Chapter 9 #3
‘No. You confine yourself to ordering, making announcements, and reproaches. Forgive me, I had forgotten.’
Arden walked towards her. Eveline did not move away, but neither did she look at him. The light coming from the drawing room caressed her cheek and brought out the dark red of her lips. Those lips he remembered in an unbearable way.
‘A little while ago,’ he said, measuring the harshness of his voice, ‘you did not seem so indignant with me. You melted in my arms, Eveline.’
She drew herself up, uneasy.
‘Do not go on.’
‘You begged me not to stop kissing you.’
‘Arden…’
‘You held me by the lapels. You begged me not to stop,’ he insisted. ‘And the first time I see you in London, I discover that you wish to find a suitor to marry because, apparently, I am not the one. ’
Eveline turned then and looked him in the eyes. She was not pale or undone. She was furious, though beneath the anger there was something Arden took too long to recognize as pain.
‘Have you finished?’
‘No.’
‘Well, I have.’ She tried to leave, and he caught her by the wrist.
‘Eveline…’ Her name came out like an agonized plea.
The crack in his control opened again, and she noticed it.
‘What do you want from me, Arden?’
‘In the first place, that you call me by my name. ’
‘Why?’
‘Because I want you to prove to me that you at least know what I am called. ’
‘And if I did not?’ she dared to defy him.
‘You do not know it?’
It was something she saw in his eyes that made her draw back. Did he look wounded? She did not understand this man at all.
‘Nathaniel,’ she whispered.
‘Good. Now what I wish is for you to tell me that you do not want to marry another man.’
‘How do you know what I meant to do?’ she wanted to find out.
‘Your brother left a letter for me at his country house, I have told you. There he gave me all the details of your intention. ’
‘When were you there?’
‘Tell me you do not want to marry another, Eveline,’ he asked her, for that was more important.
She pressed her lips together.
‘I need to marry.’
‘Me.’
‘You do not want to marry me.’
The assertion was so firm and so weary that for an instant Arden did not know how to answer.
‘Where did you get such a stupid notion?’
‘From your conduct over all these years.’
‘My conduct has just announced our engagement before a whole room.’
‘After fleeing and having left me alone.’
‘I did not flee, and you were with your family when I left. Not alone.’
‘You disappeared from Hounslow Park without a word to me.’
‘There was no time. ’
‘That is your excuse?’
‘I came to London when I left your brother’s house.’
‘What a useful precision.’
‘To obtain a special license,’ he disclosed at last.
Eveline blinked a couple of times. Then she frowned.
‘What?’
‘A special license,’ he repeated. ‘To marry without delay. And I returned at once to Hounslow Park to celebrate our wedding. The surprise was finding a letter from Statony informing me that you wished to find another fiancé. And there I was stranded by the rain, for otherwise I would have come much sooner. I have already explained it to you at the beginning of our conversation,’ he had to remind her.
The news was a great surprise, but not in the way Arden expected. He saw no relief in her face. He saw… had he wounded her again? If so, why?
‘Ah.’
‘Is that all?’
‘I am glad to know you were diligent in repairing the disaster, Lord Arden.’ She returned to formality because it struck her as the most fitting.
‘Do not speak to me that way, and do not go back to formal address. ’
‘How would you have me speak to you? With gratitude? Am I to thank you for going to the archbishop after having kissed me in front of half a party? Or for announcing an engagement I have not accepted, neither today nor on that day, only because you did it in public before I could prevent it?’
‘You will accept it.’
‘No.’
The word was emphatic.
Arden looked at her.
‘Yes.’
‘I will not marry a man who considers me a burden.’
‘I have never said that.’
‘You did not need to.’
‘Eveline…’
‘No. This time you are going to listen to me. You have spent years looking at me as though I were a calamity in skirts. You reprimand me, you watch me, you judge me, you appear every time I try to decide something for myself, and then you expect me to believe this marriage will not be another form of confinement. You kissed me because you were furious and wanted to teach me a lesson because I had asked Linfield to kiss me. You announced that I would be your countess and then you left.’
‘I went to obtain the special license. There is nothing else we can do, do you not understand?’ He did not ask her to address him without formality, because he knew she was trying to keep her distance from him at all costs.
‘Because you are honorable.’
The word, spoken by her, sounded almost cruel. It was like an insult.
Arden took a step towards her.
‘Do not reduce me to that. You do not know what I am or am not when I am with you, and, believe me, you do not want to find out. ’
‘To be merely honorable? What a tragedy for an irreproachable earl.’
‘I am not irreproachable when it comes to you, and if you are not careful, you will soon discover how mistaken you are.’
The look she saw in his eyes frightened her. He seemed a hunter, and she had just become his prey.
‘Stop.’
‘What?’
‘You cannot speak to me like that, nor look at me like that.’ Formality vanished again. She was too on edge to concentrate on etiquette.
‘How?’
‘You know it already. ’
‘No, I do not. Tell me how I am looking at you, Eveline. ’
‘It is the same look Statony gives when he wants Alice to—’ she fell silent at once.
‘When your brother wants to seduce his duchess?’ He had intuited it.
‘Do not. Do not seduce me if you are then going to detest me again.’
Arden felt something break inside him.
‘I do not detest you.’
She let out a brief, very wounded laugh.
‘Please… No more lies.’
‘I am not lying, Eveline. It would be easier if I detested you, I assure you.’
‘Then what am I to you? An obligation? A scandal? Your best friend’s sister, whom you have to watch over for life in order to save me?’
‘You do not know what you are to me. And if you knew it, it could be the end of me. ’
‘I dare you to say it.’
‘You have always been my undoing, Eveline, and you always will be. One I cannot escape.’
She misunderstood him.
‘You see? We cannot marry.’
There was the truth. Clean, painful, and impossible to dodge.
‘Eveline, I—’
Arden thought of Lady Ashbury, of her warning, of the special license that was of no use in making a woman believe in the love of a stubborn man, of all the phrases he should have said to her before, and at that moment, of how clumsy they would sound in his mouth and the terror that still closed his throat when he came near to offering a confession of a romantic nature.
He could not find in his mind the right words to explain to her how terribly in love with her he was.
There was only an uncontrollable desire. That fierce need to show her with his body what he did not know how to express aloud.