Page 34 of Every Rogue Has His Charm

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. To avoid his future? To revisit his past? But neither of those was an answer, really. Not an answer to satisfy her. Not even to satisfy himself.

“You are my husband. I am your wife. But this—” She gestured between them. “This is not a marriage.”

She was right, of course. That was precisely why he’d intended to offer her an annulment. But when it came time to speak the words, he realized he couldn’t give her up without a fight. Whether it was easier or better or safer to keep himself apart from her, as he’d always told himself, was no longer clear to him. Lonelier, certainly.

And if he had another chance, any chance, to ease a lifetime of loneliness, shouldn’t he seize it?

His heart thudded in his chest, harder than it had when he’d rowed out against the inrushing tide. He’d been strong before, brave before. But this was strength and bravery of a different order. What if she refused him? What if she was happier alone?

Despite his marvelous voice, he could manage only a whisper. “Could it be?”

“I don’t know you,” she repeated, looking back toward the window, as if she could not answer him without more information. “Neither do you know me.”

“No,” he agreed. “But will you give me leave to learn? To try?”

“I’m not sure I should.”

His heart leaped—a movement so violent he did not at first recognize it as joy, as hope.

She hadn’t said no.

Gently, he laid the book beside her on the bed and rose. “Join me for dinner tonight.” An offer, not an order. “Or better yet, I will ask Mrs. Horn to send up two trays and join you here.”

She dropped her gaze to the book and watched her fingertip trace the embossing on its cover. An eternity passed, eons in which glaciers moved and continents drifted, before she at last said, “All right.”

* * * *

Caro hadn’t the slightest idea what Hartwell expected to accomplish by dining in her room—unless it was to make more work for the servants.

One of the housemaids had dragged the chair from the bedside to the window to join its mate, and poor Geoffrey had been recruited to place the table from the corridor between them. Once the dropped leaf had been lifted and the leg swung around to support it, the narrow rectangular tabletop doubled to become a square, though still hardly spacious for dining.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Horn had fussed over the menu, uncertain what might suit both Caro’s still-delicate stomach and a gentleman’s heartier appetite, until Caro had quite literally put her foot down. “You will not prepare two meals. The duke can get by on an invalid’s diet for one evening, or else not eat at all,” she had declared.

“Very well, Your Grace,” Mrs. Horn had conceded, “I will agree to a simple menu.” Defiance twinkled in her eye. “If you will agree to change your gown.”

The last thing Caro wanted was to make it seem as if she had been preening for her husband. She did not want to reveal any more of herself to him than absolutely necessary. Not her décolletage. Not her soul.

“Very well, Mrs. Horn. The primrose silk, if you please.” Papa had gotten a bargain on it, though she had protested that she looked wretched in yellow. Given her present pallor, she would look worse still.

She had not accounted for the softening glow of candlelight. Or the warmth that flooded her cheeks when he entered the room. Leclerc must have taken a page from Mrs. Horn’s book of bargaining, for the duke looked fully the part for once. His hair had been trimmed and the knot in his cravat was nothing short of elegant. And when he seated himself across from her at the intimate little table, their knees brushing, she was so distracted by the look in his eyes, she almost forgot his scars.

Why are you doing this? she wanted to ask again.

Six years ago, she had been willing to give him anything, everything. Then he’d revealed a capacity for cruelty beyond even her father’s. The show of strength it had taken to hold her head up when he had abandoned her, to start anew in a place where she knew no one…it had left her too weak to shake off her family’s grasping, greedy hands.

But she must find the strength to stand firm now, not to let him draw her in, only to trample her once more.

“Shall we begin?” she said, setting her chin and picking up her spoon as she dared him to look down at the bowl of clear broth sitting before him.

He glanced at his place, and his expression settled into those familiar, wry lines: a lopsided smile, made more so by his injuries. But when he raised his eyes to her again, they were twinkling. “Ah, a consommé.” He took a spoonful, looking at her all the while. “How lovely.”

“Does it make you think of France?” she taunted.

“Well, where I’ve been most recently, the fare is heartier. Peasant dishes, you know.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, in the south. Near the Pyrenees.” And he launched into a description of scenery so breathtaking, it might have come from a guidebook—or a Robin Ratliff novel. She wanted to close her eyes and lose herself in its evocative beauty.