Page 109 of A Cinderella to Redeem the Earl

He cupped her cheek in his hand and turned her face towards him. He gazed into her eyes, the soft dove grey that held so much pain. Pain he had put there.

‘Never in my adult life have I ever told anyone I loved them. I have been too busy planning how I would accomplish my goals. With you it is different. I need you. Unless you are near, I am not happy. You make me want to be better than I am.’

Her expression remained doubtful. He truly had lost her trust. Until now he had not realised how important that trust had been.

His case was hopeless.

How could he even consider forcing her to do anything she did not want to do? ‘I’m sorry. I am being selfish. If you do not return my feelings, if marriage to me is not what you want, then I will accept your decision. Leave you in peace even though it will break my heart.’

She sighed. ‘You would truly leave me in peace?’

A pain squeezed in his chest. He closed his eyes briefly. ‘It will not be easy, but I will do it, if that is what you want. It is as simple as this: my happiness is yours to command, but your happiness means more.’

She stared at him for long moments as if trying to read what was in his heart.

‘I love you, Pamela,’ he said softly. ‘I want only what is best for you. If you want that cottage of by the sea, it is yours. If you want to be a cook, I will arrange for a position with a friend. If there is some other dream you wish to fulfil, I will do my best to bring it about.’

‘What about your promise to your father?’

His heart ached at the doubt he heard in her voice. ‘Long’s father should have been punished. He should not have been allowed to hide what he did behind the skirts of respectability. But... I let my quest for revenge take over my life and it has cost me the best thing that ever happened to me.’

She sat silent for a while, staring into space, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. He did not know what he was going to do when she told him to leave.

‘I need to know the truth, Damian. I don’t believe my father would have had anything to do with a scheme to defraud others of their money.’

‘That is what you want?’ How the hell was he to find the answer to that?

‘My father was judged guilty by your father, by you. If he did what you said he did, then will it not always stand between us?’

A smidgeon of hope filled his chest. ‘I would not allow it.’

She pursed her lips. ‘The past would always be there whenever you think of your mother, when you visit your childhood home. It would be there, lying in wait, like some dark vengeful beast, waiting for a moment of weakness.’

‘You paint a grim picture of me.’

‘You loved your mother. You lost her when you were still a child. You still carry the pain of her loss. Can you forgive those who caused her death?’

He closed his eyes and for the first time in a long time remembered the days before she died. The slow wasting away of a beautiful soul. The anger rose inside him. He hung his head. ‘I cannot forgive.’

‘Then I need to know the truth.’

‘There is only one person who might know the truth of it.’

‘My mother.’

‘Are you willing to ask her?’

She let out a breath. ‘I am.’

Damian tamped down his hope. After his earlier conversation with Lady Malcom, he feared she would not be helpful.

Chapter Seventeen

‘Her Ladyship is not at home,’ Mother’s butler pronounced when Pamela and Damian showed up on the doorstep.

‘Not at home to me or actually out of the house?’ Pamela asked.

The butler looked down his nose and started to close the door.