“What I want,” Anthony said, his voice low and edged, “is irrelevant.”
Gideon was silent for a long moment. Then: “That is possibly the stupidest thing I have ever heard you say.”
Anthony turned to face him. “I beg your pardon?”
“You care about her.” Gideon’s tone was matter-of-fact. “She clearly cares about you. And instead of doing anything about it, you’re standing here letting a man break your face because—what? Because you’ve decided you do not deserve her?”
“I don’t.”
“Says who?”
“Says anyone with functioning eyes.” Anthony’s voice rose slightly. “I am a rake, Gideon. I have spent the better part of a decade avoiding anything that resembled genuine feeling. I am the last man who should be anywhere near someone like her.”
“And yet here you are,” Gideon said quietly, “destroying yourself because you let her walk away.”
The words landed with the precision of a well-aimed blow. Anthony looked at him and found he had nothing to say.
“Go home,” Gideon said. “Sleep. And tomorrow, decide whether you are going to keep punishing yourself for wanting something good, or whether you’re going to actually fight for it.”
He turned and walked toward the door, pausing only to add over his shoulder. “For what it’s worth, I think she’d choose you. If you gave her the chance.”
Then he was gone, and Anthony was left standing alone in the gymnasium with blood drying on his lip and Gideon’s words ringing in his ears.
When Anthony returned to Wynford House, his butler took one look at his face and said nothing, which Anthony appreciated. He made it halfway up the stairs before the pain in his ribs forced him to stop and brace one hand against the wall.
Caroline’s face surfaced in his mind: the careful composure settling back into place when he’d refused her, the armor reconstructing itself piece by piece. Her fingers had trembled on the clasp of her cloak. Such a small thing. He had noticed it even as he’d forced himself to stand there and watch her leave.
Powell would not have noticed. Powell, with his easy smile and his mounting debts, and the way he looked at Caroline as though her acceptance was a foregone conclusion. As though she were an asset to be acquired, another piece of property to shore up his crumbling finances.
His father’s voice echoed in the back of his skull, cold and unyielding.
You will never be what William was. I will do anything—anything—not to pass this title to you until you are ready. Twenty-three years old, and still not good enough. Thirty-three now, and the arithmetic had not changed.
And he thought about what Gideon had said.
Decide whether you’re going to keep punishing yourself for wanting something good, or whether you’re going to actually fight for it.
He made it to his room and collapsed onto the bed without bothering to undress. The ceiling above him was dark. He stared at it and tried to think rationally about what he should do.
But rationality, he was discovering, had very little to do with any of this.
He had sent her away because it was the right thing to do. Because she deserved better than a man who had spent years avoiding anything that mattered. Because he would ruin her, and he could not bear to be the one who did it.
Except…
Except she had looked at him with absolute trust. She had offered him everything she had to give. And he had refused her because he was afraid.
Not afraid of ruining her. Afraid of what it would mean if he didn’t. Afraid of what it would require of him to be the man she seemed to think he was. Afraid of failing, the way he had failed at everything his father had required of him.
Afraid of wanting something and discovering, once again, that he was not good enough to keep it.
Anthony closed his eyes and felt the ache in his ribs and the throb in his jaw. There was also a hollow feeling in his chest that had nothing to do with physical pain.
She had asked him to take her. She had offered him her trust, her heart, everything.
And he had sent her away.
Because he was a coward. This was a truth Anthony could no longer deny…and it was a truth he found he would have to spend the rest of his days struggling to swallow, because he had no right to want anything more than this.