He hoped, then, as he waited and his sisters leaned over their husbands to chat with Lady Weston and various girl children gamboled on the floor and Gerard spoke in low, officious, threatening tones to the cowed minister, that she would not appear. If she appeared now, knowing what she did, knowing the one thing that Alex had thought to keep from her (because why should she know at this late date? She had not loved Trent; she would not have married him had she known; no harm had been done; the secret was old and expired and inert and harmless, like gunpowder left to rot on the ocean floor; also, he was a bloody high-handed idiot)—if she appeared now knowing that he had kept this from her, she came to marry a man who didn’t deserve her. And he wanted her only if she knew her own worth and deemed him worthy of her all the same.
He was a twisted bastard, and if he had a shred of honor in him, he would tell her to tell him to go to hell. If he had a single instinct of self-preservation, he would do the same, because he did not think their union would flourish if she went into it in this fashion. He would love her with all the intensity in him—but he knew himself well enough to know his own faults. Impatient and judgmental and stubborn and often too quick to act: he would try never to crush her, never to overwhelm her or bend her to his will, but if she did not demand only the best from him, it would happen. It might happen. Possibly.
A good man would have found a way to pull her aside and tell her these things. To warn her.
To hell with good men. They made for very sympathetic characters when they lost, but he aimed to win.
The door opened. Elma and Henry Beecham walked in, Gwen between them. She was dressed in a simple white morning gown, the neckline shrouded by a fringed white pashmina; in her left hand was a bouquet of pink roses. She met his eyes and held them as the minister crossed to stand behind the makeshift pulpit—a podium Gerard had purloined from his club. The twins exclaimed and came to their feet, pulling up their assorted daughters; their husbands remained seated, looking a bit puzzled, as well they might, about why such ceremony was required in somebody’s goddamned library. Alex was already standing at his station. He had been standing here for some time. He had not wanted to risk Gwen’s early appearance and an empty altar to greet her.
“Cue bridal music,” Caroline cried out gaily as Elma released Gwen. Henry Beecham, silver mustache twitching in what might equally have been a smile or a grimace, squared his shoulders and led Gwen the short steps to Alex’s side.
He could not read the expression in her rich brown eyes. Or perhaps he was misreading it, for to his mind, she stared at him as belligerently as any opponent in the salle d’armes. He took her hand, and her fingers tapped across his, a decisive little Morse code whose meaning he would give an arm to decipher. Her plump mouth was a flat, determined line.
The minister began to speak.
Her look seemed more and more clearly like a challenge.
“Do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife,” the minister began. Terribly nasal drone, there. Like a hive of bees.
Her brow lifted as the minister fell silent. Alex had the faintest inkling of suspicion. “I do,” he said slowly.
The minister nodded and turned to Gwen. “Do you take this man . . .”
She nodded along as the question was being asked of her. When the churchman concluded, she glanced away to survey the whole room before returning her gaze to Alex.
“What a novel question,” she said.
The minister gave a visible start. “I beg your pardon?”
He was not mistaken. He knew what was coming. She was going to give him a taste of the panic she had experienced. A queer mix of feelings stirred in him—amusement and pride and love warring with regret and the inevitable disbelief. With an effort, he produced a droll tone. “She never has made it this far before,” he told the minister.
“No, never,” she said thoughtfully. Alex tried for a smile in reply, a silent message to her: You see how well I understand you?
But a moment’s doubt sabotaged his attempt at lightness. She looked to be biting the inside of her cheek. That he did not understand. Did she need the pain to control a smile, or to steel her will? But no act of will was required. Did she not realize that? He would give her as much time as she needed to decide, here. He would even sweat for her, if she would enjoy it.
“Well, miss?” the minister prompted.
“Speak, Gwen,” Elma said irritably. “This game is not amusing.”
Gwen took a breath. “No,” she said. “It is not amusing. None of it. I do not take this man to be my husband.”
Well. Alex exhaled.
That was a bit more than indecision.
How comical to have hoped, even briefly, that she would settle for merely twitting him.
Not a coward, she looked him squarely in the eye. “I cannot marry you,” she said.
He had not expected this. His disbelief was too large to manage, or marshal into words.
The stunned silence could not last, though. “What?” Elma cried.
Gwen looked toward the gathered company. “I do beg your pardon,” she said, then paused to clear her throat. Her voice only trembled a little as she pushed onward. “I know this is a disappointment to everybody.” She looked down to the bouquet, fumbling as she tried to remove the strap from her wrist. The gesture, after a moment, became a frantic sort of clawing.
As if in a dream, Alex watched himself reach out and slide the ribbon off her hand. Freed, he thought. Remember this moment, Gwen. From here on out, you’re fair game for the chase.
She gave him a look of astonishment as he took the flowers. He no doubt looked equally astonished. He could not believe she’d done this. She was braver even than he’d imagined.
The thought clamped down on his next breath. In fact, he had counted on her being less brave than this. Lovemaking was not without possible consequences, and—so he realized, all at once—he had assumed, God forgive him, that her fear of those consequences would hold her to him as much as the love that she did, she must feel for him.
But if she was so unafraid, what might she not do? She might well walk out of this room and never look back to him, no matter what had passed between them.
