Chapter Thirteen
“I love you.”
The words echoed in William’s mind long after Eliza had gone. She had said them hours ago, whispered them into the quiet aftermath of their consummation, and he had not been able to respond.
I love you.
Three words. The simplest construction in the English language. And yet they had frozen him, paralysed him, turned his tongue to lead and his heart to ice.
Because he loved her too.
He had known it for weeks, had felt it growing like a vine through his chest, wrapping around his ribs, squeezing his lungs until every breath was an act of conscious will.
He loved her laugh and her stubbornness and her ridiculous attachment to ferns.
He loved the way she argued with him, the way she challenged him, the way she refused to be impressed by his title or intimidated by his reputation.
He loved the way she looked at him, as though he were someone worth believing in.
He loved her. Completely. Irrevocably. With a depth and intensity that terrified him more than anything he had ever experienced.
And that was precisely why he could not say the words back.
Because love, in William’s experience, was a trap. A poison. A slow-acting venom that destroyed everything it touched.
And yet here he was. Alone in the aftermath of an afternoon that had changed everything, having crossed every line he had drawn for himself, feeling exactly what he had sworn he would never feel.
He was his father.
The realisation crashed over him like cold water, shocking him fully awake.
He was his father, helpless in the grip of an emotion he could not control, vulnerable in a way he had spent his entire adult life avoiding.
Eliza had power over him now. Real power.
The power to destroy him with a careless word, a wandering eye, a simple decision to leave.
She would not do those things, of course. He knew that. Eliza was not his mother, was nothing like his mother, could never be capable of the cold-blooded abandonment that had shattered his family.
But what if he was his mother?
The thought crept in, insidious and inescapable.
What if the patterns he feared were not about being betrayed, but about betraying?
His mother had loved his father once, or had claimed to, and then she had left.
Had walked away from her husband, her child, her entire life, without a backward glance.
What if William had inherited that capacity for abandonment?
What if, somewhere deep in his nature, there lurked the same coldness that had allowed Eleanor Vane to leave an eight-year-old boy and never look back?
He closed his eyes and saw Eliza as she had looked only hours before, her face soft with trust, her hair loosened around her shoulders, utterly unaware of the storm raging inside him.
I love you, she had said.
And he had given her nothing in return. Nothing but silence and a desperate grip that probably told her more than he wanted her to know.
She deserved better.
The thought crystallised with sudden, painful clarity.
She deserved someone who could love her without fear.
Someone who could give her the words she needed, the commitment she deserved, the future she was clearly hoping for.
She deserved a man who was not broken, not damaged, not so scarred by his past that he could not reach for what he wanted without fearing he would destroy it.
She deserved someone who was not him.
It was cowardly, he knew that, but he was almost relieved she had gone. He could not have borne to see her eyes after that confession. Could not have borne the hope he knew would be there, the expectation that what had passed between them had changed something fundamental.
It had changed something. That was the problem. It had changed everything, and William did not know how to navigate what lay before him. Did not know how to be the man she needed when every instinct was screaming at him to run.
He rose and dressed in silence, his movements mechanical, his mind churning with thoughts he could not escape.
The Season would end soon enough. Soon society would disperse for the summer; Eliza would return to Devonshire, and the fragile world they had built together would be punctured by reality.
What happened then?
The options were brutally simple. He could marry her, make her his duchess, give her the legitimacy and protection of his name.
Or he could let her go, watch her marry Edmund Alcott or some other respectable gentleman, and spend the rest of his life knowing that another man was touching her, holding her, giving her the children she deserved.
Neither option was bearable.
Marriage meant trust. Permanence. The daily vulnerability of sharing a life with someone who could, at any moment, reveal herself to be something other than what she appeared. His mother had seemed devoted for seven years before the truth emerged. How long would Eliza’s constancy last?
She is not deceiving you, whispered a voice in his head. She has never deceived you. You know this.
He did know it. That was the worst part. Eliza was exactly what she appeared to be, honest, passionate, genuinely in love with him. She was not his mother. She would never betray him.
But he might betray her.
He might wake one morning and find that the love had curdled into suspicion, the way it had for his father.
Might find himself questioning her every smile, her every conversation with another man, her every moment out of his sight.
Might poison their marriage with the jealousy and fear that lived in his bones, until she looked at him with the same exhausted despair his mother had shown his father at the end.
Or he might wake one morning and find the love simply… gone. Evaporated like morning mist, leaving nothing but emptiness and obligation. Might find himself trapped in a marriage with a woman he no longer wanted, going through the motions of a life that had lost all meaning.
