anger darkening the tinker’s usually genial countenance. Fancy’s brothers, too, had looked at him as if they would like to beat him to a pulp. He didn’t blame them. Hell, there was no one angrier than he was at what he’d done.
“I wouldn’t expect you to,” he said curtly. “There is no excuse for my behavior.”
“You be hitting the nail on the ’ead.” Sheridan glowered, the mismatched buttons on his violet jacket quivering with the strength of his feelings. “Me Fancy doesn’t deserve to be mistreated by the likes o’ you.”
“You’re right. She doesn’t.”
She deserves so much more than me. Remembering how she had tried to kiss him, he flinched. He had taken her virginity but hadn’t even given her a kiss. This was precisely why he’d tried to stay away from her: he’d known from the start that he couldn’t give her what she wanted.
He was no prince, and his heart belonged to another.
“She says you ain’t to blame—that the fault be ’ers. But I know me Fancy, and she be a good girl. Until you came along with your London ways and corrupted ’er,” Sheridan snarled.
“The fault is mine,” Severin said flatly. “I’m willing to take full responsibility.”
“There be only one solution to this mess.”
“I agree,” he clipped out.
“You’ll leave at once. And you won’t bother me Fancy again.”
It took Severin an instant to register what the tinker was saying.
“You want me to leave Fancy?” he said incredulously.
“I don’t want you near ’er again,” Milton retorted. “And if I, or one o’ me sons, catch you sniffing after ’er, then there’ll be no guaranteeing the consequences.”
He cast a pointed look at the tools behind him.
Severin shook his head. “I’m not leaving Fancy.”
The idea was preposterous.
“The devil you’re not.” Milton shot up, his palms slamming onto the table. “Ain’t it enough that you’ve ruined me girl? She may be nothing more than a tinker’s daughter to you, but to us, she be a gift. E’er since that day I found ’er in the fields, she be a part o’ this family. And the ’eart o’ it, since me Annie died. I won’t ’ave you tearing out our ’eart.”
“You found Fancy in the fields?” Severin frowned; Fancy had never mentioned that she was a foundling. “She’s not your blood?”
“She be me girl, but we don’t know who gave birth to ’er…and we don’t be caring one way or another.” Sheridan’s lips curled in disdain. “But you can’t say the same, can you, Your Grace?”
Although Severin kept his expression neutral, he cringed inwardly at the implication that he was a snob. If it were up to him, if he had no responsibility to anyone but himself, then he wouldn’t give a damn about Fancy’s origins. But it wasn’t just him. He had a title and siblings to think of.
Not that it mattered. After what he’d done to Fancy, he would never abandon her. And he…didn’t want to, he realized. The idea of never seeing her again was even more unthinkable than marrying her. It didn’t feel the same as losing Imogen, true, but he was a different man now.
The memory of his last meeting with Imogen, before he’d left to court Lady Beatrice, surfaced.
If only you had come into the title years ago. Imogen’s heartbreaking sadness had enhanced her angelic beauty. How different things could have been. I could have been your duchess…and my children would have been yours, not Cardiff’s. He has never loved me, you know. Perhaps because he’s always known my heart belonged to someone else.
Severin ignored the familiar pang in his chest. The past was decided, but his future was not. And he saw with sudden clarity that he’d made his choice the moment he’d gone after Fancy in the rain.
She was his to protect. His.
The attraction he felt for her wasn’t wise or right or convenient. It just was. And even though it wasn’t the pure love he had for Imogen, he would find some way to translate the passion between him and Fancy into a version of happiness. She deserved that much from him.
“Fancy can no more change her origins than I can mine,” he said stiffly. “Given what has transpired, there is only one honorable way out of this mess. She and I must wed.”
Milton paled, then snapped, “Out o’ the question.”
Well, this has to be a first. A duke being turned down by a tinker.
He lifted his brows. “Most men would aspire to have their daughter be a duchess.”