He looked down at the bouquet. His mind felt strangely sluggish. “Lovely roses.” Oh, brilliant remark. “Gloire de Dijon, I think?” A thousand times he’d won the advantage in tricky negotiations by thinking on his feet, and now a remark on flowers was the best he could manage?
Her chest rose and fell on a deep breath. “Sir,” she said. “I do hope you will survive this, the tarnish of your first jilting.”
Smart girl. She would not be distracted by talk of roses.
“But you will understand,” she continued, “at least I think you will, when I tell you that there can be no more sham marriages for me.”
Sham marriages? His brain latched onto that phrase and demanded that it anger him. His senses were attuned to other, more important details. Her blanched face. Her shoulders, which kilted at an unnaturally straight angle.
His wits began to reassemble. She was jilting him by the skin of her teeth, here. It was costing her some great and terrible effort.
There was hope in that fact. More than hope. She would never come to him out of fear. She would only come to him in honesty. He almost wanted to take her hand and give her the encouragement she needed. To say, It’s all right; keep going. Give me hell. You’re almost done.
A thorn stabbed his palm: his hand was crushing the bouquet. He did not look down. “Bravo,” he murmured to her. Her courage deserved his admiration. “Well done, Gwen. Fearless.”
The remark visibly confused her. She took a step back from him. A tremor moved her mouth. “Was this always a joke to you, then?” she whispered. “Did you never mean any of it?”
“No.” He stepped forward, heedless of the company, to slide his palm around the back of her neck. “I meant every word.” Distantly he heard Gerard’s protest, his sisters’ sharp rebuttal, Henry Beecham’s harrumph. None of it mattered. Into Gwen’s ear, he said, “You’ve just jilted me, darling. Wait at least five minutes before you goad me into proposing marriage again.”
She recoiled so fast that it was a wonder her head did not strike the wall behind her. “You’re mad,” she said, wide-eyed.
“In love,” he said.
“I highly doubt it.”
He took a sharp breath. “Yes, I see that you do.” Enough, now, with flippancy: he felt the last thing from flippant. “I will have to prove it to you, then.”
“No.” She shook her head once. “Do not bother. I am sure you love me as much as you love Heverley End. But I told you, Alex, I am done with these shams.”
Heverley End? What in God’s name did that pathetic little estate have to do with anything? “And well you should be done with them,” he said, the first strop of temper roughening his voice. “But if you count me in with the other two shams you have courted, then you’re lying to yourself. I am not another Pennington. I need nothing from you but you. And I am not going to walk away.”
Gwen’s lips parted. She stared at him, her expression arrested; almost, it seemed, she started to speak. Every fiber in him tightened in anticipation.
And then another voice—Gerard’s voice—thundered, “What the hell is going on here?”
She cast a glance over Alex’s shoulder at the blustering ass, then snatched up her skirts. Her brown eyes flashed toward Alex; her chin lifted. “You do not need to walk away,” she said. “I will.” And turning on her heel, she bolted for the door.
Dumb surprise dulled his reflexes. After such bravery, she would flee like a coward?
A second too late, he lunged for her elbow—he would be damned if she would leave like this. But Elma and Caroline rose up in front of him, Caro catching hold of his hand, Elma’s face flushed and furious. “What did you do!” Elma cried. “What did you—oh!” She whirled and ran after Gwen.
The door thumped shut as Caroline hung like a dead weight on his elbow. “Not now,” she was saying into his ear. “Alex, not now. Heaven knows what ails her but she’s in no state to hear you! Give her a minute—an hour, perhaps—”
An hour? He took a step backward. An hour to do what? What in God’s name ailed her?
The question echoed in his brain and finally pulled him to a halt. He did not fully understand what had happened here. He’d had no opportunity to find out. How the hell could he fix it, then?
He turned on his brother, who was standing with arms crossed and brow furrowed, so comfortably and self-righteously aggrieved. “Can you never keep your mouth shut? Christ—five minutes, Gerard! Would that be so much to ask?”
“I quite agree,” Belinda snapped.
Gerard went purple, choking on his own words as he waved wordlessly toward Alex for the benefit of the glaring company. “Can . . . can . . . can he not even manage to get married without driving off the goddamned bride? Do you know how hard I worked to get that license—not to mention this goddamned minister—”
“Sir,” the minister gasped. “Your language is blasphemous!”
“Blasphemy, is it? What of him? What do you call what he—”
“Could you both desist from fighting for once?” This from Caroline, who set hands to hips and looked sternly between them. Alex’s niece, Madeleine, clambered to her feet as well, mimicking her mother’s pose with a fiercely jutting five-year-old lip.
This miniature imitation caught Gerard’s attention and neatly deflated him. He muttered some expletive in tones too soft to corrupt young minds. Then, at normal volume, he added with disgust, “Thoroughly typical.”
Alex looked at him. What a pathetically poor judgment of the situation. Typical would be brilliant. Typical would be much easier. It would mean a cool head and calm confidence. I will fix this: that was his typical resolve, the tried-and-tested approach. But he had no idea who had created this particular mess.
