Her eyes were wet. Not crying — she would not cry, she was too proud, too stubborn, too magnificently, infuriatingly strong — but wet, the tears gathering at the edges and refusing to fall, held in place by sheer force of will.
"You told me we had to maintain a professional distance," she whispered. "You stood in my kitchen at Blackwood and told me that for my safety, you were courting another woman, and I should accept it. Those were your words. Professional distance. And now you are sitting in a garden telling me that you want to be wherever I am, and I do not know which version of you to believe, Caelan, because you have given me so many versions — the duke, the rescuer, the man who knew my mother, the man who danced with me, the man who walked away — and I am tired. I am so tired of trying to find the real one. I am tired of looking for you behind all the masks and the walls and the duty and the strategy, and I just want — I want — "
She did not finish. She did not need to.
