“I want a family, Cassian. I have wanted one since I was nine years old. I have wanted one since the day my sister was born and my mother put her in my arms. I had so much love I did not know what to do with, and I had to give it to the maids and the puppies and the kitchen boys because there was no one else to give it to. I have wanted a family of my own since I was a child, and I will not give it up. Not for a title. Not for a duchy. Not even for you.”
He was looking at her face.
He was not, she registered with a slow thump of her heart, looking at her body anymore. He had stopped somewhere in the middle of what she had just said and was now looking at her face. His face had cycled through several emotions, and what was on it now was something Alice did not have a name for but suspected was very close to pain.
“Alice.”
“Cassian, I will not. Icannot. Since the orangery, I have spent my days asking myself whether I could give it up for you, and the answer is no. I am sorry. I am very sorry. I have dreamt of a nursery since I was nine years old. I do not think my heart was made for an empty one. And as much as I have come to—” She broke off.
She had been about to say something she had decided, four days ago against an orange tree, that she would not say.
The thing she had been about to say belonged in the bright, paneled room on Bond Street to a man who had moved up their wedding to seven days from today and who had not yet been told, by her or by anyone, what she felt about him. It was the one piece of information she had decided she would not give him until she had made up her mind.
She closed her mouth and breathed very slowly.
“As much as I have come to tolerate your company,” she said, more quietly, “I will not give that up.”
He looked at her. He looked at her for a long while.
The clock on Mrs. Hatcher’s small mantelpiece, which Alice had not noticed until this moment, ticked four times, five times, six times.
“You can still have my company, Alice.”
“Cassian—”
“You can still have my company. We can do a great many things together, you and I. We can have the house and the orchard and the lake. We can have the dancing and the dinners and the small house in town for the Season. We can have a great deal of pleasure in each other. We can have all of that, Alice, without?—”
“Without children.”
Cassian nodded. “Without children.”
“That is not enough, Cassian.”
“No.”
“I am sorry.”
“Do not be sorry.” He closed the distance between them.
He did not touch her. He came to within six inches of her and stopped, his arms hanging at his sides. He had decided he could stand six inches from her while she was wearing a silk nightgown without touching her, and he was holding to the decision. His face was perhaps four inches above her own. His voice when he spoke was very quiet.
“Alice.”
“Yes?”
“Listen to me. You can have what you want.”
She did not understand him. She did not understand him at all.
She looked up at him, feeling the color drain from her face, and said in a small voice she did not recognize as her own, “What?”
“You can have what you want. You can have your family. You can have your children. You can have a house full of them, Alice. You can have six of them if it pleases you. You can have them with whatever husband you choose. I shall not stand in your way.”
“Cassian—”
“Listen, Alice. I shall have a carriage ready at the back of the chapel. On the morning of our wedding, you can choose. You can walk down the aisle and become my wife, or you can take the carriage instead and go where it takes you, and I will not follow.”
“Cassian—”