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She had her pride. He knew that she would never show vulnerability before anyone, but in that brief moment, he had seen the naked pain that slashed through her. To know that he had been the cause of that would eat at him for the rest of his miserable existence.

“I shall go speak to her,” he heard Lady Southford say. “I shall make her see reason?—”

“You will do no such thing.”

The two older women looked at him in stunned silence.

He clenched his hands into fists. “Lady Scarlett will never concede to this union if she thinks that I do not want it.”

“Which you do not,” his mother pointed out bluntly.

She was wrong on that account—he would love for nothing more than to be able to fully claim Scarlett. To make her his in every way that mattered.

What he did not want was to taint her radiance with the filth that covered him. The damned blood that still coated his hands no matter how many times he had tried to scrub it off.

If he married her, he would only end up destroying her. His darkness would swallow her light.

“Stay here,” he told his mother and the Dowager Countess. “And for the love of all that is holy, donotdo anything that we will all regret in the future.”

He turned on his heel when his mother called out, “Why? Where are you going?”

He glanced over his shoulder at her. “I am going after my bride.”

“Stop!” His voice boomed across the open space, tearing through the stillness of the moonlit garden.

Her hands tightened in her skirts, and she pushed through the lack of air burning her lungs.

No.I will not allow myself to be humiliated once more.

“Little cat, I told you to stop!”

Strong yet inexplicably gentle fingers wrapped around her upper arm. She let out a slight gasp of surprise, as the sudden halt to her momentum had her stumbling. If he had not caught her, she would have had to bear the disgrace of eating grass as well as being so openly rejected.

“Little cat?—”

“Let go of me!” she snarled at him. “You have already made it clear enough that you do not want me, Your Grace. Well, I am not in the habit of forcing myself on people who disdain me!”

His arms wrapped around her. Warm. Solid. Strangely comforting.

No! I cannot allow him to have any more access to me!

She flailed in his grasp, but he held fast. She pounded at him, but her tiny fists barely earned her a grunt of discomfort.

Anguish tore through her once more. Perhaps this was all she ever was to him—an inconvenience. Oh, she might have provided a good enough diversion, but now she was probably more trouble than she was worth.

“I do not disdain you,” he told her softly, his voice oddly soothing.

“You refused to marry me!” she seethed. “And I refuse to marry a man who does not even remotelylikeme.”

He grabbed her wrists and held her still. “But youwillmarry me, little cat.”

“You must be insane,” she spat out. “One minute you are refusing to marry me, and nowthis. You change your mind as often as you change lovers, Your Grace.”

The small smile that curved the corner of his lips only made her angrier. How could he laugh at her right now?

“Well then, you would be pleased to know that ever since you walked into my home, I have not had sexual congress with any other woman,” he told her proudly.

“Well, there are still othermen,” she grumbled.