Page 105 of Duke with a Desire

Tears rolled down her cheeks now as she furiously blinked, trying to clear them. “Because it doesn’t concern you.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Phee.” He lowered his chin, forcing her to hold his stare and see the depth of his sincerity. “Everything about you concerns me. You and your children.”

She shook her head. “We are not your burden to bear.”

“You’re not a burden.”

“It is kind of you to be concerned on our behalf, but I have been managing on my own this last year. There is nothing you can do to change my circumstances.”

“There is something I can do,” he countered. “Something I ought to have done a week ago, before we ever left Wingfield Hall.”

Her brow furrowed. “I don’t understand.”

“I can ask you to marry me.” He paused, bringing her hands to his lips for a reverent kiss on the knuckles of each one before continuing.

She stiffened, her spine going ramrod straight. “That would be foolish. You don’t want to marry me.”

“Yes, I do.”

Phee’s eyes fluttered closed. “No, you don’t.”

“Look at me, Phee,” he urged.

She opened her eyes again, revealing a fresh wave of tears glistening in their depths. “I’ll not have your pity. We will carry on just as we have done for the last year. You deserve to be happy, to find a lovely young woman who will give you children of your own one day and marry her.”

“There’s just one problem with that notion.” A tear spilled free and slid down her cheek, leaving a glistening trail over the freckles that had haunted him as constellations he could never reach. “I’m not in love with this imaginary woman you’ve dreamt up. I’m in love with you.”

Her lips parted. Another tear stole down her cheek. And she stared up at him, silent.

Shocked, he thought.

Apollo lowered his head and kissed the tear away, then released her hands, cupping her face instead. “Did you hear me, Phee?”

“I…you can’t possibly…” Her words trailed away as she simply stared at him.

“I love you, Phee,” he repeated. “I’ve been in love with you for a long time. For years. I watched you when you were another man’s wife, and I wanted you. I told myself that it was lust I felt, nothing more. I even convinced myself it was true. But then, I held you in my arms at Wingfield Hall, and it was like the sun rising on a dark, cold winter’s morning. I didn’t want to let you go.”

“But you did let me go,” she pointed out. “You walked away from me at Wingfield Hall.”

“Because you told me we would be over when we returned to London,” he explained. “But now I understand why. My God, do you know how it killed me to walk away? How much it has destroyed me every day since then? You’re all I think about, Phee. You’re all I want to see before I close my eyes at night, and you’re who I want to see when I wake in the morning. I want you at my side, in my bed, in my arms. I want to help raise your children and to grow to know them. I want everything with you, my love. Everything you’re willing to give.”

“Apollo,” she whispered, the tears beginning to fall in earnest now, no longer held in check by her. “You aren’t thinking clearly.”

“On the contrary, my head has never been clearer, nor has the path I’m meant to take. I shouldn’t have walked away at the gamekeeper’s cottage. I should have been stubborn and demanded that you marry me then and there.”

She huffed out a small laugh of disbelief. “I am too old for you.”

“Nonsense.”

“But what if I am too old to give you children?” she asked next.

“There is no guarantee that any woman can bear children, regardless of her age,” he pointed out. “God willing, I would love to have children with you, but if that doesn’t come to pass, it won’t affect the way I feel about you. It won’t change a thing for me. I love you, and I want you to be my wife. No more scandal. No more stealing about in the night. No more misery while we’re apart.”

“Marrying you won’t change the guardianship of the children.”

“I know that,” Apollo agreed. “Lord Timothy will still be their legal guardian, but you and the children will have me as your protector. You’ll no longer want for funds. I’ll make certain no harm comes to you or the children. I’ll stand between you. I have more wealth and power—far more—than Lord Timothy. I’ll use both and everything else at my disposal to keep the three of you safe. This I vow to you.”

Apollo would crush the bastard. One way or another, he would make certain Lord Timothy could never harm Phee or her children, even if it required the last breath in his body.