Page 53 of The Rake’s Convenient Bride

She was asking him to say the words aloud, to break down the final barriers he’d built around his heart. He couldn’t remember the last time it had been laid so fully bare, so raw and open and vulnerable.

“I want to marry you, Elizabeth. Not as a ruse to mask a mistake on both our parts, innocent though they might have been, but in earnest. With the intention to be your husband and for you to be my wife.”

Elizabeth stared at him wide-eyed, cheeks pink from either emotion or the wind that pulled at the blue ribbons of her bonnet and made them dance in the wind.

Elizabeth’s friends and his grandmother had given up all pretense of finding the nonexistent rabbit and now had turned their unconcealed attention on Elizabeth and Jasper. He threw them a sardonic look and they all quickly turned away.

“Do you love me?” Elizabeth asked abruptly.

Jasper blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“I know we’ve only known each other a short time and it’s probably a foolish thing to ask, but, well, do you love me?” She shrugged her shoulders up to her sheepish expression, looking suddenly as though she would rather be anywhere but there.

The question took him aback.

Had he not already laid down his pride? Had he not already opened his person and his heart to rejection when he asked her to marry him in earnest?

But love?

Love?

Such an emotion was a complicated maze, a trek he could not endeavor to pursue, not when he was not sure he could ever love again. His heart was too shattered for such a thing, most of the pieces too broken to put back together. Even the few he had managed to repair for Bess were badly cracked.

He could have easily replied with a light jest, but the earnestness of her gaze told him she wanted a genuine answer. And he knew in his soul she would not like what he had to say.

“Many marriages do not begin with love,” he answered finally.

Her face shuttered from him, almost a visible snapping closed of her expression. “So you do not love me.”

It was not a question, but a statement. And one he could not refute.

Because he did not love her. He did not love anybody.

He held her hand more firmly in his, as if by keeping her from physically pulling away, he might do so emotionally as well. “I’m sorry, but I do not.”

Her nod was stiff, but she left her hand tucked in his. “Do you think you ever could? Love me, I mean.”

He gazed into her lovely blue eyes, wanting nothing more than to lose himself in them and ascribe to every notion of love and romance he’d ever known.

But he couldn’t.

Love was poison, an insidious leech upon the body that drained one of reason and logic and opened oneself to exploitation. He had seen it many times in his life, not only with others, but with himself.

His mother had exploited his love to make him guard over his brother. A familiar ache stung at Jasper’s heart. And when he’d failed at that, his father had turned his mother’s love into something horrible, citing it for what had killed her in the end.

And putting the full blame on Jasper’s shoulders.

No, he could not love again. It was far too painful.

He shook his head. “Forgive me, but I don’t know if I can.”

She gasped out an exhale that sounded like a choked sob and wrenched her hand from his, the connection between them severing in a way that was jarringly abrupt and left him immediately bereft.

“Then my answer is no,” she said, her tone almost incredulous. “I deserve better.”

And in those words, she confirmed exactly what he knew and had always known. She did deserve better. Someone who didn’t have a stained past, someone whose heart was not so wounded that he could never open it fully again.

In this way, their soon-to-be broken engagement truly was for the best.