Because she’d always loved Geoffrey. Since they’d been children sneaking off to partake in some mischief or another… and then beyond that. To the time they’d grown up and become aware of each other in a different way, a romantic way. Then, she’d loved to sneak about and steal off to forbidden corners and gardens and parlors, while everyone else in the world had their heads turned and find herself in his arms. And she’d loved the feel of being in his arms.
But she also loved her younger sister, more than she loved herself.
As such, there was no choice in this, for Lydia.
There had never been a choice.
Not really.
Everything she’d taken these past months had been stolen. Joy that she would take with her forever. It would be enough.
Tears pricked her eyes, burning, and she welcomed the pain.
It had to be.
So why couldn’t she bring herself to step through that door and meet him? Instead, Lydia stared blankly down at the Duke and Duchess of Bentley’s intricately carved door handle. Roses were etched upon the pewter, and at the center, a heart.
A heart that had with time landed a slight scratch that intersected that carving.
Her lips twisted in a bitterly sad smile.
How very fitting.
And yet, there were roses there, too. Roses, which were her most favorite of flowers. The blooms that had been brought to her that afternoon were a reminder that she could at least, if not know the all-consuming love that all young ladies aspired to, be happy.
Drawing in a deep breath, and before her courage deserted her, Lydia let herself outside.
Firm but gentle hands immediately caught her about the waist and guided her against the edge of the stucco wall, even as a yellow rose drifted before her eyes. Her fingers immediately collected that vibrant bud. “I wondered how long you intended to stand at that doorway, love,” Geoffrey Meadows, the future Duke of Bentley, whispered as he dropped a kiss on the side of her neck.
Moaning, Lydia tipped her head sideways, allowing him the access he sought. The fragrant hint of that bloom he’d brought her filled her senses. Glorious shivers raced from where he touched his mouth, radiating out, sending a delicious heat through her.
It was always so very wonderful in his arms.
So very good. When he held her, when he kissed her, it was like she was coming home. And it was the only place in the world she wished to be, and yet, this time, it was also… wrong.
It hadn’t been before, when he’d been her choice, and she’d believed there would be a future with him.
His sure hands guiding her hips, Geoffrey turned her about and pulled her in close so that her body pressed against his. The rose slipped from her fingers, and she clung to him. He was all muscled strength. Not an inch or ounce of padding to his tall, sinewy frame.
Unlike—
With an agonizing effort, she made herself turn her head away just as Geoffrey would have claimed her mouth in the kiss she yearned for.
His kiss grazed her cheek.
He went instantly still. His long, ink-black lashes swept low, concealing his gaze. But not before she saw the flare of unease there. “What is it, love?”
Love.
Oh, God. He’d make this impossible for her. As he should. “My… father summoned me to his offices this morning.”
He said nothing for a long moment. “And?” he asked gruffly.
Unable to meet his eyes, Lydia stepped away, putting distance between them, because doing this, telling him this, was agonizing enough. But to do it while he held her… “You know our families, Geoffrey… They don’t get on.”
“Ah, my sweet Lydia and her understatements,” Geoffrey murmured, and leaning down, he nuzzled her neck.
Her eyes slid closed once more. Yes, it was an understatement. Their fathers quite despised each other. That hadn’t always been the case. Her father and the Duke of Bentley, together with the Duke of Mowbray, had been the best of friends, with Lydia’s father having been expected to marry the duke’s sister. Until Lydia’s father had broken it off and married Lydia’s mother.
Everything had changed between her father and the Duke of Bentley, with the Duke Mowbray caught in between as broker of an uneasy peace.
“Come, love, why so troubled, hmm?” he asked in gentle, soothing tones as he brushed back the loose curls that had been left to hang artfully about her shoulders. “We’ve always known this would be… difficult. But not impossible.”
Yes, when she’d been a girl of seven and he a boy of nine, they’d spit into their palms, shaken hands, and promised to one day marry each other, because she was the only girl he liked, and he was the only one whom she couldn’t outclimb or outrace. But they were no longer children, afforded the same innocence and hope.
Lydia hugged her arms tight around her middle. “They’ve tolerated one another because they care first and foremost about their reputations and honor that all-important strata of social ranking…” A panicky laugh escaped her. “But letting you and I sneak off at annual summer parties and winter house parties was tolerated only because we are children.” Now, everything had changed. Pain scissored through her, and Lydia let her arms drop. She looked over at Geoffrey, holding his gaze. “They were never going to accept a marriage between us.” She’d deluded herself into believing her father would support that match.
Geoffrey shrugged. “That doesn’t matter.”
