Page 252 of Dukes for Dessert

She pushed away from him. “Father did meet someone. The love of his life. There’s one special person out there for each of us. He met her; he married her; she died.”

“I know people find the notion of ‘one’ true love romantic, but to me it’s just… sad.”

“It’s not emotion,” she insisted. “It’s maths. Every problem has a perfect solution.”

“Does it?” he said doubtfully. “I rather think the perfect match is two imperfect people who happen to be perfect for each other. Since we’re all imperfect, it’s stands to reason that there are plenty of fish in the sea—”

“My mother was The One.” Her fierce voice cracked, and a glassy sheen coated her eyes.

“Of course she was,” he agreed quickly. “She was absolutely the perfect and only One then, but your father lives now. Finding happiness a second time doesn’t cancel out the first time.” He tried to find words she would understand. “Love is addition, not subtraction.”

“It doesn’t feel that way.” With trembling hands, she slid a finger under her necklace and pulled a slender golden ring up from her bodice. “This was my mother’s. I keep it next to my heart. It first belonged to her mother, and her mother’s mother, and the grandmother before that.”

She dropped the necklace and the ring returned to its hiding spot.

“I’m breaking the chain,” she said quietly. “On purpose. That’s the only way to be certain I won’t lose my daughter and my daughter won’t lose me.”

There was nothing he could say to take away her pain, so he pulled her into his arms and said nothing.

He understood why she believed life was a formula that could be learned. Why she needed to believe every problem had a solution. But by reaching for answers that might not exist, peace would forever evade her. He lay his cheek against her soft hair.

“It’s all right to want things you can’t have,” he murmured. “It’s all right not to be perfect; to be sad; to be happy. It makes you human, not incomplete.”

She lifted her face from his cravat and gave a wobbly smile. “But is that enough?”

“It’s more than enough,” he said softly. “You’re enough. Plenty of the fish in the sea are very bitter that you’re not out there swimming with them.”

She snorted. “Do fish get bitter?”

Adam was starting to think maybe they did.

He was a fish. He was in the sea. No—she was in the sea and he was in a private aquarium with a view of the water. His glass palace was expensive and protected, up high on a pedestal, boxed in on every side. Her boundaries were as limitless as the ocean. She could swim as far away as she wanted, but she was right here in his arms.

Marrying her would be the opposite of fitting in. Instead of talking to him, the peers he was trying so hard to fit in with were more likely to talk about him. Not to mention his duty to the title. And yet…

He didn’t need a fortuneteller to see his future: his bride would be the wealthy daughter of a fellow peer. Well-connected, well dressed, and well bred, with a flawless reputation and a dowry whose property rivaled his own. In all his thirty years, he’d never questioned the strictures he was meant to follow and the ideals he was meant to live up to. Now he was wondering whether that path was the right path.

What if he didn’t marry a High Society debutante? What if he took an unconventional bride? What was the worst that could happen? And if the worst did happen… would it still be worth it?

He cleared his throat. “Carole?”

Her hazel eyes peered up at him from beneath her lashes. “Yes?”

He tucked a tendril of golden hair behind her ear. “We’re always here, in my billiard room. Out of the way. Secretive. What do you think of… Would it be all right for me to call on you tomorrow instead?”

Calling wasn’t the same as proposing. All sorts of gentlemen paid twenty-minute afternoon visits to all sorts of ladies. Although, perhaps not typically dukes knocking at the cottage of—

He needn’t have worried. Carole reared back as though he’d doused her in water.

“Please don’t.” She pulled an expression that might have been comical, had it not twisted a knife in his chest. “If you come to our door, my father would think it meant something.”

Which told him everything he needed to know.

“Of course,” he murmured. “It’s better like this.”

Just like billiards, the rules were clear. When the game was over, it was over.

Effectively being rebuffed before he could progress far enough to ask a question ought to have turned him against the idea altogether. Instead, his respect for her only grew. Carole had never left him unclear as to where things stood. As far as she was concerned, she wasn’t missing a man. As far as Adam was concerned, that was absolutely true. Carole was marvelous in her own right.