“I should have explained to you before that marriage and love in the world I live in are two very different things.”
Then, as the meaning of what he was saying had seemed like a knife-thrust into her heart, he had gone on,
“It is a question of noble blood being matched by noble blood, of putting the family first and being true to one’s inheritance.”
That was what he truly believed and what her grandfather had believed when he had turned her father away from the house and forbidden a marriage between him and her mother.
Rowena knew that nothing she could say or do would alter their feelings or dissuade them from sacrificing their emotions to what they believed was a sacred trust.
She only hoped, as she lay in the darkness, that the Marquis was suffering as she was, knowing that when he
