Page 70 of A Game of Scandal

“What, then?” Ash kept a careful distance between us, but somehow I knew that he was fighting the urge to touch me.

“I—” I cut my sentence short, not sure how I could possibly explain what was going on in my mind.

“Hey.” His finger came to my chin, lifting my face as he had that first night in his office at the Penny. I held his gaze, seeing nothing but patience and understanding there. “You can talk to me about anything.”

“I don’t want to get married,” I blurted. “Not now at least, perhaps not ever.”

His eyes widened in surprise, and I pushed on, the words falling over each other in an anxious tumble. “Not that you’ve said anything about marriage. I don’t mean to presume. It’s only … I am a duke’s sister and you’re a gentleman and a few lingering kisses is one thing, but there are … conventions, rules that are usually followed…”

“You don’t wish me to have false expectations,” Ash said carefully, and I watched his face for any flicker of anger or upset but found none.

“Well, no. I suppose not,” I said, still trying to find the words to express what I really meant. “I have feelings for you, but I don’t know what to do with them. If we are to have a future.” I hesitated here, afraid for a moment that I might have misread him. “Though perhaps I am getting ahead of myself, perhaps you don’t…” I trailed off hopelessly, then tried again. “I don’t know what a future between us looks like if it’s not marriage. It’s what’s expected of me. And your parents said—”

“My parents have nothing to do with this.” Ash cut me off. “I won’t let them near whatever this is, Felicity. I have feelings too, and I won’t have the two of them come between us. Not a chance. Whatever the future looks like, it’s the two of us together.” He smiled, that charming, crooked smile. “I knew it from the second you stormed into my office, incapacitated Davey and offered to draw me some mathematical tables.”

I relaxed then, a small sigh escaping my lips as I leaned forward, dropped my forehead to the centre of his chest. His arms came up at once, wrapping me in a hug that felt as though it were anchoring me in a safe harbour. “I think I knew it from the first time I heard your voice, before I even saw your face. You touched the curtain in front of me, and I felt it in my toes.”

“In those pretty silk slippers.” Ash grinned, and then his mouth found mine again, and we didn’t talk for quite some time.

“I’ve never felt this way,” I admitted when we finally broke apart. “Right from the start, it’s as if I recognized you, as if I’d been waiting for you all along.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” Ash murmured, dropping another kiss against the corner of my mouth. “You walked into the room, and my heart rolled over and I thought, there she is.”

I smiled at that, at the wonder in his face.

“I’m sorry that my parents made you uncomfortable,” he said.

I shrugged inside his hold. “It all makes me uncomfortable,” I admitted. “Over the last year, everything has changed for me. I should have been prepared for it, but I am suddenly treated like … a thing rather than a person. Like a prime bit of horse flesh up on the auction block, simply because I am a woman of a certain age and background.”

“I can understand that,” Ash said softly. “It’s not the same, but I’ve felt trapped by the expectations of my family, of society.”

“When you were yanked out of the navy,” I murmured, pulling back to look at him.

Ash nodded, paused, and then took a deep breath, brushing a lock of hair gently away from my face.

“Honestly, it broke my heart.” He spoke the words like a confession, and I knew somehow that he hadn’t said them aloud before. “I was finally happy. I felt like I belonged somewhere for the first time, thought I had control of my own destiny, and in an instant I was reminded that my career, my life was at the mercy of my father’s whims. I don’t pretend to understand your situation, but I know what it is to have someone else dictate the course your own existence should take.”

“But you didn’t let that happen,” I pointed out. “You struck out on your own, started the Penny with Joe, made something for yourself away from your family.”

Ash sighed. “Yes, but for how long?” He ran his hand through his hair, hair that was already rumpled by my fingers, the tie that had held it back lost in the darkness, a fact that brought me a strange sense of pride.

“The title brings responsibility. Not to my parents,” he said quickly at my sound of protest. “They’ve made their own beds, as far as I’m concerned, and I’m not about to pretend to feel affection for them. But they oversee an estate: one that is ailing, and one that employs a huge number of people. There are livelihoods at stake. When it comes to being the Viscount Ely, I’ll hold more than one life in my hands. It’s not something I wanted, but I can’t ignore it, however appealing the idea is.” He looked at me, and I saw vulnerability in his gaze. “I haven’t admitted that to anyone else. I don’t think I had even admitted it to myself. With Perry’s death, my life has taken another turn that I neither wanted nor asked for.”

I reached across the space between us and pulled his hand into mine, letting him know that this time he wouldn’t face the challenge alone. I admired him for his selflessness, even while I felt sad and frustrated for him. He squeezed my fingers, understanding me without the need for words.

Here in the darkness, on the brink of whatever wild, magical thing was between us, it felt like a time for sharing secrets. He had given his and I knew I should give mine.

“When I was nine, I was very ill,” I said the words quickly, wanting to get them out. “I don’t remember much about it. For the worst of it I was delirious or unconscious. The doctor diagnosed scarlet fever and I almost died.” Ash’s fingers tightened round my own but he didn’t interrupt. I was glad, because this was a story that I hadn’t shared with anyone, though I knew Max had told Izzy.

“Max was seventeen,” I said. “Younger than I am now, and a year away from officially becoming my guardian, but he was at my bedside through the whole thing. The recovery took a long time, had several setbacks. My mother is a good woman, but she’s not a person to turn to in a crisis – that person is my brother. She didn’t handle it well. She was … absent.”

I thought about Mother’s determination to help me into a good marriage. “I think she carries a lot of guilt over that,” I said slowly. “That in her own way, she sees my season as a way to be here for me as she wasn’t then. It’s difficult in a different way when people try to control you out of love. Max sees me as someone delicate; he almost lost his sister once before and now he wishes that he could wrap me in cotton. For him, seeing me married to a good man is a way of keeping me safe.”

“And your mother wants to help you now because she felt helpless then?” Ash said gently.

“Yes,” I agreed. “They’ve both sheltered me – too much, perhaps – for my whole life. I feel as though I am banging against the bars of a cage that’s grown far too small. It might be a lovely, gilded cage, but it’s a cage nonetheless. I’m ready for my life to begin. When Laetitia invited me to dinner, I met women who spoke easily about real challenges, big ideas, about changes they wanted to make for women everywhere, and I wanted to be a part of it. Badly.”

I pressed my other hand to my stomach, as though I was trying to keep everything I felt inside me. “I want to study, to learn, to travel and have adventures.” I could hear the wistfulness in my own voice. “I’m not ready to disappear into the respectable role of wife and mother when I have seen and done so little. I want my world to grow wider, not shrink. I think … you can truly understand that. Perhaps you are one of the only people who could.”