He turned away to stare at nothing. His role in the Trent debacle could not fully explain this. His handling of that episode had done him no credit, but it certainly did not, in any way, give Gwen cause to doubt his love—or to think him in any way similar to the two shams that had greeted her at more formal altars.
The door thudded again, this time on the exit of Henry Beecham.
The minister snatched up his Bible and, with a hunted look, ducked out after Beecham.
With every exit, that thud was sounding more and more significant. The sound of finality.
Which it was not.
Of course he could fix this problem. There was no need to panic. He turned back to the mumchance assembly. “I only need to know what the problem is,” he said.
Belinda and Caro exchanged veiled looks.
He did not like that. “Say it to my face,” he said, and his voice had a grim note in it that made him wonder whether his instincts had recognized something that his brain had not yet. In an hour, perhaps, he would not feel so calm at all.
“I believe that she told you,” Belinda’s husband said helpfully. “Doesn’t think you love her.”
Belinda shot her husband a glare.
Ah. But the man was right. At present, Alex’s truths held no value or meaning to her. He would not know how to speak them persuasively until he cracked this riddle. It would take more than an hour to do that. Why do you doubt me, Gwen? What was the true cause?
Little Madeleine spoke. “Why did the bride run away, Mama?”
“Because she got scared,” Caroline said, smoothing down her daughter’s hair. “Uncle Alex is going to fix it by proving to her that she doesn’t need to be scared anymore.”
“Does Uncle Alex love her?”
“Of course he does,” Gerry snapped.
Hearing this truth from Gerry’s mouth brought a wave of foreboding over Alex. Christ, if Gerry could believe this but not Gwen—
“Well,” Gerard continued gruffly. He took a seat at the desk, graceless as a sack of turnips. “I’ll say no more, then. But it’s a damned shame. Family could have used three million pounds.”
“Oh, Gerard,” Caroline sighed. Alex opened his mouth to deliver the truly cutting reply that his brother’s asinine remark deserved—and a nudge of intuition stopped his tongue.
“Could we, then?” he asked mildly.
Gerard’s eyes, meeting his, widened infinitesimally—then dropped. “Who couldn’t?” he muttered.
Alex did not look away. A possibility, theretofore unthinkable, spun through him. He did not like unthinkable possibilities. He liked none of this. You love me as much as you love Heverley End. Is that what she thought she was to him? A problematic millstone around his neck? Some unwanted weight?
A glimmer of inspiration struck him. “I’ll fix this,” he said slowly.
At the Beechams’, he discovered that Gwen had fled to Heaton Dale, and Elma had taken to bed. She called him up to her sitting room, where she subsided across a chaise longue, tipping her head to the cold compress held by a solicitous maid. “Do not chase after her,” she advised. “You will waste the trip. She would not permit even me to accompany her. I have never seen her in such a state!”
He did not argue. “If she asks after me—”
Elma took charge of the compress and sat up. “She won’t, Mr. Ramsey. I tell you, she has lost her wits. I reasoned with her all the way to the station. I might as well have been speaking to a lump of clay!”
He mustered a smile. “If she asks,” he said, “tell her I have gone to Heverley End.”
The compress thumped to the floor. “But why?” Elma frowned. “That’s the opposite direction! Surely you can’t mean to listen to me? You must go after her!”
He laughed. “And so I will,” he said. But first he had to find Gwen what he had promised her: the proof she required.
Heverley End was a Jacobean cottage of Portland stone, weathered and pocked by the centuries of salt that had scoured its golden face. It sat atop a serpentine cliff veined with copper, and its mullioned windows overlooked the surf’s retreat. In Alex’s memory it was fearsome, a place better fit to abandonment and hauntings. In his more recent imaginings on the journey here, men with bowler hats had menaced the perimeter.
The truth was far less remarkable. The house was pretty in the setting sun. Quaint, even. And if Barrington had yet visited his new possession, he’d made no changes to the staff. The gatekeeper recognized Alex from boyhood, and the front door opened on another familiar face: the housekeeper, Mrs. Regis, still as spare and tall as a Maypole. He remembered her as a stiff and bloodless presence, always hovering a few paces from the doctors and nursemaids. Now, to his surprise, she insisted on crying briefly into her apron before leading him on a tour of the old terrain.
As he followed her, he grew conscious of a stupid disappointment. He would have taken pleasure from fighting his way into the house. It would have seemed fitting, for he’d certainly fought his way out of it, once upon a time.
“We have kept it up,” Mrs. Regis assured him as she guided him down the creaking corridors. No electricity here yet; gaslight lent the scene the bluish tinge of history, things already receding, soon forgotten to the world. Emptiness pervaded the rooms: walls denuded of their paintings, rugs rolled away, furniture put to sleep beneath dust sheets. But Mrs. Regis spoke the truth: the oak floorboards squeaked beneath a layer of fresh wax.
On the second floor, outside his old bedroom, she stepped aside to permit him entrance and he thought that here, surely, was the moment when things would finally become difficult. He stepped in on a breath that wanted to falter in physical memory of his time here. They had removed the bookshelves and armoire. Stripped the bed of its mattress. But the view of the sea, of the whitewashed cliff and the pale blue waters stretching endlessly out beyond, was the same.
