Chapter Twenty-Two
James could hardly breathe. The power of Emma’s even stare, the power of her words, washed over him. Emma Liston loved him. She loved him.
A terrifying and wonderful concept that all at once made his head spin and his legs tremble.
And yet she didn’t look pleased about that confession, nor did it change the fact that she had told him she didn’t want to marry him.
“Why are you a fool to love me?” he asked softly. “Because I am not worthy of your love?”
Her lips parted and she reached for him, touching him for the first time since they’d begun this conversation. She caught one of his hands in both of hers and lifted it to her chest.
“Great God, no, James. That is your father talking, not me.”
His heart lurched. “What do you know of my father?” he asked. She tilted her head and he shook his own. “Meg. She told you about him. About us?”
She nodded. “A little. But don’t be angry with her. I asked, I pried.”
“I’m…not,” he said slowly, and realized it was true. Very few people knew about his relationship with his father. All of them were people he trusted to his core. Emma certainly fit that description. “If we are to marry, which is a topic we still have to discuss, then you have a right to know. My father was…cruel.”
Emma sucked in a breath. “Meg said something similar.”
“He’d lost his first son, his first wife. They were the family he really wanted.” James fought the pain that accompanied those words. “We were a replacement. I never lived up to the original. I never earned the love he felt for his son. His true son.”
She gripped his hand tighter. “You were a boy, you should not have had to earn anything. Love is not a bartering tool, James. That he used it as a reward rather than a gift says everything about him and nothing about you. You deserved more.”
He looked down into her eyes and saw reflected there the life he would lead with her. A life of love and happiness, of protection, not just of him to her, but of her to him. He saw children and a chance to be the father he’d never had.
He saw his future, and in that moment he swelled with a desperation not to lose it. Not to lose her and the love she offered. The love he felt in return but had been hiding.
“Emma,” he whispered. “Lady Montague approached me on the terrace and she wanted to be my mistress.”
She made a soft sound of pain in the back of her throat that stabbed him in the heart, and moved to pull away from him. He clung to her hand, holding her in place.
“Listen,” he said softly. “Please look and me and truly hear what I’m about to say.”
Her breath came short, but she stopped struggling and looked at him with teary eyes. “Very well. What do you have to say?”
He swallowed hard. “I didn’t want her,” he said.
Her brow wrinkled. “But she is beautiful and popular, better matched to you than I would ever be. And everyone knows the rumors of her…her…experience. Many men take a lover and—”
“I don’t care,” he interrupted before she could waste any more breath on convincing him. “I don’t want her. I didn’t want her when she made the offer. And I told her so. I only want you.”
She blinked, rapid little flutterings, like a bird struggling to take flight. “But you’re…you. And I’m…me.”
“You keep saying that,” he said, frustrated by her continued self-deprecation. “But I’ve never thought that you didn’t match me. In fact, this new side of you that you described earlier, the one that is willing to confront me, to walk away from me if you think I’ve betrayed you…that Emma may be far above me. I like her. I like the original Emma too. The bluestocking wallflower with all that passion hiding beneath her surface is exactly who I became enthralled with. I want you, Emma. All the parts and sides of you.”
“You truly refused her?” she whispered.
He nodded slowly. “I did. And I will refuse any other offer I may get in the future. I’m not your father, Emma. I will never betray you as long as I have breath in my body.”
She let out a shuddering sigh. “And I am not your father, James. I will never use love as a bargaining chip.” She shook her head. “Aren’t we a pair, though?”
“Yes,” he said with a small laugh. “It seems we’ve both been so tangled up in the past, we were ready to let it ruin our future.”
She caught her breath, her hands trembling even though she continued to hold his firmly. “Do we have to let it?”
“No,” he whispered. “We could start over.”
She cocked her head. “Start over?”
He slid his hand away from hers and held it out again, as if to meet her for the first time. “Hello, I’m James Rylon, Fifteenth Duke of Abernathe. And I love you, Emma Liston. If this moment is to be a fresh start, that is all you need to know.”
Her face crumpled slightly and she stared at him in heartbreaking disbelief. “You—you love me?” she repeated.
“I do. And if you will lower yourself to marry me as we planned, I will endeavor for the rest of my life never to make you doubt that fact again. I will endeavor to show you that it is true every moment of every day for the rest of my life.”
She let out a sob, but she was smiling. Then she took his hand and shook it gently. “Hello, I’m Emma Liston. And I love you James. And you are more than worthy of my love, no matter what some crusty old bastard of a duke told you.”
He leaned in and cupped her cheeks, kissing her with all the passion and love and surrender he had found with her. And for the first time in a long time, years, decades, he felt at home. Because his home was with her. And that made it safe.
He drew back with a laugh. “I think we just made our wedding vows. Assuming you will still marry me.”
“If you wish to,” she said, tears streaming down her smiling face.
“I used to think not marrying, not carrying on his name, would be my best revenge against my father,” he said softly as he gently wiped those tears away from her cheeks. “But living happily, removing myself from his shadow…I think that is a far better revenge.”
“Then let us go be happy together,” she whispered, taking his arm.
He guided her toward the stable doors with a laugh. “Happily ever after.”