Lydia briefly closed her eyes. Only the arrogance of a man assured of his place in the world didn’t know what it was to be a woman. “It does to my father,” she said quietly.
“Fine.” Geoffrey flashed a roguish half grin, an arrogant smile he’d possessed since they’d met at Mowbray’s summer house party when they’d been mere children. “Then that leaves us as a regular old Romeo and Juliet.”
A giggle spilled from her lips. “It bears pointing out they both die at the end, Geoffrey.”
“Well, we will rewrite that story and our families’ history,” he said with the hope and optimism she so very loved him for.
Hugging her arms around her middle, she wandered deeper into the garden, presenting him her back and fighting to get her emotions under control. “He is determined that our family be connected to the Earl of Chombley’s.”
Just like that, a scowl chased away Geoffrey’s confident grin. “Chombley is an arse. All pompous and stuffy and rude. Your father would call one such as him friend.”
But that was the way of most lords. They were generally almost all those unflattering descriptors Geoffrey had affixed to the nobleman in question.
And yet… Lydia made herself draw in a slow breath through clenched teeth, the slight intake sounding shaky to her ears. “His son is not.” Lawrence Brandeis, the Viscount Wainright.
Geoffrey stilled. His gaze narrowed upon her face. “No,” he said gruffly. “Wainright is a good sort.”
Lawrence had been the hanger-on friend to her, Geoffrey, and Geoffrey’s friends Harold and James through the years.
Lawrence had also always been the cautious one among that group of wilder boys. Where Geoffrey was a wicked rogue with a wicked reputation, the Lawrence had settled down and become steady, dependable, and unfailingly respectable. It was why he would make her a good… a good…
Her mind balked, shying away from putting the thoughts to completion, even for herself.
“What of Wainright?” Geoffrey pressed.
She bit her lip hard enough that she tasted the metallic sting of blood tinge her mouth.
He made a quiet, soothing sound. “Here,” Geoffrey murmured and produced a crisp white kerchief from his pocket. He gave it a snap, and then with an infinite tenderness, he touched the fabric to the bruised flesh.
Geoffrey tended her self-inflicted wound, dabbing away traces of blood, silent all the while. But then, they didn’t need to fill the moments between them with prattle and empty words. They’d always been as comfortable in each other’s presence when they’d been teasing and telling stories as when they’d found moments of quiet at the edge of the Serpentine, when the world had slept, and they’d stolen that time on the shores of the river as their own.
And those moments… They were all about to end.
A vicious pain tore through her chest, threatening to break her apart under the steady, crushing weight of this impending loss.
Returning the kerchief to the inside of his jacket, Geoffrey raised a thumb and lightly explored her injury. “There,” he said softly. “It’s healed already.”
It’s healed already.
Unlike her heart.
Her heart was being torn apart, each piece of the fragile organ ripped free, leaving a crushing hurt that grew with every moment spent out here with him. Tears flooded her eyes. “You are making this impossible for me, you know,” she whispered, her voice threadbare.
“Good,” he said sharply, when his voice had never been sharp and only ever gentle and loving. “I want it to be.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, and a tear slipped out, rolling down her cheek.
And yet, despite that flare of his fury, Geoffrey palmed her face, and despite the need for distance from the death of… the dream she’d had for a future together—nay, the dream they’d both had for it—she leaned into his touch. Stealing these last and final moments. Taking his caress for the last time. It would be enough.
It had to be.
He caught that drop with the pad of his thumb, brushing it away, and she made herself look at him once more.
Lydia tried to arrange her features into a mask, tried and failed. “I’m marrying Lawrence,” she stated quietly. How was her voice so calm? How, when she was trembling and her body splintering apart?
His entire body stiffened, a recoil that felt much like the time she’d pretended to practice firing a pistol in her father’s office, and the weapon had discharged. “No.”
His was such a perfectly ducal response, a declination of someone else’s statement of fact. “I have to, Geoffrey,” she murmured.
He scoffed. “Of course you don’t.”
“My father wishes to join our families. The responsibility falls to me or… Marion.”
Her sister, who was younger by just ten months and with whom Lydia had always sought to protect. Lydia might be less than a year older, but she was still the elder sister to her more gentle, fragile-hearted sister.
“Marion is in love,” she went on to explain, while her voice was still steady.
“She’s sixteen,” he scoffed.
“We loved one another long before that,” she reminded him. “And…” She drew in a breath and told him the secret her family had only just learned. “They eloped, Geoffrey.”
His breath hissed through his teeth.
