“What on earth—”
Rowarth.
Impossible.
He was standing just inside the door. He had the key in his hand. Shaking, Eve moved several of the counter items at random. “I thought you had gone,” she said foolishly, since he was standing right before her.
“I’ve come to claim something I lost.” He sounded confident, authoritative, the humor lurking just below the surface. Eve’s heart leaped and she tried to quell its insistent beat.
“This is a pawnbroker’s shop,” she said, “not a lost property office.”
Rowarth smiled. Her stomach dipped. “I appreciate that. And there is another difficulty, too, I fear. I cannot pay you. What I want is beyond price. You have to give it to me freely.”
“That isn’t the way that I do business.”
“It is now. I want your love. Your hand in marriage.”
“My love?” Her voice sounded squeaky as a rusty gate. “Marriage? Rowarth, I told you this morning—”
“You told me that your words of love meant nothing. I think that you lied. I think you sent me away because you are afraid to take the risk.”
Eve stared at him, unwilling, unable to lie again. That morning it had been painful enough. “I cannot be held to anything I said in the throes of passion. It was so blissful I probably would have said anything…”
Rowarth smiled again, devastating, wicked. She felt light-headed, dizzy with love for him. “Eve…” He shook his head. “Take the risk. I love you—you make me happy, a better man. I hope I make you happy, too. So we will wed.”
The blunt male logic of it made it sound so simple.
Eve’s throat closed with tears. How to dissuade him now? He had come several steps closer. There was a smile in his eyes and a confidence about him that said he knew now how this would end. She could not hurt him again, could not lie.
“We cannot marry,” she said defiantly. “I was your mistress. I am unsuitable. Everyone will talk scandal.”
He looked unmoved. “I have had a great deal more women than you have had men, my dear.” He shrugged. “Does the past matter, if we love each other?”
Actually she found it did. She was consumed with jealousy for all those women. She wanted to rip them to shreds.
“If you believe that my past does not matter, you are mistaken,” she said. “No one will receive me.”
He looked regretful. “Some will because of the title. But I know that it is a great deal to ask of you. Do you love me enough to do it?” Then, as she hesitated, knowing she was only making excuses anyway, he added, “Eve, you know that I am no callow youth with unrealistic ideals. I’m old and cynical yet despite that I know that once I have found love—the real thing—I cannot afford to let it go if I am ever to be happy again.”
Eve picked up a cuckoo clock, concentrating fiercely on it. “I cannot. I am illegitimate, and ill-educated—”
He took the clock from her, placed it carefully on the desk and then took her hands, his gaze suddenly intent. “You may recall that we have had this conversation before. I do not care about your parentage or your education. You are loving and generous and warm and the most special woman in the world and I knew it from the moment we first met.”
She could not look at him. She tried to free herself and was held fast.
“Rowarth,” she said again, and she could hear the unsteady note in her voice and cursed herself for it. “How many dukes do you know who married their mistresses?”
He was actually counting. She could see it. “Three,” he said, at last. “Dunston, Glenroth and Shefford. The Duchess of Shefford called herself an actress but we all knew—”
“Rowarth!”
“I beg your pardon.” He sounded genuinely apologetic. “But you are scared, Eve. You are making excuses.”
She was. It was true. She so desperately wanted to accept him and to lay to rest the very last secret between them, yet she knew that if she did she ran the biggest risk of all, that of losing him for good.
“Eve, look at me,” Rowarth said. “Tell me what truly troubles you.”
It was pointless to resist. He was determined and his gentleness undermined every last defense she had.