He walked to the window. The vista felt more intimate and familiar to him than his own reflection. His reflection was a fluke, a product of chance. In that endless vista he had looked to find his courage and his future as the sour smoke of burning nitre-paper had roiled endlessly up behind him. He had worked to discover himself.
For your own good, Alex.
He pressed his fingertips to the pane. He forced a long breath.
It came easily. Of course it did. Sometimes life was kind, and illness faded more gracefully even than the dead.
He blinked, and the view was not so portentous, after all. It was merely . . . pretty. Yes, he thought, if Gwen thought the Seine at sunrise lovely, she would find this view no less pleasing. This view: how curious that it had once meant so much to him, so much anger and desperation and possibility as well. It was only a small slice of the world, a pleasant slice, framed and made coherent by wood and glass and plaster, rude, dumb material that had no pull on him, no claim, no weight.
This house laid no weight on him. He pressed his hand now against the window frame. Of course it didn’t. It was only a damned building.
He breathed again, even more deeply. How could she think she weighed on him? Even standing in this house, thinking of her, he felt light. As a boy, if he could have looked out this window and seen her instead of the sea, he still would have proved no less ambitious for himself.
Well . . . perhaps not. He felt himself smile—here, in this house, without effort. Boys were dim-witted about women. Even as a man, he’d been dim-witted for too long.
A groaning floorboard announced Mrs. Regis’s approach. He turned, and the smile still lingering on his lips appeared to startle her. Her hands flew together at her waist, burrowing into her apron strings like two bony birds in search of cover.
He supposed his sudden appearance, his silent survey, might have looked a bit queer to her, particularly in light of the sale to Barrington. “And how is it with your new master?” he asked, seeking to put her at ease. “Have you met the gentleman yet?”
Her brow knitted. Myopically, she peered at him. “Sir? We’ve not seen the master for some months, now. But . . . that is to say—” She spoke more hastily, perhaps fearing that this remark would be taken as criticism. “He is in regular communication with Mr. Landry—that would be the steward, now, sir. A very good master, Lord Weston is; the rent rollback saved many a family in the village this spring.”
Alex stared at her. “Lord Weston,” he said slowly.
She blinked at him, a startled sparrow. “Aye, sir. Your . . . brother?”
“This spring?” He sounded like a parrot. No matter. Here it was: his intuition finding its aim.
Her sunken face took on a delicate pink hue. “Ah—perhaps more properly summer, sir. We count May as spring in these parts, you know.”
So. The smile was back on his lips now. A month ago, long after news of the sale had circulated, Gerry had been rolling back rents on the property.
He laughed, and she flinched. Poor Mrs. Regis. No doubt the village would soon be whispering that the boy asthmatic, who had bedeviled the family with his reckless antics, now had grown into a full-fledged madman. “He never sold this place.”
Mrs. Regis drew herself up, affronted by the idea. “Certainly not! This property has been in your family for near to three hundred years, sir.”
“True enough,” Alex said. That hypocritical, two-faced bastard. “And so it shall remain.”
Of all the things to be loathed in a London season—the hypocrisies and charades, the cruelties small and large, the shallow praise and shallower judgments—none was worse than this: the season had robbed Gwen of springs in the countryside. She had forgotten how beautiful Heaton Dale was in June, even with the pagodas, which made such a ridiculous mismatch with the surrounding cornfields.
She sat in a wicker chair on the back terrace, overlooking this land, the light shawl across her shoulders donned for a chill that the morning sun had long since burned away. So take it off, she thought. But she did not move.
She had moved very little in the last two days. It was as if making her way out of London had exhausted all her strength and now she could do nothing but sit very still, and look, and try not to think.
She looked, then, and tried to nourish herself on beauty. Heaton Dale sat on a slight rise—a hillock, really—to which her parents had added. Layer upon layer of sediment had been pressed into the earth, lifting the house farther toward the sky than nature had intended. From this lofty vantage point, the countryside rolled out in all directions, the grass walks that bordered the cornfields drawing a geometrical grid to guide the eye. The hedges bristled with shepherd’s roses and blossoms of white hawthorne, and closer by, interspersing the remaining pagodas (she’d had two chopped up and carted away this morning, and the rest would fall to the axe tomorrow), limes and honeysuckle dotted the lawn. Nightingales and larks flitted from limb to limb, serenading the sky, the season, the sun.
Such a lovely view. Too lovely to be viewed and admired by nobody but her. Behind her, from inside, came a great racket amongst the staff. There were eighteen bedrooms to be aired—eighteen; she could not imagine what her parents had been thinking—and half as many drawing rooms. Also: two dining rooms, a billiards room, a smoking room, a morning room, two conservatories, a music room, quarters to house over sixty servants, and, of course, the nurseries. Very large nurseries, with great, glorious windows that let in light both in the morning and afternoon. Her parents had nursed grand plans for their children, of which marriage had only been the beginning.
Well, they had sent her away, and then they had died.
And then Richard had died.
Anger flickered, and with it stirred a horrifying urge to cry, still not quite vanquished. She took a sharp breath against it. She did not care what her parents’ plans had been. If, somewhere above, they were upset with her for failing to honor their dreams, they must look to themselves for the reason. They had died. Everyone who loved her had died, but she had survived and done her best. She was done with being left and abandoned.
