last.”

There it was. The best man she had ever found, the most incredible person to ever enter her life, and he didn’t believe in love—the one thing that could induce her to marry. The one thing she wanted.

She raised her gaze to his. “I cannot imagine marrying someone who does not believe in me.” Oh, it hurt to say it, but his words, his confession about his parents and his own lack of belief in love scared her more than anything ever had before. How could a person not believe in love? How empty did he have to be? Yet her heart knew Devlin wasn’t empty at all. In fact, he was a man bursting at the seams with so much to give.

An odd brightness lit his eyes. “I have not asked you to.”

Oh, that was a low and sharp blow! Cold heat flooded Blythe’s cheeks and limbs. He hadn’t asked because he already knew the answer. He had heard her declaration in the drawing room, and he had been hurt by it. Hurt badly enough that he needed to hurt her too, just a little.

She could forgive him for it. She had wanted to hurt him a little just now as well.

He placed both hands on her shoulders. “But what if I did ask? What would you say?”

He knew the answer, she could see it in his eyes.

Say you love me.
She’d say yes if he said he loved her, even though she wasn’t certain of her own feelings. She was such a hypocrite, demanding love from him yet not knowing if she’d ever return it.

Tears filled her eyes. “My answer,” she whispered hoarsely, “would be no.”

I
t was a good thing he hadn’t asked then.

Devlin had expected her answer, of course. After her outburst in the drawing room he could have no doubt; still, he had hoped…Well, it didn’t matter what he had hoped or expected.

Her refusal was real, as real as the tears spilling down her cheeks. His amazing Blythe was weeping. What was he supposed to do now?

He put his arms around her. She resisted, but he was bigger and stronger. Poor thing; she was too done in even to fight him. Or perhaps she didn’t want to fight him. Perhaps she wanted him to hold her, because he couldn’t help but feel that her refusal was his fault—that he had done something wrong.

He rested his cheek against the top of her head as his governess used to do when he was a child and had hurt himself. It had been so long since he cried. He didn’t think he was capable of it anymore.

“Shh.” He rubbed her back. “Princess, don’t cry. Everything will be all right.”

She shoved free of his embrace. “No it won’t! You asked me to marry you and I cannot!”

No, he hadn’t asked her, but now wasn’t the time to remind her of that.

Blythe swiped at her eyes with the backs of her hands. “You do not love me.”

“I will learn to love you.” It wouldn’t be a hard lesson if he was capable of the emotion. If he wasn’t…

Didn’t she deserve someone who could love her?

Obviously she hadn’t forgotten his earlier doubt. Her eyes widened, her tears gone. “You do not even know what love is! You admitted so yourself.”

“You could teach me.” He was grasping at straws now.

Blythe stomped her foot, her fists clenched. “That is not what I want!”

“What do you want?” His was the quiet, pathetic tone of a man who would do almost anything, agree to almost anything to get what he wanted, even though he had already been told he couldn’t have it.

Crossing her arms, she made it impossible for him to come any closer. “I said yes before to a man who did not love me. The result was heartache and humiliation. I won’t allow that to happen again.”

Ahh, it came back to Carny once again. What a surprise.

“It won’t.” He would make sure of it, damn it.

“How do you know?”

Yes, how did he? He had already said he didn’t think he loved her—that he didn’t even know what love was. Why couldn’t he have just lied? He felt more for her than he had ever felt for anyone before in his life. Did she not understand that?

“I would never do anything to intentionally hurt you.” It was the one truth he could give her.

The pain in her wide green eyes cut him to the very quick. “You do not love me. That is hurt enough.”

Until now this conversation had been terribly one-sided. It all seemed to revolve around how
he
felt,
his
shortcomings. He wasn’t the one who had announced in front of witnesses that no “folly” would induce him to marry.

His lips formed the question he could scarcely bear to ask. He had never asked it of anyone else, not even his parents. Especially not his parents. “Do you love me?”

She looked away. “I do not know.”

Now he understood that rawness in her gaze, the whiteness of her features. This wasn’t just about him, it was her own indecision that scared her—possibly even more than his own.

But still it hurt. It wasn’t quite rejection, but it felt like it. He wanted her to say yes, even though he was uncertain of the strength of such a volatile emotion. Any love he had seen had been fleeting and painful. It rarely lasted—truly happy couples were those who had a good solid friendship as well as a healthy attraction for one another. He thought he and Blythe had been well on their way to building such a foundation.