Perhaps his mother had felt that emptiness. Perhaps that was what had driven her away in the end. William did not know. He had spent years trying to understand how a woman could abandon her husband, her child, her entire life, and had never found an answer that satisfied him.
What if William was capable of the same thing?
What if he woke one day and discovered that what he felt for Eliza had been nothing but infatuation, intense, overwhelming, and ultimately temporary?
He could not do that to her. Could not bind her to him with vows and promises, only to discover that he was incapable of keeping them. Better to end it now, while she could still recover. Better to set her free while she was young enough to find someone worthy of her.
Better to destroy himself than to destroy her.
***
The thought haunted him for the next several days.
It followed him through dinners and political meetings, through estate accounts and correspondence, through every waking hour in which he attempted, and failed, to think of something else.
By the time Eliza arrived for their next meeting, he had convinced himself that he was doing the right thing.
She found him in the study, standing by the window.
“William?”
Her voice was soft, and it cut through him like a blade. He did not turn at once.
“Is something wrong?”
Everything is wrong. I love you too much. I’m going to ruin you. I need to let you go.
“I was thinking,” he said instead.
“About?”
“The future.”
She moved closer.
“That sounds ominous.”
“It is not meant to be.” The lie tasted like ash. “I simply… the Season is drawing to a close. We need to discuss what happens next.”
“I thought we were going to decide that together.”
“We are.”
He forced himself to turn and meet her eyes.
The sight of her nearly undid him.
I am going to hurt you, he thought. And I hate myself for it already.
“Eliza.” He took her hands in his. “The other day was… I have never experienced anything like it. You must know that.”
“But?”
Her voice was steady, but he saw the fear flicker in her eyes.
“But I need you to understand something.” He drew a breath.
“What I feel for you terrifies me. I have spent my entire life avoiding exactly this. And now that I am here, now that I…” He broke off and tried again.
“I do not know whether I can be what you need. I do not know whether I am capable of the sort of love that sustains a marriage.”
“You are capable of more than you think.”
“You have such faith in me.” His laugh was hollow. “I wish I shared it.”
“Then let me have faith for both of us.”
She stepped closer, her hands tightening around his.
“And if you are wrong?” he asked roughly. “If I fail you? If I become the thing I fear?”
“Then we shall face it together.”
Her eyes never left his.
“I am not asking for certainty, William. No one is ever granted that. I am asking for a chance. A real chance, not an arrangement that ends when the Season does.”
“You are asking me to marry you.”
“I am asking you to consider it.” Her voice softened. “I know you are afraid. I am afraid too. But what exists between us is worth fighting for.”
He wanted to say yes. How desperately he wanted to say yes. Wanted to pull her into his arms and promise her everything, marriage, children, a lifetime together. Wanted to believe that love could be something other than a trap, that he could be something other than his parents’ son.
But the fear was stronger.
The fear that had lived in him since he was eight years old, watching his mother drive away, watching his father crumble, learning the lesson that had shaped the whole of his life: love destroys.
“I need time,” he said, and watched the hope flicker in her eyes. “I am not saying no. I am saying that I need to think. To be certain that I am not making a mistake that will hurt us both.”
“How much time?”
“I do not know.” It was the only honest answer he could give. “But I promise you this: before the Season ends, you shall have my answer. Whatever I decide, you will know it before you return to Devonshire.”
She studied him for a long moment.
“All right,” she said at last. “I will wait. But William…” Her grip on his lapels tightened. “Do not make me wait too long. I have given you everything I have. I need to know whether you mean to do the same.”
He kissed her then, a soft, desperate kiss that felt far too much like farewell, and felt something crack deep inside his chest.
I love you, he thought. I love you more than I ever thought possible.
And that is precisely why I cannot trust it.
When she had gone, he remained where he was for several minutes, staring at the closed door.
The Season would soon be over. Soon, Eliza would return to Devonshire, and the choice he had postponed would have to be made.
The options were brutally simple.
He could marry her, make her his duchess, and trust that what he felt would endure.
Or he could let her go.
The fear had already chosen for him; it had been choosing for years.
She deserved better than a man who doubted every promise he made. Better than a man who could not hear the words I love you without remembering the devastation those same words had left behind.
She deserved certainty.
And William had none to offer.
He had allowed her past every defence he possessed, deeper than anyone had ever reached. Yet even now, when the thing he wanted most stood within his grasp, he could not bring himself to take it.
Fear held him fast.
And fear, he suspected, was going to cost him everything.