Wedding of the Season by Laura Lee Guhrke Read Free Book Online Page B

England, eating plum pudding at Sunderland for Christmas, going to London for the season, Epsom, Ascot, and Henley, coming back to Torquay for August, country house parties in September—”
    “Yes!” she cried, interrupting his derisive catalog of a typical peer’s life. She met his gaze again, hers defiant. “What’s wrong with that?”
    “It wasn’t the life I wanted! And you knew it. You always knew.”
    “But it’s the life you were born to.” She shook her head, her defiance seeming to fade into bafflement. “You’re a duke.”
    Even now, even after all this time, she still couldn’t see beyond their lineage. He doubted she ever would. “Yes, I’m a duke,” he conceded, making no attempt to conceal his contempt for that meaningless happenstance of birth, “and you want to be a duchess. First me, now Trathen.” He took another drink. “Well, for what you want in life, one duke’s as good as another, I suppose.”
    “His rank isn’t the reason I’m marrying him! Do you really think I’m that shallow?”
    “I don’t know. You seemed to love my position more than you ever loved me, for you abandoned me quickly enough when I didn’t want to fulfill it.”
    “You think I abandoned you?” She stared at him in disbelief. “I’m not the one who broke an understanding that went back to our childhood. I’m not the one who decided to go off to another continent just before our wedding. All our lives—” Her voice choked up, telling him he wasn’t the only one who’d felt the pain of their separation. A reaction was what he’d wanted, but somehow it gave him no satisfaction. It just hurt him more. “All our lives, Will, you knew what was expected of us. You knew the duties and responsibilities you were to assume. You abandoned them, and me.”
    “Yes, there it was, my whole life laid out for me before I was even out of short pants. Can you blame me when a life I’d only ever dreamed of opened up? A life, I might add, you led me to believe you’d be willing to share. Remember that barrow of Roman ruins I dug up one summer? You sketched all the artifacts, you helped me research and catalog what we found. You visited the British Museum with me every time we were in London for the season. When Sir Edmund offered to take me to Egypt and look for Tut, it never occurred to me you’d balk, though in hindsight, I suppose I should have known you couldn’t leave your dear papa.”
    Too late he remembered her father was dead. He saw her chin quiver at the reminder, and he suddenly felt like a bastard. “Hell,” he muttered, and looked away.
    “You wanted me to abandon him!” she cried. “How could I? After Mama ran off to Paris all those years ago, abandoning her family and her duties as a countess? And for what? To paint and live like a bohemian?”
    “It changed your father when your mother left. He drove any sense of adventure out of you. I didn’t really realize just how tightly he had you chained until you wouldn’t go to Egypt with me.”
    “That’s not fair! How could I leave Papa and go to Egypt?”
    “You were going to be my wife! Damn me for a fool to believe you wanted to be my partner in life, no matter where it led us. But it wasn’t me you wanted.”
    “That’s not true.”
    “You wanted the trappings. You wanted to live in this house, three miles from your father, where everything was safe and familiar and approved by all. Coming with me would have meant defying all that and jumping into a whole new world, and you couldn’t do it. It wasn’t just about leaving your father. When it came down to brass tacks, you were too afraid to go.”
    “Afraid?” She blinked, staring at him as if he’d actually said something absurd. “Are you saying I’m a coward?”
    “I don’t know. Are you? Remember when we were children and Paul, Julie, and I used to dive off Angel’s Head into the sea at Pixy Cove? You wanted to do it, too, but you couldn’t work up the nerve.”
    “I