Total pages in book: 51
Estimated words: 46501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 233(@200wpm)___ 186(@250wpm)___ 155(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 233(@200wpm)___ 186(@250wpm)___ 155(@300wpm)
If I wanted her, she’d made it more than obvious over the past year that she was more than willing. But it wasn’t meant to be and we both knew it. If it were just me who would bear the brunt of it, I’d say fuck it and take her. But the price to her was just too damn high.
“Now you’re pouting, very unbecoming.” That was a lie. I find nothing about her unbecoming, but to encourage her in her disrespect and dislike would only make her continue on this path. As the adult, it was up to me to make her see the way of things.
Why couldn’t I have met her two years ago? Because two years ago she would’ve been two minutes away from jailbait. We could never be, her and I, no matter how we may both wish differently.
I had no doubt about her feelings for me. I knew them as well as I know my own. But it was no use. It wasn’t just her age; well maybe that was a big part of it. Heaven knows we’d face every obstacle there is if I were to ever lose my mind and give into my lust. And though I had no fear for myself, someone so young would be buried under the avalanche to come.
I come from a long line of aristocrats who’d moved across the pond hundreds of years ago. The family has always been part of high society both here and back in the ancestral home of England. While hers were what my so-called peers would call members of the lower class.
You’d think shit like that would be extinct in this day and age, but not as long as there were women like my own mother and her lady brigade. They were members of a dying breed who’d taught their offspring to be just as prejudiced and nearsighted as them.
None of that mattered to me, but I’ve seen what that shit can do to a person when they’re made to feel less than. I’ve seen women and men shunned because of their birth. And though I could give two fucks about that outdated fuckery, I wouldn’t do that to her.
My time in the marines had taught me that all men are the same no matter how much money they had in the bank. I’m not the first in my line to serve, but I’m the first who came back changed. I wasn’t just an officer whose family had bought a commission. I fought for my country, shed blood and lost quite a bit of my own much to my mother’s dismay.
At thirty I was expected to marry and carry on the family name as the only son. It’s something I grew up with and never cared too much about one way or the other. When you’re taught from the cradle what you’re supposed to be you kinda get used to it.
I wouldn’t change who I am for the world, but sometimes, late at night when I’m in bed alone, I know I would do it for her. There isn’t much I wouldn’t do for her in fact. But there was more involved here than just her and I. As much as I love her, and I’m one hundred percent sure that I do, there are too many reasons why I can’t have her.
My inheritance is not at stake here, nothing as medieval as that. And if I didn’t know what she would face if I made her my woman I would jump at the chance. But I’d seen too much of what my kind have done to what they perceive as someone they found beneath them. So, in order to not kill someone on domestic soil, I choose to give her up.
Would that that was all there was to it. There were ways around other people’s prejudice. We could move, start over somewhere else. But why should she have to run, leave everything she’s ever known behind because she fell in love? For that matter, why should I? But it wasn’t just her and I that would be hurt and that was the biggest issue of all.
“So you’re going through with it.” She spoke out loud as if following my train of thought. I looked at her as she wrapped her arms around her middle as if holding in the pain. The tears in her eyes killed me and I had to clench my fists so as not to reach out and comfort her.
When she stomped across the room and headed for the opposite door I told myself to let her go. It was for the best, but… “Lucia.”
She threw a look over her shoulder. A look filled with such devastation it cut deep, then she turned and ran.
I was quick on her heels as she headed for the vast gardens beyond the conservatory. She knew this place as well as I did by now and if she got away I wouldn’t find her until she was ready to come out of hiding. I couldn’t let her go away feeling as she did, with tears in her eyes. My poor baby.