He didn’t want her to see his pain. “We understand each other, we feel the same way. So what if it’s not love? What we have is better.”

Christ, was that pity he saw in her gaze? She looked truly sorry for him. He didn’t want her goddamn pity. “Did your parents honestly not love each other?”

“Yes.” They hadn’t even liked each other very much. Tolerate—that’s what they had done with each other.

“Mine did.” It was as though she was pleading with him to understand, but he truly didn’t know what it was she was trying to say. “I want what they had. If you do not love me, I do not want to marry you, and if I do not love you, you shouldn’t want to marry me.”

He took a step toward her. He never said any of this made sense. “I have yet to say whether or not I want to.” And he
wouldn’t either; why admit that he wanted to marry her when she so obviously didn’t want to marry him? Still, he couldn’t seem to help himself. “Would it be that bad?”

She pulled out of reach, backing up enough to put several feet of space between them. Her frustration was almost palatable. “What could possibly make it good? Because I am big enough? Because you desire me? Because you like me? It is not enough, Devlin.”

What could possibly make it
good
? It sounded good to him. What did she want? Flowers? Poetry? He could try, but he wasn’t good at that sort of thing.

“I can give you trust. I can give you respect. You already know I can give you pleasure.” His own frustration drove him to thrust one hand toward her in supplication. “Christ, I can give you Rosewood. I know you want it.”

“I will not have you thinking I married you for a house.” Wonderful, now she was indignant. Would someone please just tell him what it was he was supposed to do so he could do it?

“I wouldn’t mind.” So why did it feel so wrong?

“You should.” She sighed and suddenly she looked very tired. “And eventually you might.”

Devlin moved toward her again. All this space between them made him anxious. “Blythe, you can’t just walk away from what we have.”

This time she didn’t move, but there was an emotional wall so thick around her he couldn’t get close even if he touched her. “I’m not, but neither am I going to marry you.”

She wasn’t going to leave him but she didn’t want to marry him either? That didn’t leave much. He clung to the remnants of his pride. “I haven’t asked you to.”

Her smile was patently sympathetic. She saw through that thin defense.

Another tactic was in order, even though he hated treating this discussion like a battle. It shouldn’t be that way. She was
not an enemy to be conquered, yet he was treating her as such. “We cannot go on as we have been.”

“Why not? No one of consequence saw us tonight.”

Now she was the one who didn’t seem to understand. He hoped he would have better luck explaining to her than she had to him. “Because I don’t want you to be my mistress.”

“Your mistress, your wife. Without love there is no difference.”

He scowled at her vapid tone. What did she mean there was no difference? She wasn’t a simpleton, she’d been out in society. Lord, after a decade in the army
he
still knew the difference. “You do not have to be a wife to be loved. My father loved his mistress more than he ever loved my mother.”

“Then he should have married his mistress.”

For the second time that evening, Devlin’s temper threatened to snap. “Damn it, Blythe!” His voice cracked. “If we’re caught again you will be ruined.”

Now she was back to pitying him. Why could she not take pity on him then and just agree to be his? “I would rather live by my own rules than society’s, Devlin. As long as I am happy I do not care what anyone else thinks. Ruination is preferable to an unhappy marriage.”

“I do not believe that.” He shook his head, a dubious smirk tilting his mouth. “You care too much what society thinks. That’s why you’ve been hiding here in Devonshire these past two years.”

Her shoulders straightened defensively. She could stand as tall as she wanted—she wouldn’t intimidate him even if she stood on a frigging chair. “Believe what you will. I will not marry you because society says I should.”

“And I refuse to play hard and fast with your reputation just because you refuse to be rational!”

She looked as though he had slapped her. Wonderful. Just frigging wonderful.

“Rational or not, it is how it has to be.”

Maybe this wasn’t about just them. Maybe there was someone else figuring into this skirmish. Maybe she didn’t love him because there was someone else in the way. “Do you still have feelings for Carny?”

“I told you I did not.” He wanted to believe her, but he didn’t know what to believe anymore. He thought she wanted him as much as he wanted her. He had been wrong about that. What else had he been wrong about? “Do you think I would kiss you and touch you if I loved another man?”

He sucked his cheeks against his teeth. His hold on his temper was slipping. He didn’t want to fight with her, not like this. “You’ve said yourself that you do not love me. Yet I’ve had my fingers inside you.”

She flushed a dark red as he held up the hand that just a short while ago had coaxed cries of pleasure from her throat. “You do a pretty good job yourself, but then men seem to have no trouble making love to women they do not truly love.”

