Page 81 of The Dueling Duchess

“I want to make it my business—I want to make you my business. I want to know every single detail about you, Cecile, no matter how small or insignificant. Of all the things I regret in my life—perhaps even more than the insulting offer I made to you—I regret not pushing past your wall of reserve in France and learning who you really are.”

“What difference would that have made?”

“Because you are worth knowing, Cecile.” He rubbed his thumb over the thin skin on the back of her hand. “Is what Helena and I planned immoral?” He shrugged, his expression more than a little wry. “Probably. But then commonly accepted principles of morality have rarely influenced my decision-making. I wrote those letters to you because I was greedy, and I wanted to have you and rescue my family.” He sighed. “It is not the stuff of Gothic romance tales, I’m afraid. I did not do the noble or honorable thing—I am no romance hero. But neither am I a villain. I am just a flawed man who wants to be with you more than anything I’ve wanted in my life.”

Cecile pulled her hand away and he let her go. She turned, unable to look at him and think at the same time, struggling to wrap her mind around his words. She did what she always did when an emotional issue was before her: She imagined that a friend—Marianne, for example—had come to her for advice.

What would she say if Marianne had laid out the mess Guy had just confessed to her?

He’d not just thrown her away and forgotten about her. He’d had a plan—a stupid one—but at least the person he was going to marry wouldn’t have been hurt by his behavior.

Indeed, looked at objectively, and with bourgeois standards of morality stripped away, everyone would win in his scenario. His sisters and mother would be taken care of, the hundreds of people relying on the Duke of Fairhurst would prosper, his wife and her lover would get to be together—as would Cecile and Guy, at least part of the time.

The only thing Guy could not have given her was respectability. Or a family. Two things she’d never believed she wanted.

Until Guy.

The truth was that Cecile never could have accepted such a compromise, and it infuriated her that he could.

Jealousy would have eaten her from the inside out.

She looked up to find him waiting for her. “And would you have taken her to your bed, Guy?”

He hesitated, but then nodded and said, “Yes, but just for an heir.”

Cecile threw her head back and laughed. It was either that or hit him.

His big hands settled on her shoulders. “I see now that might have been difficult for you to—”

“Difficult?” she shouted, knocking his hands away. “Is that what you said? Difficult?”

“Very well, perhaps that was the wrong word.”

“Here is a better one: unbearable.”

He inhaled deeply, let it out, and then nodded. “I agree. But none of that matters now that things are—”

“No!”

“Cecile—”

She raised a hand. “I don’t wish to know how things are as you put it. That might be how things are for you, but not for me, Guy.”

“But—”

“You think I can just forgive you for this past year and take you to my bed?”

He gave her a hopeful look. “Maybe if you took me to your bed, I could help you forgive me.”

Cecile gave a squawk of disbelief. “Can you really be so arrogant? So thoughtless?”

“I’ve been told more than once that I really can be,” he admitted.

“If I take you to my bed, it will be because I want you in my bed—not because I want anything more—”

A smile—no, a grin—spread across his face, cutting her rant short.

Cecile bit her tongue; she literally bit her tongue, and blood flooded her mouth as the realization of what she’d just said flooded her brain.