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Please, Leopold. I would have married you in a heartbeat, and my father would have allowed
     it because he dotes on my every wish. You know that. Don’t pretend otherwise and act
     as if I were the one who rejected you. ”
    He took both her hands in his, and the physical connection nearly stole her breath.
     His hands were large and strong, so achingly familiar …
    Why was he doing this?
    “I pretend nothing,” he said with an intensity that caused every nerve in her body
     to quiver and burn. “At least not now, but two years ago I was not free to propose,
     and I need you to understand that.”
    She struggled to keep her breathing steady. “What do you mean … you were not free
     to propose?”
    At last, the answer came.
    “Since birth,” he said, “I have been pledged to another.”
    Her stomach dropped like a stone.
    There it was. The explanation she had longed for on so many nights when she was weeping
     into her pillow, dreaming of this man’s hands upon her body, his lips upon her mouth,
     his vows before God at the altar.
    Why hadn’t he told her this before? How could he have broken her heart in the cruelest
     manner and led her to believe he did not care for her? That he did not desire her?
    “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” she asked. “Why did you treat me with such cold
     indifference, as if you had lost all affection for me? Do you have any idea how badly
     you hurt me?”
    He spoke firmly. “I couldn’t tell you then, and I shouldn’t be telling you now because
     I haven’t even met my betrothed yet. We are secretly engaged but have never set eyes
     on each other.”
    “You haven’t?”
    “No.”
    It sounded very clandestine. She swallowed uneasily. “Then why are you telling me?”
    He sat back, looking all too gorgeous and dangerously seductive. “I’m not sure. Perhaps
     I’ve had too much brandy.”
    Rose sat back also. “I see.”
    A log shifted in the grate and a flurry of sparks exploded into the chimney.
    Her heart was racing. The inside of her belly was on fire. She had not expected to
     ever have this conversation with Leopold Hunt. She didn’t know what to say, what to
     make of it, how to manage it.
    He was engaged!
    “She’s English, isn’t she?” Rose asked. “That’s why you are here and why you have
     been so vague about the reason for your travels.”
    He nodded casually to confirm her suspicions, and she reminded herself that she, too,
     was engaged to another.
    A wonderful man who adored her.
    “There are many things you don’t understand, Rose,” he said. “All my life, I have
     been duty-bound to marry this woman, and when I met you, I certainly didn’t intend
     to fall in love. It just happened. I shouldn’t have let it, but it was beyond my control.”
    Rose tried not to melt completely into his shocking admission of love and this long-awaited apology, for it was not as simple as all that.
    “Nothing is beyond anyone’s control,” she argued. “I do not believe in such a thing.
     No one is a slave to their emotions. You should never have kissed me during the hunt
     at your father’s estate, or after dinner that night. You shouldn’t have shown me the
     secret passages that led to your rooms. I spent the night with you, Leopold, because
     I trusted you and thought you were going to propose.”
    “I never took your virtue,” he reminded her.
    “No, but you took my heart.” She was compelled all of a sudden to rise to her feet.
     “You shouldn’t have asked me to come here.”
    He stood up, too, ignoring most of what she’d just said. “You took my heart as well.”
    Oh God, did he have no pity? Did he not know this was torture? She was engaged to
     another man now, and he to another woman.
    Yet despite the anger that was knotting up inside her, she relished those words upon
     his lips. You took my heart  …
    He had loved her. He truly had, but he had not been free.
    Just as neither of them was free now.
    “I came downstairs