Page 22 of How to Wed a Courtesan

He winced. ‘Lottie, please forgive me.’ His hand came to rest on her back.

The touch was like a bolt of lightning, cracking through her shock. It ripped away the surprise of seeing him for the first time in four years and left her once more at the mercy of her turbulent sentiments.

Forgive me.

So much pain. So much loss. So much that could never be reclaimed.

‘God, Lottie, please forgive me,’ Evander repeated, in a gentle voice that stoked a memory deep inside her—one that did not want to be coaxed to life.

He had spoken to her gently thus before. When he had loved her.

‘You want my forgiveness?’ A bitter laugh choked her. She was acting like a madwoman, no doubt. Perhaps she ought to care more about how she came across. But she’d cast aside decorum a long time ago. When she’d had nothing left. Nowhere to go.

Evander had asked for her trust and then he had abandoned her. Ruined her. And now he wished for her forgiveness?

Suddenly she did not feel compelled to laugh so much as to cry, to give in to the wild, desperate sorrow that clawed inside her like a beast.

‘I love you, Lottie.’ He held his large hands out, not reaching for her but imploring, the same way his gaze did. His palms, once smooth, were now callused. ‘I’ve never stopped loving you. There’s been no one else this entire time. In heart. In body. There’s only ever been you.’

In body.

She sucked in a pained breath. Where he had been faithful, she had not. But then she hadn’t been able to afford such a luxury as fidelity. Not when her hopes of being a governess in London were dashed with her realisation of the importance of a referral.

She’d had no choice but to become a dancer in the opera. The pay, however, had not been nearly sufficient. She’d managed to make do, but when payment of the physician’s bills became necessary, there was not nearly enough money.

A fresh squeeze of agony gripped her. There had been many offers from men who’d sought to become her protector. She’d held them off for as long as she could. At least until...

‘I did this for us,’ Evander was saying. ‘For our future. So we could marry, so I could provide you with the life you are worthy of.’

The life she was worthy of.

He’d meant his words to soothe her hurt, but he was unintentionally thrusting the blade deeper. Whatever life he had planned for them together, she was no longer eligible for it.

‘It’s later than we had expected, I know, but I have never stopped wanting you as my wife.’ He lowered himself to the carpet on one knee before her and lifted his hands in expectation for her to put her fingers to his. ‘Marry me, Lottie.’

She shook her head, unable even to work a single word into her throat.

‘Please.’ He gestured around the room where he kneeled, indicating the crates and wooden pallets stacked throughout the well-appointed study. ‘I did this for us. For you.’

She shook her head again, her eyes filling with the tears she’d been resolved to keep from him.

‘Good God.’ He pushed up to his feet in a smooth motion. ‘You’re already married, aren’t you?’

‘Who would marry me?’ she asked bitterly. ‘I’m ruined.’

He jerked back as if she had slapped him again. ‘Don’t say such a terrible thing, Lottie. What we did was... It was beautiful.’ Some of the hardness in his eyes softened as he gazed at her with affection. ‘It was love.’

That word was almost laughable. Love. It sat in her mind like a ghost.

‘Perhaps that first time was,’ she replied slowly.

Confusion pulled at his brows. ‘I don’t understand.’

Her heart thundered in her chest like galloping horses over hard-packed dirt. She would hurt him with these words, but he had to hear them.

Two letters. In four years.

Yes, that steeled her resolve.