“I’ll leave you two alone.” Papá left the room, and the door clicked shut behind him.
I peeked up at Desmarc, then turned my attention to the floor. It was too hard to look him in the eye after remembering the way the reporters had asked about Hiram and I secretly dating.
“I’m sorry.” I clasped my hands behind my back to hide their trembling.
“For what?”
“For all of it. For not telling you the truth and getting caught up in a scandal.” My voice grew soft by the end.
Desmarc shifted a step closer to me. “And what about your feelings? Are you sorry for those?”
“What do you mean?”
He tugged at the fingers of his glove, then pulled it back on and repeated the process. “Don’t play coy now, Kyra,” he said. “We both know you care for that detective.”
I straightened my shoulders and met his gaze. “I didn’t mean for that to happen.”
“So where does that leave us?” Desmarc sank back into a chair as if my admission was too much for him to take standing.
“Where do you want it to leave us?”
He raised one eyebrow. “Do you often answer a question with a question?”
“Only when I don’t know the answer,” I admitted with a hesitant smile. How could I tell him that my feelings for him had shrunk while my feelings for Hiram had grown? Guilt twisted inside the thought. I never should have let this happen.
Silence stretched between us, growing as long as the late afternoon shadows outside. I rang the bell for Cogsley to bring tea, then I took a seat in the chair opposite Desmarc. The same chair as when he’d returned my glove, kissed my hand, and given me my engagement necklace.
“Do you want to end our engagement?” I asked suddenly, unable to bear the silence.
“No. Do you?” He looked at me imploringly.
“No.” But even I could hear the hesitance in my voice.
Desmarc’s shoulders slumped. “So you really don’t know how you feel about it.”
I bit my lip and looked down as tears burned at my eyes again. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
Desmarc knelt in front of me and cupped my uninjured cheek with his hand. “It’s all right, Kyra. I know you weren’t trying to betray me.”
I winced at the word betray and clenched my hands in my lap.
“Just know that I care for you, and I still want to be with you.”
His words settled over the room, leaving a blanket of silence while I struggled with what to say or do. If I ended things with Desmarc now, that would make it seem like there was some validity to the rumors going on about Hiram and me. That would hurt everyone involved, including Desmarc, who had done nothing wrong. Just because our ideas didn’t match up or my feelings weren’t as deep as I’d thought didn’t mean he deserved any of this.
And ending things would reaffirm how selfish I’d been in agreeing to the marriage in the first place. Yes, Desmarc had been Papá’s choice, but saying yes to the agreement had been mine. I’d cared for Desmarc, but I’d also seen him as a way to escape Papá’s iron fist. I’d thought it was fine having a marriage of convenience as long as we both knew where the other stood, but now I wasn’t so sure.
No, I cared about him once, so surely I could grow to care about him again. Especially if I stopped seeing Hiram. Then I wouldn’t be hurting anyone. And not seeing Hiram would be better for everyone. It would help the scandal blow over, so Hiram could keep working. It would keep Desmarc from getting hurt. And it would stop my feelings from growing any more than they already had.
Even if I had my doubts about how good a match Desmarc and I actually were, if I brought them up now, it would feel like I was just using excuses to get out of it so I could be with Hiram.
“Are you sure I’m what you want?” I asked softly.
“More than anything.”
He tilted my chin up so I had to meet his gaze, which was filled with conviction. Maybe he did care for me as much as he said, but his easy forgiveness reminded me yet again that this was a political match for him as well.
“And if you don’t believe me, I’ll fill you in on a secret,” he said, almost as if he could read my thoughts. “I wanted to surprise you with this after our wedding, but I spoke to a few professors at AIR U. They’ve already promised to enroll you for the next semester.”
I swallowed thickly. Desmarc had been planning for our future and listening to my dreams when I’d been off falling for another man. I never should’ve questioned his feelings. He’d done nothing to earn my suspicion.
“You deserve better than me,” I whispered.
“Don’t say that,” he said. “You’re all I want, Kyra. I care for you.”
“I care for you too.” Maybe it wasn’t as much as before or not in the same way, but I still did.
His eyes lit up. “So you’re going through with the marriage?”
I nodded slowly.
“Can you promise me one thing?”
“What is it?”
His thumb traced my cheekbone. “Please don’t work with the Blue Capes anymore. It’s too dangerous, and I can’t stand the thought of losing you.” He looked down, then back up at me. “Especially not to that detective.” His request was fair. If he wanted to be able to trust me, I needed to give him a reason to.
I closed my eyes. “You don’t need to worry about Hir—him anymore. I won’t see him again.”
“I’m sorry that I didn’t notice how stifled you felt. If you were so unhappy that you had to help solve murder cases to keep busy, I should’ve done something earlier.” He dropped his hand from my cheek to my knee, staring at the floor.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said, “and you did do something. You agreed to help me enroll at AIR U just like I always wanted.”
“It was the least I could do,” he murmured.
“Besides, I wasn’t doing it to keep busy. It was because I wanted to be able to do more with my life. I wanted to help.” I sighed and waved around the room in general. “I didn’t mean for this to happen, but once I started helping with the cases, I realized how much I enjoyed feeling like I was being helpful to someone.”
His eyes met mine. “You’re more helpful to me than you know.”
I smiled and cleared my throat, trying to ignore the blush in my cheeks. “Now that we’ve caught the killer, I have no reason to continue working with the Blue Capes. I can turn my attention to my studies.” And forgetting a certain blue-eyed detective.
“Wonderful. I hate to think of you putting yourself in any more danger.” He looked me over once more. “If you’re up for it, we should call your father in and we can go over a statement about today and reassure everyone that our plans are still on track.”
“All right.”
After Papá returned, we spent the next hour discussing the wedding.
“Unfortunately, my uncle asked me to return home the day before the ceremony,” Desmarc said. “But it shouldn’t affect anything. We’re essentially done with the planning, and I’ll be back that morning in plenty of time for the evening ceremony.”
“Is everything all right?” His uncle had never seemed to approve of us—evident in the way he’d never come to meet me—and after what happened today, he was probably more against me than ever.
“Everything’s fine.” He smiled and laid a hand over mine. “I’ll meet you at Edison’s Aircrafts the morning of so we can run through any final details and make sure everything is all right. Then after the ceremony, we’ll have a short reception back on land before you and I take the airship for our honeymoon.”
A knock sounded on the door, so I took the chance to pop out of my seat. “I’ll get it.” I walked through the front hall—behind me, their conversation was already shifting back to politics—and opened the door.
“Hello, Poppy,” Hiram said.