“And you would?”
“I would like to try.”
The siren call of his extraordinary assertion beckoned to her. Yet she should know better than to listen to Damon's blandishments.
“You forfeited that right two years ago,” she finally replied.
His gaze seemed to darken for a moment. “I won't deny that, but my particular failing doesn't mean your prince would treat you any better.” Damon canted his head. “Do you actually think Lazzara will care anything about your happiness? Your pleasure? That he would trouble himself to see you satisfied? I suspect you would enjoy the marriage bed far more with me. In fact, I believe we just proved it-and that was only a taste of what you can expect from our lovemaking once we are wed.”
Eleanor flushed at the reminder of the stunning experience Damon had just given her. She had suspected pleasure with him would be incredible, and indeed it had been.
“Perhaps so,” she conceded, “but simply because you are a marvelous lover doesn't mean you would make a good husband. Marriage should be based on more than carnal pleasure.”
“Ours would be.”
“It would be nothing more than a union of convenience.”
“What is wrong with that? Many members of our class marry to carry on bloodlines.”
That gave Eleanor pause. “Do you care that much about continuing your bloodlines? You never said so before.”
To her surprise, she glimpsed a fleeting impression of sadness in Damon's eyes before he answered with what sounded like honest sincerity. “I've always accepted that I have a duty to my title. And the years are passing. It's time for me to consider fulfilling my obligation.”
She pursed her lips in an unyielding line. “If you seriously want to marry to carry on your title, any number of gentlewomen would suit your purposes.”
His gaze held hers. “I want you, Elle, no one else.”
She badly wanted to believe him, yet she couldn't risk it.
“Well, I do not want a mere union of convenience,” she responded. “If I did, I could have been married several times over. I have had over a dozen proposals, but I turned most of them down.”
“Most of them?” Damon contemplated her curiously. “I knew you were betrothed a second time, but were there more?”
Eleanor hesitated. Her second brief engagement had been a wildly impulsive response to Damon's defection. After he had humiliated her by publicly turning to a lightskirt for his pleasures, she had wanted to feel wanted, desired, worthy of affection. But thankfully she had quickly come to her senses and withdrawn her acceptance of Baron Morley's offer.
Her third, even briefer betrothal to a nobleman, however, had been a total ruse. She'd never had any intention of following through with it, nor had her third fiance.
“I was betrothed to Lord Claybourne for a few hours this past summer,” Eleanor admitted reluctantly.
Damon's eyebrow shot up. “To Claybourne? For a few hours? I should like to hear an explanation for that.”
Eleanor waved her hand. “It is a long story. Suffice it to say that Heath asked me for a favor to help him win Lily Loring, and I willingly obliged. Our betrothal didn't really count, though, since it was a pretense and very few people knew about it. But that doesn't mean I want to risk any more broken engagements. If I were to agree to marry you, who is to say we would actually go through with the wedding this time? I am in danger of developing a reputation as a jilt as it is.”
“We would wed this time,” Damon assured her.
She managed an indifferent shrug, even though she was not feeling at all indifferent. “Well, it is pointless to speculate, since I don't intend to marry you.”
“Why not?”
Eleanor glanced away, hiding the vulnerability that she knew shone in her eyes. The undeniable truth was that Damon could never love her as she wanted- needed-to be loved. A marriage where affection was so profoundly one-sided would be even more painful than a cold contract of convenience.
“Because I am a romantic at heart,” she answered. “That is the chief difference between us, Damon… why we would never make a good match. I want true love in my marriage. I want my husband to love me.”
It was a long while before Damon responded-and then his tone was rather curt. “You are putting too much store in the notion of true love, Eleanor.”
“Perhaps. But I know it is possible. Marcus found that kind of love with Arabella. And I won't settle for anything less for myself.” She took a step closer to Damon, her hands unconsciously reaching out to him in an imploring gesture. “You know about my childhood before my parents died. How lonely I was then, and afterward, when I went to live with a widowed aunt who never wanted to be saddled with a child.”
Her voice lowered even further. “I don't want that same loneliness in my marriage, Damon. I want to matter to my husband. I want to matter deeply. I want to matter to my family. I want to bestow on my children the love I never knew from my own parents. The kind of familial love Marcus and I shared as children. That is not something you can give me.”