“We just found out and my parents are insisting we act as though nothing is amiss,” she whispered, her words rolling together. “She’s gone off with Mr. Cheevers and he is a merchant, Geoffrey. A poor man. With hardly any funds. My father is refusing to release Marion’s dowry… unless…unless…” She bit her lower lip.
“Unless you wed Wainright,” he filled in for her, his voice empty.
She managed to nod. “They will have no funds, and my sister and the children she has one day will have no future.” It was not just about Marion’s happiness, but her entire future, and security. And worse, the lack of security.
Silence surrounded the gardens, enveloping the grounds in quiet, and everything was all confused, where she couldn’t sort out whether the moment was a dizzying quick one or whether it stretched on. Suddenly, Geoffrey took several steps away from her, and she thought he intended to leave her standing there, and as wrong and selfish as she was for it, she didn’t want him to leave. She wanted to steal whatever was left of their time together. But then he stopped those frenetic strides and cursed, roundly and blackly, and Lydia stood there, allowing him that volatile emotion.
“But what about your happiness?” he implored, a thread of desperation lining his plea.
She squeezed her eyes briefly shut. “It is about more than happiness, Geoffrey,” she said, her voice threadbare. “Their life will be…impossible.” And she’d have given her very soul to Satan to see Marion safe.
He stalked back over. “And what of me?” he asked, dropping his brow to hers. “How will I live without you?”
A sob slipped out, and she stifled it with her fist. “Being forced to choose between you,”—the man she loved—“and a sister whom I share half a soul with is breaking me, Geoffrey. It is breaking me,” she whispered.
Geoffrey drew back and dragged a shaky hand through his dark locks.
This time, it was he who shut his eyes, so tightly his face scrunched up. When he opened them once more, he was in full control, his features a perfect mask, so that she might have imagined the heartbreak there from moments ago.
“He won’t make you happy,” he said matter-of-factly.
“He is your friend,” she chided.
The wry twist of his lips ran counter. “That is how I know as much. He’s dull and lacks passion.” Geoffrey looped an arm about her waist and drew her near. “And you need passion, Lydia. You want it.”
Her breath quickened, as it always did at his touch.
“Geoffrey,” she whispered, her voice trembling, and of its own volition, her neck moved.
And he placed his lips close to the place her pulse pounded. “Are you telling me to stop, love?”
Because if she was, honorable as he was, she’d no doubt he’d honor that command, and yet, when he did, then she’d never again know… this. Him.
In the end, he made the decision.
Sadness filled his eyes.
Nay, sadness was a weak, mewling emotion. This was an agony so deep and keen and sharp it cut through her soul, and robbed her of breath, and left her empty inside.
“Please, do not look at me like that, Geoffrey,” she pleaded.
“Like what?” he asked with a mournful twist of his lips in a grin that had always been pure and joy-filled before this. “Like you’re breaking my heart, Lydia?” he whispered. “Because you are.”
She took his hands in hers, his fingers long and strong and hot in her own, and she gripped him, selfishly stealing the warmth to be found within his touch. “I have no choice,” she pleaded.
His eyes hardened, and for the first time ever, the cynical glint in his eyes was directed her way. “You always have a choice.”
“You might believe that, and you also have that freedom,” she said, trying to will him to understand. “You are a duke. But women? We do not have the same power that men enjoy, Geoffrey.”
He scrubbed a hand down the side of his face. “Leave it to me to fall in love with the one and only woman for whose family a dukedom is not enough.”
A pained laugh escaped her.
“When I’m a duke, I’ll have access to all my funds. I can give—”
She took a deep breath. “My father has put a timetable on the decision. I have just two days to decide. If I marry Lawrence, he will free up Marion’s dowry and support the union between her and Mr. Cheevers.”
He gave her an aching smile. “Damn you for putting another’s happiness above your own.”
“It is one of the reasons you love me.” Her voice caught.
Geoffrey dropped his brow to hers. “Yes.”
As close as they were, their eyes meeting, their noses nearly touching, she detected the shimmer in his eyes.
Oh, God. His tears would gut what was left of her heart. “Please, don’t cry,” she whispered.
“You are,” he pointed out, and a pair of crystal droplets coursed down his rugged cheek.
She brushed them away. “I love you.”
“But not enough,” he said sadly.
Too much. So much she was dying inside. But he could not understand that.
Going up on tiptoe, she pressed a final kiss against his lips, one filled with sweetness and warmth… and also one that offered goodbye. She sank back on her heels.
“I will always love you, Geoffrey,” she said softly, and then Lydia collected her hem and did the hardest thing she’d ever done, or would ever do, in her life—she walked away from the love of her life.
