Page 68 of The Duke’s Matchmaker

“I was,” Dorothy whispered. She was blushing now, and it made her think of Nathaniel, just like it always did. She knew how he liked to stare when she blushed, and how he like to touch her face. A part of her wished he was here with them right now.

It can’t be that way. It’s over between the two of us. Rejecting his proposal ended it once and for all.

“But if you enjoyed it,” Violet said slowly, “don’t you think it would be worth at least considering his proposal? You said yourself that you had feelings for him.”

“Violet, I told you why I can’t do it.” A shudder passed through Dorothy’s body. “You know why. You know the reason. I told you and Agnes both, don’t you remember?”

“Of course I do,” Violet said quickly. “And if you’re sure…”

“I am. I’m sure.”

“Then I support you,” Violet murmured. “I don’t know what the answer is, Dorothy, but we’re going to figure this out together. We’re going to figure out what you need to say to you sisters, and to other people. And in the meantime, you may stay here, of course. You’re always welcome in my home.”

Dorothy let out a sigh. “Violet…thank you. I don’t know how to thank you enough for what you’re doing for me. I just couldn’t be in my house for another minute with my sisters.”

“They have houses of their own,” Violet said. “Couldn’t they be the ones to go?”

“But they wouldn’t,” Dorothy told her. “Honora in particular has the idea in her head that she has to make arrangements for me now, to tend to my future. I suspect she won’t leave that house until she sees me walk down the aisle. And besides…” She sighed. “I still feel so sad for them all the time. What they’ve been through, what they’ve lost…it’s so awful, Violet. I was by their side during the worst of their grief. Now they’ve finally started to recover from all that, and I just can’t bring myself to turn them away from the house where we all grew up. Even if I thought they would go, I couldn’t ask it of them. I couldn’t take their home away like that and banish them to the houses that belonged to their dead husbands.”

Violet flinched at the word dead. Dorothy wished she hadn’t said it. It had been like choking on a rock. But it was true, and it was a truth that was always on her mind. What had happened to her sisters, what they had lost…it was something that hung like a storm cloud over the whole family now. And because the grief was not primarily Dorothy’s, she almost never spoke about it out loud.

Violet recovered well and put a hand on Dorothy’s arm. “I understand,” she said. “And I understand them, too, Dorothy. They want the best for you, that’s all. You know they do.”

“I know,” Dorothy murmured. “But the trouble is, they’re not willing to take my thoughts into account about what might be best for me. They’re not willing to consider anything but their own opinions. If I stay there with them, the only conversation will be about why I haven’t accepted Nathaniel’s proposal. They won’t let it go, won’t allow us to move on from it, unless they see me change my mind. And I will never change my mind.”

“I just wish it didn’t make you so miserable,” Violet lamented. “You must realize that I can see it on your face, Violet, how unhappy you are. You say over and over that you don’t wish to marry, and I believe you’re telling the truth. And yet, I’ve seen you now on the other side of a proposal, heartbroken because you feel you cannot accept. You could accept, though. You could take a chance on love. You could allow yourself to marry him and see what it brought you.”

“I can’t,” Dorothy said, looking away. “Violet, if you care for me at all, please don’t say that to me again. Please don’t ask me to turn it down again. It hurts too much.”

“I don’t understand why,” Violet admitted. “If this is truly what you want, why is it making you so sad?”

Dorothy let out a long sigh. “Because I do love him,” she admitted. “Because I can imagine myself married to him, and it’s a beautiful picture. I would like to be married to him. It would be a lovely thing. If I wasn’t so frightened of what might happen—of losing him—I would have said yes. But that’s also the very reason why I can’t accept. Because if I were to lose someone I cared about so much, it would hurt much more than losing a gentleman I only somewhat cared for.”

“You’re losing him either way,” Violet pointed out, her voice soft and gentle. “Haven’t you thought of that, Dorothy?”

“That’s all I’ve thought of.” Dorothy felt ill.

“Then why is it better?” Violet asked. “Why is it better to give him up like this than it would be to let him in? If you married him, you would run the risk of losing him, but at least you’d have a chance of keeping him. As it is, you know for certain you’re losing him. Why is that better than taking a chance?”

“Because the closer I get to him, the more difficult it would be,” Dorothy said. “To give him up now…it already hurts. It’s already so hard. But if I had to do it after years together, after we had built a life and everything, I don’t think I could take it. I don’t think I could stand to believe I had such happiness only to see it ripped away from me.”

The door opened. Jonathan poked his head in. “Dorothy,” he said. “I hadn’t realized you were here. Good afternoon. I trust you’re…well?”

He must have seen the scandal sheets. Or, if he hadn’t, Violet would have told him what had happened last night. She was shaking her head now, signaling to him that he ought to go away.

It was humiliating to know that Jonathan was aware of her troubles. Dorothy hung her head until she had heard the door shut and knew that he had left.

“I’m sorry,” Violet murmured. “He worries.”

“He worries about me?” What sense did that make? “He hardly knows me.”

“He knows you well enough, Dorothy. And he knows that I care for you, and that means that he cares by extension,” Violet explained. “That’s the way it is in a marriage, Dorothy. You care for the things the other person cares for. Everything you love meshes together, because your two separate lives become one. Jonathan would be hurt if something were to happen to you, because I would be hurt.”

Dorothy found herself thinking of Colin. She knew at once that she would be devastated if anything were to happen to him. Not only because she had grown fond of the little boy, though she had, but because it was easy to imagine how painful it would be for Nathaniel to go through something like that. She had sat with him that night when Colin had been ill.

Perhaps that was when she had fallen in love.

She closed her eyes again, briefly. Perhaps you couldn’t help falling in love with someone when you knew, so intimately, what would hurt them. Perhaps love was wanting someone not to hurt.