Chapter 16
Sixteen
Dominic filled the doorway, his broad shoulders blocking the afternoon light.
His grey eyes found her immediately, burning with a restless energy.
He looked as though he hadn’t slept. There were shadows under his eyes and a harsh tension in the set of his jaw.
His cravat was tied carelessly, the way he’d pulled it together without the aid of a glass.
“Lord Westmore.” Nell’s throat tightened, making the words come out as a strangled rasp. Her hands once again found the edge of the counter, gripping the wood for support. “The shop is—”
“I saw Hartley leaving.” He stepped inside and closed the door behind him with a definitive click. His movements were deliberate, his hand reaching for the sign hanging in the window and flipping it to CLOSED.
Nell’s spine went rigid. She pressed back against the shelves of cooling bread, the warmth of the loaves seeped through her dress but did nothing to chill the fear in her chest. “You cannot just—”
“I can.” He moved toward her, eating up the distance with long strides. “I am.”
“Someone will see.” Nell’s hands curled into fists at her sides, her heart hammering against her ribs.
“Let them.” He stopped at the counter, looming over her. A muscle jumped in his jaw as he searched her face with eyes the colour of a stormy sea. “What did he want?”
Nell lifted her chin, refusing to cower beneath the solid mass of his stare. “That is none of your concern.”
“Everything about you is my concern.” The words were scraped from somewhere deep in his chest. He braced his hands on the counter, leaning in until they were mere inches apart. “What did he want, Nell?”
“He made me an offer.” She held his gaze. “A good one.”
A spark lit within him, edged with cruelty and possession. His fingers curled against the wood until his knuckles blanched, mirroring the tension that seized his frame. “What kind of offer?”
“The kind that makes sense.” Nell forced the words out past the constriction in her throat. “Stability. Security. A father for my children. His name. Today, if I want it.”
His face drew taut, at the word today, his expression fractured into a look of pure, jagged jealousy.
“And what did you say?” His words had thinned to a rough rasp. He leaned in further, making her skin prickle.
Nell clasped her hands in front of her to hide their trembling. “I said I would think about it.”
He stood there for a moment, utterly still, his hands curled into white-knuckled fists at his sides. Then he moved. He rounded the end of the counter, invading her space and coming so close she could smell the scent of sandalwood and feel the heat radiating from his body.
She didn’t back up. She held her ground, her spine as straight as a poker.
“You are considering him.” He threw the words at her not as a question, but as an accusation, the pain in his expression raw.
“Of course I am considering him.” She kept her features schooled into something steady, though her hands remained locked together so tight her fingers ached.
“He is everything I should want. Kind, steady, respectable. And he is free to offer it. No complications, no scandal, no whispers behind fans about the scheming baker who trapped a viscount.”
“Should.” He latched onto the word. His eyes turned to slits as he tilted his head. “Not do. Should.”
Nell’s lips pressed into a thin line until they ached. “It’s the same thing.”
“It’s not.” He stepped closer still, towering over her. His breath was warm on her face. “Should is what other people want for you. Do what you want for yourself.” Nell went still.
Nell pressed her back against the wooden shelf behind her, her heart hammering like a trapped bird. “Perhaps they are the same for me.”
“They are not.” The statement landed between them with the pressure of cold iron. He leaned in until the world narrowed to the lines of his face and the heat of his breath against her skin. “I know what you want, Nell. I felt it yesterday. In that maze. When you came apart against me.”
“That was a mistake.” She forced the words out, even as her body betrayed her. Heat pooled low in her belly at the memory, her cheeks flushing a deep, telltale crimson.
“No.” He spoke the word with a fierce conviction, his hands coming up to bracket her against the shelf without quite touching her. “That was the first honest thing either of us has done since we met.”
Nell went still. She pressed her palms flat against his chest, feeling the frantic thud of his heart through the fine wool of his coat to hold him at bay. “Dominic—”
“Marry me.” He blurted the words, like the breath had been knocked from him.
The request hit her like a physical blow, driving the air from her lungs. She stared at him, her mouth falling open as her hands froze against the heat of his chest.
“What?” She barely recognized the thin, reedy sound of her own voice.
