Page 39 of The Marquess Match (Love’s a Game #3)

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

T he night was suffocating. Clare sat alone in the dim candlelight of her bedchamber, staring blankly at the packed trunk by the door. She had planned everything—her escape, her future, her refusal to let a man decide her fate ever again.

So why did it feel like her chest was caving in?

She wrapped her arms around herself, as if that would stop the ache spreading through her ribs.

She was doing the right thing.

She had to keep telling herself that.

Ash had only proposed because of duty, because of guilt, because he thought she needed saving.

And she wouldn’t let him be trapped like that.

Not with her.

Because she already knew— knew —what it felt like to be unwanted. And she had no intention of spending a lifetime with that feeling.

But then, as she sat there, breathing through the hollow emptiness, something shifted. A strange unease unfurled in her stomach, something deeper than heartbreak, something physical.

She had felt…different. For days now.

She closed her eyes, counted back the weeks in her head.

Her stomach clenched.

No.

Her breath came faster, shallower.

No, no, no.

It couldn’t be.

Her hands trembled as she pressed them against her abdomen, as if she could feel the truth lying beneath her skin.

Ash.

She had left him. Pushed him away. Broken both their hearts.

And now— now —she suspected she was carrying his child. Tears burned at the corners of her eyes, but she refused to let them fall.

Because this changed everything.

And at the same time, it changed nothing.

She was still leaving. She had to.

Even if it meant carrying this secret with her all the way to Paris.