Cross had changed her.
Without even trying.
“My lord,” she said, making her way across the room to greet him herself. “I am sorry to come without notice.”
He looked up at her from where he was crouched with Trotula. “No need for notice,” he said. “After all, in less than a week, it will be your home, and I won’t have any notice at all!” He paused. “Though, I suppose this is notice . . . betrothal!”
There it was, her cue.
She had considered any number of ways to begin this particular conversation. The gentle, the diplomatic, the evasive. But as she was Philippa Marbury, she settled for the honest.
“My lord, I cannot marry you.”
His hands did not stop as they worked their way through Trotula’s fur, and for a moment, she thought he might not have heard her. After several long seconds, he stood, and rocked back on his heels, putting his hands in the pockets of his waistcoat.
They stood like that for what seemed like an age, Pippa refusing to hide from him, this kind man who had offered for her even when he could have had better. More normal. This good man who had courted her even when she was the oddest woman in London. “I’m sorry,” she added.
“You do not think we make a good match,” he said.
“I think we would have made a very good match,” she replied. “But everything has gone pear-shaped.”
His brows rose. “Pear-shaped?”
She took a deep breath. “I thought I could . . .” She paused. “I thought I would . . .”
I thought I could simply research marriage. Investigate pleasure. I thought I would not suffer the repercussions.
“Do you require additional time? To consider it? We needn’t have the wedding so soon.”
She’d had more than a year. She’d considered Castleton from every angle. She’d planned her life with him. She’d been ready for it. And in one week . . . one day . . . one minute, it seemed . . . everything had changed.
She shook her head. “I do not require additional time.”
He nodded. “I understand.”
She was willing to wager that he didn’t understand at all.
He continued. “I think we could learn to love each other. I think I could learn to love you.”
It was a kind thing to say. He was a good man.
Before, it had been enough. He had been enough. More than. He’d been willing to be her partner, to let her live the life she desired. To give her marriage. Children. Security. All the things a young woman in 1831 required.
Before.
Before she’d decided that she required more.
She met his warm brown gaze. “Unfortunately, I cannot learn to love you.” His eyes widened, and she realized that she had hurt him with her careless words. She rushed to repair it. “No . . . I don’t mean it in such a way. It’s that . . .”
She did not know what to say. How to repair it.
She stopped, hating the feeling, the way the entire male of the species seemed to make her feel in recent days.
And she told the truth. Again. “I’m sorry, my lord,” and she was. “But the vows . . . I can’t speak them. Not to you.”
His brows rose. “The vows?”
The silly ceremony. The one that had started it all. “Obedience and servitude, honor, sickness, and health . . . all that, I feel I could do.”
Understanding flared in his brown eyes. “I’m amenable to all those.” A small smile played across his lips. “I gather it is the love bit that is the problem?”
“Forsaking all others,” she said. She could not forsake all others. She wasn’t sure she could ever forsake the only other who mattered. She took a deep breath around the tightness in her chest. “My lord, I am afraid that I have fallen in love—quite accidentally and not at all happily. With another.”
His face softened. “I see,” he said. “Well, that does change things.”
“It does,” she agreed before she changed her mind. “Except, it doesn’t, really. He . . .” She paused. He is marrying another. “. . . The feeling is not reciprocated.”
Castleton’s brow furrowed. “How is that possible?”
“You should not be so quick to defend me, you know. After all, I just ended our engagement. You’re required to dislike me immensely now.”
“But I don’t dislike you. And I shan’t. Such is the risk we take in this modern world.” He paused, stroking Trotula, who leaned against his leg. “If only marriage were still arranged at birth.”
She smiled. “We mourn the past.”
“I would have liked a medieval keep,” he said happily, “and I think you would have made an excellent lady of the castle. Surrounded by hounds. Riding out with a sword on your belt.”
She laughed at the ridiculous image. “Thank you, my lord, though I wonder if the best ladies of the castle were as blind as I.”
He waved to a nearby settee. “Would you like to sit? Shall I have something brought from the kitchens?” He paused, obviously considering what one offered one’s ex-fiancée in such a situation. “Tea? Lemonade?”
She sat. “No, thank you.”
He looked across the room to a crystal decanter. “Scotch?”
She followed his gaze. “I don’t think ladies drink scotch before eleven o’clock.”
“I shan’t tell anyone.” He hesitated. “In fact, I might join you.”
“By all means, my lord . . . I wouldn’t dream of preventing you from having a proper drink.”