“Marry me.” He said it again. His hands finally made contact, gripping her shoulders to hold her in place. “Be my wife.”
She kept staring, waiting for the mocking smile that would tell her it was a joke, a jest, or some cruel game of the aristocracy.
He was not smiling.
Nell shook her head, her fingers curling into the fabric of his coat as if to anchor herself. “You are mad.”
“Probably.” He didn’t soften his expression, but his grip on her shoulders tightened. “But I am also in love with you.”
The breath left her body in a soft whoosh.
“I love you.” He said it as though the confession were being ripped from him, like every word cost him something vital.
He leaned forward, his forehead dropping to rest against hers.
“I have tried not to. God knows I have tried. But I cannot stop thinking about you. I cannot stop wanting you. I cannot imagine my life without you in it.”
Nell’s hands trembled against his chest. She shook her head again, the movement brushing her brow against his. “You barely know me.”
“I know enough.” He pulled back just far enough to look at her, his thumbs brushing across the fabric on her shoulders.
His expression was raw and entirely open.
“I know you are the strongest woman I have ever met. I know you built a life from nothing. I know you’d die for your children without a second thought.
I know you make me feel like I am worth something for the first time in my miserable life. ”
Nell pressed her hands harder against his chest, trying to create a desperate distance. “Dominic—”
“Marry me.” The words were raw with desperation.
His hands slid from her shoulders to cup her face, his palms warm against her skin.
“I will give you everything. Bramwell Park. Money. Security. Your children will want for nothing. They shall have the best education, the finest clothes, everything they have ever dreamed of. I will adopt them legally, and give them my name. They will be Westmores, with all the rights and privileges that entails.”
It was everything. It was more than she’d ever dared to hope for in her darkest hours. And she couldn’t say yes. Nell closed her eyes, drew a long breath, and pulled his hands away from her face. “No.”
He went utterly still. The colour drained from his face, and his hands fell limply to his sides. “What?”
“No.” She spoke firmly, forcing the word past the ache in her chest. She opened her eyes to meet his. “I cannot marry you.”
His brow furrowed. Confusion and pain crossed his face. “Why not?”
“Because it would destroy us both.” She pressed her back against the shelf, needing the support as her legs shook beneath her heavy skirts.
“I don’t understand—” He reached for her again, but she held up a hand, palm out, to stop him.
“I am a widow, Dominic.” She pressed her hand flat against his chest to hold him back, her composure brittle as old plaster. “A common widow with two children and a bakery that barely keeps us fed. And you are a viscount.”
“I don’t care about—” He tried to step closer, but she shoved against him with a sudden, sharp strength.
“The ton will care.” She cut him off, her jaw set in a hard, uncompromising line. “They will call me a fortune hunter. Every ball, every dinner, every drawing room — I will be the joke they tell behind their fans.”
“I don’t care what they think.” He caught her hand against his chest, trapping it there so she could feel the steady, insistent beat beneath his ribs.
“You say that now.” She shook her head, her throat tight as she struggled to pull free.
“But I count pennies, Dominic. I measure flour by the ounce and stretch every shilling until it screams. You have never had to count anything in your life. That kind of distance between two people — it doesn’t disappear because you want it to. ”
“Money means nothing to me—” Dominic protested.
“Because you’ve always had it.” She wrenched her hand free. “That is exactly my point.”
He stood there, breathing hard, his fingers empty.
“And I am six years older than you.” She pressed on before he could reach for her again. “Six years. The ton will count every one of them, and they will not be kind about it. When your friends sit around their clubs and laugh about the viscount who married an old widowed shopkeeper who...”
“Stop.” His voice cracked on the word.
“I cannot stop.” She wrapped her arms tight around her middle. “Because you won’t think about this, so someone has to. I have Oliver and Lily depending on me. Two children who have already survived so much — I cannot do this to them.”
The words landed like a blow. She saw him flinch, saw the colour leave his face, and she pressed on anyway because stopping now would mean losing her nerve entirely.
“There is more.” The admission tore out of her, the truth she had never spoken aloud. A tremor ran through her frame. “Lily nearly killed me. The birth was so difficult the doctor said another pregnancy could —”