“I have found the same in many women.” Why did it hurt so much to hear her words and reply in kind? They’d already established they weren’t in love, so why did it feel like a knife in the gut every time either of them spoke of it?

Obviously it hurt her too. “I cannot speak of this anymore. We are going to end up saying things we both will regret, if we have not already. I am going to bed.”

“Who are you going to think about?” Why couldn’t he just leave that wound alone?

She shook her head sadly, that damn pitying expression back in her eyes. If he never saw it again it would be too soon. “I am going to think of you, Devlin. The same as I have done every night since we first met. But I will not marry a man who cannot love me as I deserve. And I will not marry a man who deserves the same just because I cannot stop thinking of him.”

The first time he’d been shot hadn’t hurt as much as those softly spoken words. Not even his parents’ rejection had cut him as deeply as she had.

“Go then.” He almost choked on the words, the lump in his throat was so hard.

She did, and he watched her go with a strange burning behind his eyes.

But he didn’t—wouldn’t—cry.

“You said no?”

Blythe looked up at the thunderous and incredulous expression on her brother’s face with unconcealed weariness. How could one say no when she technically hadn’t been asked a question? As Devlin pointed out, he hadn’t officially proposed.

“Yes.”

“Why in the hell did you do that?”

They were in her room, so at least there was little chance of any of the guests hearing his yelling—not that she cared if they did. She didn’t seem to have the energy to care about anything this morning, which was why she was still in her nightgown, sitting on her bed at eleven o’clock.

She managed to push herself to her feet. “Because I have taken complete loss of my senses.” At least that was how it felt. She knew she had done the right thing by refusing to marry Devlin, but a part of her—all right, her heart—felt that it was all wrong.

But what did her heart know? It had been wrong in the past when it came to men and their feelings.

“Well,” Miles huffed, “at least we are in agreement there.”

Blythe shuffled to the washbasin and splashed cool water on her face. It helped a bit, but it took far more effort than it should have to walk from there to her dressing table, where she plunked herself down and started unbraiding her hair.

“Just what the devil is wrong with you anyway?” her brother demanded as he yanked a silver-backed brush from her hand. “You are going to end up with a head full of tangles if you brush before all the braid is out.”

How he knew that, Blythe didn’t want to know. She just sat there, like a lazy cat on a hot day, wanting nothing more than to go back to sleep, and let him unwind the rest of her braid.

She didn’t even let her shock show when he started brushing her hair in long, gentle strokes. Miles hadn’t brushed her hair since they were children, and even then he used to hit her with the brush more than anything else.

“You are not going to strike me with that, I hope.” It took all her strength to inject humor in her tone.

He scowled into the mirror at her. Goodness, but he looked like their father. “No—not that you do not deserve it. Perhaps it might knock a little sense into you.”

“Doubtful.” Her smile was rueful. “But perhaps you could cosh me hard enough to make me sleep for the next month.”

Miles paused in his brushing long enough to meet her gaze in the mirror. “What happened, sweet? I was under the impression that you liked Devlin.”

The softening of his tone brought a tremor to her chin. She would not cry. Not now. “I do, but I do not know if I love him, and he is quite certain he does not love me.”

Her brother nodded as though he understood, even though Blythe was positive there was no way he could.

“Ah yes, love. The emotion women claim to be such experts on but know so little about.”

Now it was Blythe’s turn to scowl at his reflection. “We know considerably more than a ‘little’!” And women ultimately knew more about it than men, but she wasn’t about to remind him of that when he had a weapon in his hand.

“You
think
you know more than you really do.” He held up a hunk of hair in his big hand and ran the brush through the ends. “But in actuality, all you know is how you think love should be, not how it really is.”

How unimpressive his philosophy was. Another treatise
on how men were superior in every manner over women. If he went into a tirade about how gothic novels were to blame, Blythe would hit him with the hand mirror.

“Oh really? Then tell me, oh wise one, how is it really? Ow!”

Miles smirked in the mirror. “Tangle. Sorry.”

Tangle, her foot! He’d done that on purpose, and perhaps she’d deserved it. He was trying to give her advice after all—and he wasn’t yelling, which was a lovely boon.

“Love isn’t something you can dissect or dictate, brat. It is unexpected, quiet, and will sometimes wait till the last possible moment to let you know it has arrived. Today you do not think you love him. Tomorrow you might wonder how you ever lived without him, and he you.”