“Harry—”
He rushed on before she could object. “We can start afresh. In New York, we’ll be beyond your brother’s reach.”
“America,” she said as if he’d suggested flying to the moon. “I don’t know anyone in America.”
“I don’t either.” He caught her hands, needing the physical contact. “That’s the glory of it, my darling. We’ll be free, free to become the people we’re meant to be.”
“I’m not sure.” Her fingers twined around his as though he offered protection against her fear, when he was the one who had frightened her.
“Sophie, I know it’s not what you dreamed. I know you wanted a wedding at St. George’s, and James walking you down the aisle, and a place in society.”
“Those things don’t matter. But leaving my family and my country does. Can’t we stay in England?”
He tried not to be disappointed at her lack of enthusiasm. “Your brother will hound us. I wouldn’t put kidnapping past him. The gossip about our elopement will dog us for the rest of our lives. If we stay here, we’ll never outrun the scandal.”
“You ask so much.”
“I know.” He paused. “The decision is yours. You’ve got more to lose than I have.”
She looked troubled. “We’ve become lovers. I have no choice.”
He sighed and spoke the grim truth. “Sophie, I hate to say it, but you’re a great heiress from an influential family, whatever your uncle did. Many men will overlook your lack of virginity in exchange for your fortune and your brother’s favor.”
Her lips turned down with disgust. “That’s not how I want to live.”
He raised her hands and kissed them, feeling like a blackguard. He really should have talked to her before he took the irrevocable action of sleeping with her. “You can’t have the life you were born to lead and marry me, my love.”
She regarded him somberly. In that moment, something changed within her. The girl who spoke had grown up in some subtle way. “You’re forcing me to choose?”
He released her and stood. The urge to sweep her into his arms and kiss her into compliance was too powerful when he sat only inches away. “I must.”
She scrambled to her feet, delicate jaw setting with determination. “Can you walk away from me?”
“If it’s for your good, I can.” The thought of never seeing her, never kissing her, hell, after tonight, never making love to her, cut like a blade. “I tried to do the decent thing. I asked your brother for your hand. But he’ll never countenance me as a brother-in-law.”
“We can wait.”
“No, we can’t.” He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “Sophie, we’ll get caught. And when we do, the world will sneer at you and call you vile names. You deserve better than that.”
He waited for her to disagree with what they both knew to be true. Instead she wrapped her arms around her chest and stared blindly into space. “But America?”
He fought the impulse to draw her close and say that none of this mattered. They’d found paradise in this house. They could find it again. If they ignored the outside world, the outside world would ignore them.
Sadly neither he nor Sophie was fool enough to believe that nonsense. “We could go to France or Italy. Pen has friends on the Continent.”
“Friends who write letters to England.”
He flinched at Sophie’s stark assessment. She’d reached the same conclusion that he had. The Continent was both too far away and too close for them to establish themselves free of scandal.
“At least in America, they speak English,” she said in a small voice.
“So they claim,” he said drily.
Sophie studied him with an agonized yearning that made his belly cramp with denial. He saw her regret. He saw her count everything on his side and everything on her brother’s side. He already knew which balance carried the most weight.
She meant to say no. After all they’d been through, all they’d been to each other, all that had happened tonight, she’d leave him and retreat to the safety of her brother’s care. She’d marry bloody Desborough and grace high society for the rest of her life. And in a few years wonder just what madness had possessed her that she’d almost discarded a secure future for the sake of Harry Thorne’s bright black eyes.
Bloody, bloody, bloody hell.