I love you, he said, and I will prove it, as if, by doing so, it would become his right to demand another chance from her. Oh, he was worse than Pennington and Trent by far. At least they had only wanted her money. He wanted far more than that. He was the last man any sane woman would trust; leaving was his art form. Yet he wanted to take her trust in his hands, to lure her into loving him, with her only reassurance his single, slim promise not to break faith and abandon her. And what did this promise come down to? Merely two words, two syllables, scripted by somebody else, and spoken countless times by a million cads or more: I do. How many men had said those two words while already plotting their peccadilloes and betrayals? Her parents had loved her truly, by blood as well as by heart, and Richard had, too; but that had not stopped them from leaving. How dare he think a simple promise more powerful than what had bound her family to her? How dare he ask her to imagine that he could deliver to her what her own family had failed to do? Nobody could promise to stay.
“Mistress,” came a voice from behind her. One of her new footmen. It had taken under two days to assemble a staff; money did have its advantages. “Lady Anne rather wishes to see you. Are you at home?”
She turned in her seat. How curious that of all the people she might have imagined would call on her here—although Elma was fuming at her, and the Ramsey twins were maintaining their distance, per her wishes—the first should be Lady Anne. Gwen could not imagine what might have prompted it. Heaton Dale was two hours outside the city by rail, no small effort for a girl whose social schedule was—so Anne assured her in regular notes—remarkably full.
She breathed deeply of the warm air. “Show her out here,” she said, and turned back around.
So much land. She had no idea what she would do with all of this. She had worked and reworked it to please others, to suit the tastes of men who had never bothered to learn her own tastes, or even to come and view what she had wrought for them. In the end, the only transformation she had undertaken that would last was the transformation she had wrought on herself. Alex was wrong. She could change. She would no longer seek to please. She could be alone and content. Romantic love was not so thick as blood. This sense of mourning, in turns as vivid-bright as the lash of a razor, or as numbing and crushing as a boulder on the chest—it would dull. He would forget her. She would forget him. They were not family and nothing permanent bound them. People could change.
He should realize this. He had changed himself. He had made himself from a sickly boy into a strong, vibrant man. He had sacrificed in order to do it—cutting ties and avoiding connections lest he surrender some part of himself vital to the person he needed to become. And she, too, had sacrificed. To become this person she needed to be—a woman unafraid to build a garden to her own tastes; a woman confident in her right to honor her own desires—she had sacrificed him.
Only . . . the thoughts in her head did not feel as though they belonged to such a woman. They circled some dark pit she had looked into before, when loved ones had been lost to her.
He was alive, but she was mourning him as though he were dead.
She closed her eyes. She would not cry.
The sound of footsteps came from behind her, emerging from the house. Glad for the distraction, Gwen rose. “Lady Anne,” she said. Her voice sounded like gravel.
“Gwen!” The girl looked radiant, glowing in her spangled day gown. She came forward to give Gwen a light kiss on the cheek. “What a magnificent house,” she said. “And what a cunning garden!”
Gwen managed a smile. “It will be more cunning yet.” She would redesign the garden now, in the evenings, when her thoughts would be most inclined to wander, to turn toward him, to wonder where he was, if he was already leaving her behind, letting her grow ever smaller in his view and memory, like the dark shadow of the coast in the wake of a ship.
She took a breath. The garden would be beautiful. She envisioned a rolling wooded parkland, near to natural, only a slight bit of landscaping. She would thread it through with wildflowers. She had never minded wildflowers; it was only the hothouse variety that bored her. And maybe, by the time she was done with this project, she would have planned out a use for some of these rooms, particularly that deserted nursery above. Maybe she would open an orphanage.
It was a bold idea, but she did not feel brave. She felt . . . battered. Already broken.
“Will you have something?” The question emerged stiltedly. “Tea, of course, but have you lunched yet?”
“Thank you, I did,” said Lady Anne. “I promise, I am not so ill-bred as to appear uninvited and demand to be fed!”
The very fact that Lady Anne admitted the possibility that an earl’s daughter might be ill-bred was enough to surprise Gwen into brief silence. Nobody had ever called Lady Anne beautiful—her nose was too prominent, her jaw wider than her temples—but she truly was glowing. “Do you have good news?” Gwen asked cautiously. Was a marriage in the works?
“I would not call it good news,” Lady Anne said. “But news, yes. That is . . . I have come to do you a favor—one that I think you will gather I was very grateful for myself.” She paused to draw breath, and her expression grew very serious. One slim, gloved hand settled atop Gwen’s knuckles. It’s to do with Alex, Gwen thought. But no, it couldn’t be. What truck did Lady Anne have with him? Still, she felt her pulse bump and begin to speed as Lady Anne continued, “Brace yourself, dear.” The girl’s hand delivered a squeeze. “It concerns the Viscount Pennington.”
Gwen’s hopes deflated. “Oh? What of him?”
