“No,” she said, shaking her head as if she’d just seen a ghost. “You don’t get to be nice now. You can’t beg my forgiveness and expect me to . . . to . . .” Her throat convulsed with a choking sob. “Do you understand what you’ve put me through? In one single day?”

The tears were running freely down her cheeks, and it took all of Hugh’s strength not to lean forward and kiss them away. He wanted to beg her not to cry, to apologize for this moment, and for the future, because he knew it would happen again. He could devote his life to one of her smiles, but at some point he would fail, and he would make her cry again, and it would wreck him.

He took her hand and pressed it to his lips. “Please don’t cry,” he begged.

“I’m not,” she gasped, swiping away her tears with her sleeve.

“Sarah . . .”

“I’m not crying!” she sobbed.

He didn’t argue. Instead, he sat beside her on the bed, and he held her and stroked her hair, and murmured nonsensical sounds of comfort until she sagged next to him, utterly spent.

“I can’t imagine what you think of me,” she finally whispered.

“I think,” he said with every ounce of his soul, “that you are magnificent.”

And that he did not deserve her.

She had come and saved the day; she had bloody well done what he and Daniel had not managed in nearly four years, and she’d done it while Hugh had been tied to a damned bed. Perhaps not at the exact moment of her triumph, but if he’d been freed, it was only because she had been the one to do it.

She had saved him. And while he understood that the circumstances of this particular situation were unique, it clawed at him that he would never be able to protect her as a husband was meant to protect his wife.

This was where any man worth his salt would step aside and allow her to marry someone else, someone better.

Someone whole.

Except that any man worth his salt wouldn’t have been in this situation to begin with. Hugh had caused this debacle. He had been the one to get drunk and challenge an innocent man to a duel. He was the one with a bat-crazy father who required a threat of suicide to get him to leave Daniel alone. But Sarah was the one who was paying the price. And Hugh—even if he was that man worth his salt—couldn’t possibly step aside. Because to do so would be to put Daniel in peril. And Sarah would be mortified.

And Hugh loved her too much to ever let her go.

I’m a selfish bastard.

“What?” Sarah murmured, not moving her head from the cradle of his chest.

Had he said that aloud?