What you wanted. Your commitments and responsibilities.”
Charles smiled. “That is all in the past.”
“Still, I wish to absolve myself,” said Priscilla seriously. “I thought…well, that I needed to be impressive, decadent. Something more than myself, to make sure you loved me.”
“I did not need anything else to love you – though I certainly needed your exuberance to make me realize what I had right in front of my nose,” said Charles.
This was madness; here they were, locked in a tight embrace when just a few feet away society of London was walking by on the street.
“Priscilla, I loved you before all of that,” he said quietly. “I did not recognize the emotion, true. But it was there. I love you the same, whether you are splendidly dressed to attend my engagement picnic to another woman, or whether you are wrapped up with a cold and the biggest and reddest nose I have ever seen!”
A flush of embarrassment flushed Priscilla’s face. “Well, you have certainly seen me at my worst over the years, as well as my best.”
“And I want to keep seeing both of them, and all the Priscillas in between, for the rest of our lives.”
Charles knew he spoke the truth as joy welled up in his soul. How was it possible that he could be this happy? How could he deserve it? How had he found his soulmate, the perfect woman for him, a rival for his affections when his heart was supposed to belong to another, in Priscilla?
Somehow, despite it all – the engagement to Miss Lloyd, the pretensions, the confusion, the debts – they had found each other.
But Priscilla had not spoken. She had hesitated, and Charles found his heart sinking. Surely, after all they had been through, she would not abandon him now?
“Surely, you cannot think of another reason why we should not be happy?” he asked quietly. “Have we not compromised enough?”
Priscilla swallowed before replying, placing her hands on her chest. “Why did you not tell me about the debt to the bank, Charles?”
Damn and blast. When had she found out – how had she? Questions swirled in Charles’s mind, but he knew better than to attempt a cross-examination of Priscilla. He did not want to see that fiery temper directed at himself.
“Debt to the bank,” he repeated dully.
She nodded. “If I had known that your marriage was, in essence, to save your family name – to clear the mortgage to the bank, and of Orrinspire Park, too, why did you not tell me? I would have understood.”
“No, you would not,” Charles said. “And you should not have to. No gentleman wants to think of himself as a purchasable commodity, but that was what I was. I allowed myself to think I could simply sell myself to solve the family’s problems – but it goes far deeper than that. We need to rethink how we spend money.”
Priscilla was staring. “That is all very well, but what about the debt to the bank? Wasn’t Frances’s dowry intended to pay those debts?”
It was impossible not to become a little frustrated at these words. “Does everyone know about my financial affairs – other than myself, I mean?”
Priscilla raised an eyebrow. “What happened to all those sweet nothings?”
He kissed her, pushing her back, so she fell against the wall with a little gasp, and Charles groaned. It was damn near impossible to have a rational conversation with this woman while she was so delightfully teasing.
“I am not as foolish as so many consider me,” he said aloud, looking into her eyes. “I have rented a little land to a friend, down in Cornwall. That will bring the estate five hundred pounds a year. If I consolidate the debts, pay some of them quickly to reduce the interest, in thirty years –”
“Thirty years!”
Charles laughed. “Well, what of it! You must remember, Priscilla, I am a duke. We think in decades, not years. Some of the trees on my land were planted by my father, and it will be our grandchildren who will enjoy them.”
The words made her shiver. “Grandchildren?”
He raised a hand to brush back some of the hair that had fallen over her eyes and nodded. “My mother has her own home, the dowager house. We can make a home for ourselves. A new beginning for us.”
Priscilla laughed dryly. “I am not certain that encouraging your mother to leave and move into a smaller home would do much to improve her opinion of me – and it needs