Her flat tone visibly surprised Lady Anne, who then misinterpreted it entirely. “Is it still so sore a subject? I had hoped Mr. Ramsey—is he about, by the way? One hears such delicious rumors about him, I had hoped to see him in person, to beard the devil, as it were! Joking, dearest Gwen—oh, he isn’t? Pity. What was I saying? Oh yes, I had hoped—but ah, well, I know how slow hopes are to heal.”
“Very slow,” Gwen murmured. Painfully slow, she feared.
“Yes,” Lady Anne said soberly. “You did gather, I think—that is, you may have gathered that for a brief period, before of course the gentleman fixed his attentions on you, that I was rather . . . taken with him myself. Which is why I say with full confidence that it may comfort you to know why the viscount fled so ignominiously from the altar.”
Gwen blinked. Alex had said he wasn’t responsible, and she believed him. The cause therefore seemed thoroughly immaterial to her.
But Lady Anne was clearly waiting for some reaction. And perhaps it was a mark of her own addled state that she felt no curiosity. She cleared her throat. “Oh, dear,” she said.
“Yes, it is just that shocking,” Anne said righteously. “I am afraid, Gwen, that the viscount has found himself in an . . . indelicate situation . . . with a certain man, a very wealthy German from Baden-Baden, who blackmailed him and threatened to expose him to prosecution—if he should go through with marriage to you.”
Gwen frowned. “I know no Germans,” she said. “Why should this gentleman object to our marriage?”
“That is the shocking part! The German was seen entering your ceremony just before the vows were taken. But he did not appear in order to threaten the viscount. No—he appeared to prove his love!”
It took Gwen a moment to work through this. “Do you mean to say that the viscount . . .”
“He was romantically involved with this man,” Anne hissed. “A foreigner. Yes. And now the German has cleared the viscount’s debts, and together they are fled to the Continent, for fear that here, they will be prosecuted for unnatural behavior!”
“How . . . astounding,” Gwen said. It was so far outside anything she had expected that she barely knew how to react. “I feel very—terrible—for the viscount, I think.” And also—could it be?—the first bit envious. She had no idea of how to understand such love between men, but if Pennington would risk the whole world’s wrath and his own freedom for it, the German could never doubt him now.
“As well you should, I think,” said Lady Anne, surprising her again. “I told you, it was a foreigner who he took up with. Besides, he might have gone through with the marriage and used your wealth to mount his defense in court, should their affair be discovered. But he spared you the infamy, Gwen! So you see, his disinterest in you was not at all personal. He has no feelings of that sort for any woman.”
Gwen’s mouth twitched. She could not help it. No wonder Lady Anne had come running to her. By spreading this story, she also salvaged her own wounded pride.
Her small smile appeared to unnerve Lady Anne, who collected her purse and rose. “Well,” she said, and her tone was more in line with what Gwen remembered of her: starchy and a touch condescending. “I thought it would soothe you, at any rate. But I suppose you have no care now you are safely—if I may say a bit hastily—married.” She glanced around again. “Although I do find it odd that Mr. Ramsey is not here.” Her regard switched back to Gwen, speculative now.
Gwen came to her feet as well. “It was lovely of you to pay a call on me, and to be the first to share these tidings. I will give you even more exciting news to spread, if you like.” Why not? Otherwise she would wait, breathless and nauseated by nerves, for the truth to slip out. She might as well let it slip now herself. “You see, Mr. Ramsey and I aren’t actually married.”
Anne blinked. And then her mouth fell open. “What?”
“It’s true.” She wanted to speak the words boldly, carelessly. But they felt leaden in her mouth, and they dropped her voice to a pitch better suited to gravesides. “Not married. We never were.”
Anne’s eyes unfocused. Her expression grew a little dreamy. No doubt she was beholding her own social celebrity the moment she dropped this truth like a bomb onto London. “Oh, Gwen,” she sighed. “You’re mad, do you know that?”
Gwen hesitated. This remark had not been issued in any of the appropriate veins—she heard no censure, astonishment, disbelief, or sympathy, only a chiding and indulgent note.
A suspicion seized her. What was Lady Anne staring at, somewhere behind her?
The suspicion grew into a cold certainty as Lady Anne’s smile widened, and then fractured into a giggle. Her blue eyes returned to Gwen’s, widening dramatically, as if to say, You naughty girl, you! Telling me such lies!
Hands slipped around Gwen’s eyes. She went rigid. She would know him anywhere, simply by the feel of him. His skin made her skin come alive.
She thought desperately of her landscape. Of transformations. “He is not my husband,” she said stonily.
“That’s right,” he said, very near to her ear. “Sometimes she likes to call me Mr. de Grey. Lovely little game, we play.”
The sound of his voice raised a physical pain in her, a longing so acute that it made her throat clog. This was not fair—that she should feel this way when he was here, when he was next to her, when he was hers for the touching if only she would lift her hands.
His hands gentled slightly. She knew then that he felt the tears rising in her lashes.
“Perhaps,” he said, “you might give us a minute, Lady Anne?”
“Oh yes,” came the girl’s breathless reply. “I’ll just be on my way, then. Gwen, you’re an awful tease. I will write you this very evening.”
Gwen stood still for a very long moment, waiting for Alex to release her.
He slid his hands straight down her face, to her waist. The sunshine poured back over her, but it seemed now out of season. What she wanted were gray clouds to weep with her.
