She stepped toward him, her eyes wide, her features serene. But she wasn’t entirely composed. A tension radiated from her, so thick he thought he could slice it like bread.

He flexed his hands. “I’d planned to tell you after the assembly tomorrow night, when I will know for certain if I will marry or not.”

“That is still a possibility?” She sounded surprised.

“It is.” Miss Goodfellow would be there tomorrow night, and he was going to ask if she would entertain marriage to him. He would be clear about why he was asking and his expectations that they would hopefully form a romantic attachment. At the very least, he expected them to be friends and behave as a married couple should. It was not the union he’d dreamed of, but it was all he could expect given the deadline his father had imposed.

In that moment, he realized he’d planned to afford Miss Goodfellow a courtesy he had not given Fiona—the truth.

Suddenly overheated, he shrugged off his coat and draped it over the back of a chair near the hearth. “Fiona, I’m sorry. I should have told you everything from the start. I didn’t know you then. I expected a young chit from the country who would be eagerly wed and removed from my responsibility.”

“I don’t know what’s worse, that you didn’t tell me after you came to know me, or that you assumed I would be a simple-minded automaton who would bend to your will. You try to not be like your father, but you are not entirely successful.”

Her words cut into him, inflicting a sharp, deep pain. Because there was a veracity to them. He had handled this—her—as his father would have. “Please don’t compare me to him,” he whispered.

“As a woman, I have been and will always be subject to a man’s whims—my father’s, my cousin’s, your father’s, yours.” Now she looked angry, her eyes blazing. “I am entirely dependent on whatever scraps you have for me. Until now. If you do not marry and I do not marry before I’m twenty-five, I have the chance to be independent, to own my choices, to decide my future. It’s the closest thing to a miracle I will ever see, and you wanted to keep all of it from me. I thought you’d grown to care for me. You can be so kind, so considerate, and you seem to realize when you display despotic tendencies—”

“Despotic?” He flinched.

“And you rein them back. But then I learn that you’ve kept me ignorant of things that would change my life and my perspective, and I feel as though I don’t know you at all.”

He closed the distance between them and took her hands. “My father set all of this in motion to cause the maximum pain. I wonder if he somehow knew I would grow to care for you, that I would fail to marry because of the distraction of you.” He shook his head. “Distraction sounds terrible, but it’s true. You’re my ward. I am not supposed to be attracted to you in the way that I am.” He let go of one hand and clasped the lower half of her braid between his fingers. Dragging his thumb down the silken coil, he couldn’t help but smile softly. “I am so sorry for not telling you. Please understand. Horethorne is my dearest possession. To lose it would be to lose my mother all over again.”