“Please, Kit. Just leave me alone. We have done enough damage to each other. There’s no need to make things worse. By tomorrow, I’ll be the laughingstock of the entire city—”

Her voice broke and she pushed by him, running from the kitchen and toward the back stairs. Defeat crashed through him, hurt and anger burning his throat. He’d ruined everything by not telling her sooner. Just as he suspected, she didn’t believe him . . . and thanks to Hearst and his newspaperman, she never would.

He stood there for a long moment, his mind reeling. “Was that your idea of a proposal, signore?” Franconi leaned against the wall and wiped his hands on his apron. “Because that was depressing.”

“What do you mean?”

The chef shook his head. “You have to speak from here.” He poked Kit in the chest. “Tell her you love her. So, do you love her?”

There it was—the tug deep in his chest when he thought of Alice. Overflowing happiness, so much so that he feared his chest might crack open with the force of it. Yet panic lurked not far behind, like storm clouds on a sunny day. There was every possibility he’d ruined his chance with her for good. He might never see her again.

Was love a combination of such tenderness and fear? A bone-deep affection haunted with the worry it could all disappear in an instant, mixed with a desperation to never leave her side? If so, then he was drowning in love for her.

“I do.”

“Then why are you standing here?”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chest heaving, Alice hurried up the staff stairs. Everything had gone so horribly, horribly wrong. The entire city would be laughing at her in a matter of hours. Posing as a chef, cooking in a supper club, chasing off a duke . . . she was positively ruined.

Her throat closed. Oh, God. What had she done?

Unable to take another step, she collapsed against the wall somewhere between the third and fourth floors. Being ruined wasn’t even the worst part. No, the look in Kit’s eyes, the pity and guilt, had shredded her heart like strips of paper. He didn’t wish to marry her. He merely wished to save her—and she would never marry a man for those reasons.

Years and years with her mother, as joyless as the white, unadorned walls of this stairwell, stretched out in front of her. There would always be the snide comments about Lockwood, the probing questions about Kit. The reminders of her failings to find a husband. Alice would never escape.

This is your doing. You have no one to blame but yourself.

That was true. She had gone to Kit in Newport, hoping to change her life—and she had. Except in the end, it had changed for the worse, not the better.