“Gwen.” He pressed his cheek to hers and spoke in her ear as his arms closed around her torso. “Darling, this is the bottom of stupid, and perhaps halfway onward to abominable idiocy. Why are you crying?”
She stared very hard at the pagodas. “You know why.” I want you to leave: that was what she should add. But she could not say it. Why couldn’t she say it? He had called her fearless, but she was a coward. She was a coward with him. She had forgotten Trent and Pennington so easily! Their loss had stung less than the scandal attached. She had never loved them in the first place. It had been so easy to wait at the altar for a man she hadn’t loved. Without love, one could not be crippled by loss.
But he was standing here with her. Where was the loss?
It never showed its face before it arrived. It would come. And there were reasons, solid reasons, to doubt him.
She ripped out of his grasp and took a step toward the terrace rail. “You above all people should know why I rebuff you,” she said. One of the pagodas lay in fragments; the axmen had grown tired and stopped mid-work. Had she the strength, she would chop the rest of them up herself. Yes, she would enjoy such violent activity. “Were you not the one who said I must recognize my own desires? Accept them without shame? But how does that fit with you, Alex? You did not respect me enough to let me make my own decision about Trent. You did not bother to consult my wishes. Do you think that spells the path to freedom for me?”
He sighed. “I was wrong,” he said. “I should have shared the news about Trent. I do not argue that. My only excuse is idiocy. I was working very hard, then, to keep as far from you as possible.”
Her hands closed over the railing, clenching tightly. “I don’t believe that. You simply didn’t want to waste your time on informing me. Your interest is fickle. Today you have found me interesting, but tomorrow—”
He caught her elbow. “Spare us,” he said, and his voice had hardened. “Spare us both these tales. Your objections have nothing to do with the Trent affair, and you know it.”
She held silent.
“Don’t be a coward,” he said. “Look me in the face.”
She shrugged out of his grip and pivoted.
No wonder Lady Anne had blushed and shuffled like a child. He was dressed only in his shirtsleeves, a blinding white in the midday light, offering stark contrast to the tanned skin of his throat. A passing breeze ruffled his thick hair, played with the spare material of his sleeves, but he himself was motionless.
“No,” she said. “It has nothing to do with Trent.”
“Yes,” he said. “I know. And here’s something else it has nothing to do with.”
He held out his hand.
She regarded the document warily. And then, looking to his face once more, she took it from him.
“This . . .” She frowned and turned over the document. The seal looked legitimate. Astonishment briefly slackened her grip. “This is the title to Heverley End.”
“Yes,” he said.
“But how—Barrington sold it to you?”
“He never owned it. Gerry didn’t sell the place.”
“But—” She covered her mouth with her hand. None of this made sense. Had he—surely he hadn’t come only to show this to her? But shouldn’t that be precisely her hope?
“Gerry was part of Barrington’s scam.” He pushed his hand through his hair, then sighed and took a seat. “Well, he was. Was being the operative word, here.”
She sank into the chair across from him. She hardly trusted herself to stand. Some storm seemed to breaking inside her, silently, ferociously, scattering her wits and addling her emotions; she barely knew how she felt. “What on earth can you mean?” she asked faintly.
He rolled his eyes. “God knows it only makes sense to Gerry. The rumors about the sale were meant to lend Barrington credibility. He asked Gerry to refer potential clients to him—people looking to sell their estates—and in turn, Barrington passed on a percentage of the selling price. Gerry was using the profits to defray a rent rollback, help his tenants through a poor year’s returns.” Alex drummed his fingers atop the table for a moment. “Idiocy,” he said in disgust. “My brother finally decides to dabble in commerce, and he does so in the name of noblesse oblige.”
She choked on a laugh. She could not help it; he simply looked so put out. But how surreal this scene was becoming—sitting across from each other, speaking so civilly of real estate. At least her amazement had temporarily numbed her distress. “But then—Heverley End? Why is it deeded to you?”
“That was my price,” Alex said. “Gerry deeded me Heverley End, and in return, I give him the grand honor of turning Barrington in to the authorities himself. Otherwise, I would have done it, and God knows I would have strung Gerry up by the heels, as well.”
“No, you wouldn’t have done,” she said instantly.
He hesitated, regarding her curiously, a smile finally turning his lips. “No, probably not,” he said. “But Gerry didn’t know that.”
By some silent accord, they both settled back in their chairs. Another warm wind swept the terrace. Alex tipped his face back to the sun and shut his eyes. The sight struck a dagger through her, unleashing a sense of terrible urgency: so long as the conversation remained on these other matters, he could stay. He could stay as long as he liked.
It would not last, though.
It would break her heart when it ended, and she could not bear the wait. “You would never be happy here,” she blurted.
One eye opened. “No? Why not?”
“You hate the country,” she said. “The city is where people with ambitions go. The country is dull. It’s a boring cousin to the city.”
The eye closed again. “God above, I am a pompous prick sometimes,” he said. “Gwen, I made Gerard deed me Heverley End. Had you asked me a year ago, I would have named it, above all places in the world, as the last place I should wish to live. And now I own it. Think on that, a moment.”
