Page 85 of How to Best a Marquess

Urgency made him quicken his pace, and his heart thumped an irregular beat with each step. With stunning clarity, he realized that he loved Ellie. Had always loved her. His desperation for her to marry him had nothing to do with the club, their fierce attraction for each other, or for his need to protect her, but because he could not envision a future without her. Without her laugh, her wit, her keen intelligence that rivaled his own.

Ever since his parents’ damning words regarding Ellie’s family, he’d thought to do right by her. And after surviving his parents’ cold upbringing, he’d left his childhood home and had learned never to rely on another. Love, he’d believed, was a foolish emotion.

Then Ellie had returned to his life, and his youthful feelings had resurfaced stronger than before. He’d fallen even more in love with her, not only with her beauty, but with her intelligence, her determination, and her unwavering loyalty to those in need. She’d turned his world inside out, and he could never return, never imagine a life without her by his side. He needed her to challenge him, to make him laugh, to make him feel alive, to complete him.

And how had he shown her his love? Because of him, she was being banished to the country and sent away from those she loved. Her dreams of financial independence and helping others were now shattered.

He was responsible. For everything. He’d broken her heart when she’d been a young debutante. He justified his need to protect her by thinking it was the only way, but he’d been wrong. Terribly wrong. By not telling her the truth about his parents’ disapproval and by hurting her in a cruel fashion by kissing another, he’d effectively taken away Ellie’s right to make her own choice. She should have had a say.

And he’d repeated his mistake when he’d privately spoken with Castleton about her activities with Violet Lasher. Ellie was right. He hadn’t trusted her enough to come to him and instead had acted on his own. His stubborn pride, his need for control, had ruined their chance to be together, just as it had years ago.

She had every right to despise him.

His heart sank as he realized what he had done. Could she ever forgive him? More importantly, would he reach her in time to beg her forgiveness and profess his love?

The alternative was unthinkable.

He could lose it all.

His breath caught as he spotted the jeweler’s. Pushing past a startled group of dandies, he reached for the door and burst into the shop. The shopkeeper looked up in alarm. “Is something amiss?”

“Is there a back door?”

The man pointed and Hugh took off. Goblets and bowls toppled off tables on his mad dash to the back door.

Praying he was on time, he sprinted into the alley.