“Forget the Irish!” the Duke exclaimed. “They are of no importance. It is you who matters and I love you. It will take a very long time, my precious, to tell you how much.”
He would have kissed her again, but her hands still held him away from her.
“No,” she said. “No! I cannot – allow you to do – this. I love you – too much.”
She made an unexpected movement and freed herself from the Duke’s arms, to move away from him and sit down on the side of the big bed.
The Duke made no effort to prevent her from leaving him. He only watched her with a tender expression in his eyes that no one had ever seen before.
He knew that in the whole of his life he had never known another woman who had put his interests in front of her own.
He knew too that there was not one woman of his acquaintance who