She hesitated, too afraid, briefly, to speak. “I don’t follow,” she finally whispered.
Now he looked at her, mouth quirking, becoming a wry slant. “It’s the only property I own outright. Always thought about investing in land, but—well, to the point. I told you, the next time you decide to marry, you really need to pick a man with a roof of his own. One that doesn’t leak. Heverley End doesn’t.”
The breath seemed to have leapt directly into her lungs; it was more a silent gasp than an inhalation, really. “Alex—”
“You might like it,” he said. “I was not eager to return to it yesterday. I walked its halls half expecting to choke. And then—I began to imagine you there beside me. I wondered what you might see when you looked out its windows. And I discovered, in the process, that the place is rather pretty. More than pretty. My childhood prison is quite charming. And it would be no prison if you were there with me. It would be . . . a home.”
“Heverley End,” she said in disbelief. “You would . . . live there. Again.”
“With you,” he said. His light eyes never left her face. “Anywhere with you, Gwen. That is the freedom I was always seeking. Not to be beholden to any place but to a person—one person. You. And without you . . .” He smiled a little, a wry, almost lost smile. “What difference where I am? On a city street flooded with people, on a ship bound for a new port . . . without you, it won’t matter. Might as well still be that boy suffocating alone in an echoing room, waiting for footsteps to come. Only now, I will be waiting for your footsteps. Only yours.”
He watched her a long moment as she struggled with what she wanted to say, what she had to say.
But habit won out. What she said was, “You love me. You do love me.” She sprang to her feet, but he remained sitting. He looked up at her, shading his hand to block the sun from his eyes.
“For God’s sake, Gwen,” he said gently. “What matter that I love you? That’s not the bit that’s always been missing.”
Her lips parted. They wished to ask a question she could not bear to bring herself to ask. He was never less than honest. The answer, then, was bound to be wrong.
So she did not ask it as a question. “You won’t leave me,” she said.
He drew a long breath. “There,” he said, quietly, fiercely. He came to his feet. “That is the answer to this riddle. The promises I can make, and the one I can’t. Gwen.” His hands closed on her wrists, tightening until she swallowed and found her courage and looked up at him. “I will never leave you willingly,” he said. “Life is a risk, and so love is, as well. But I swear to God, you will not regret the gamble.”
The light was so bright that it pricked tears into her eyes. Instead of squinting, she widened her eyes further so the sun blinded her. She saw him as a silhouette, a dark shape against the sky. So easily his face began to fade.
But she knew his features well enough to see him in the dark. And his hands were warm and alive and vital. The strength in him was tremendous. She could feel it, leashed in the tension of his grip.
“I love you,” she whispered.
How horrifying, and how thrilling. It felt like a secret, a confession, a taunt: a dare to fate.
But he did not seem to think it remarkable or daring. “I know,” he said, and his thumbs stroked her wrists, once. “We love each other. And look, darling: the world continues to turn.”
She pulled out of his grip. He let her go, his fingers sliding softly over hers, a lover’s caress. She stepped around him, to put the sun at her back, and he turned toward her, and his features clarified. He smiled, and some sharp, sweet pain caught her heart.
Since Richard’s death, she had never been afraid to lose anyone. She had never entertained any suitor who might have inspired that fear.
I am so afraid to lose him.
And so—what? She must lose him now, at once, as quickly as possible?
What sort of logic was that?
She looked at him, his eyes so blue, his hair ruffling in the wind, so relaxed on his feet, hands in pockets, lounging as gentlemen were not meant to lounge, while beyond him in the garden lay one dismantled pagoda and two more awaiting the axe, and beyond them the cornfields in the sun, and the sky, and farther out yet, the sea. “I love you,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “Say it again. Louder, if you please.”
She laughed. She could say it aloud. She could let herself say it. She could scream it. He would not leave; lightning would not split the sky. The gamble was honest and earnest and it carried no punishment. Why—how could fate be cruel? Fate had brought him to her. Alex, the most unlikely suitor in all of England, loved her!
She jumped once, and then gave a wild laugh, feeling . . . mad—insane—who cared, indeed? “I love you,” she said. What couldn’t she do, now? Especially with this garden! “Alex—help me fetch an axe!” Turning on her heel, she raced for the house.
He caught her by the elbow, laughing, breathless, just inside the door. His eyes were sparkling. “An axe, Gwen?”
“For the—oh, never mind!” she cried. “Later!” And threw herself at him, her arms going around his neck, her mouth finding his. He turned her, backing her against the wall, running his hand up her wrist, capturing it against the wall, breaking away briefly to say something—a comment forever lost as he glanced beyond her, out the door, into the garden. His gaze abruptly narrowed.
“The pagodas,” he said.
“An axe,” she said.
“Definitely.” He looked at her. “Later,” he said, and then he kissed her again, and she planted her hands in his hair and pulled him down—down, down, down; she did not worry about the ground, their inevitable collision with the marble floor, or the servants, or tomorrow, or the next day, or ten years from now. He had her in his arms and he was kissing her, and I want this, she thought. I want you. And then, as his lips moved to her throat, I need you. And finally, at last, as his arms tightened around her and the sun spilled over them like a blessing:
I have you, Alex.
I have you.