Chapter 4 #2
The woman he almost feared was an apparition gave a sharp gasp and stopped short, her hand flailing out.
They stared at each other for an astonished moment as the evidence before him pierced the fog of his amazement.
It was indeed Amy Bridwell. The rich chestnut curls, the brown eyes that lit with understanding and playfulness—although he saw none of that now—the full lips that hid white teeth as perfect as a row of pearls.
The woman with whom he had once hoped to build his life until she had suddenly engaged herself to another was in Spa!
She lowered her hands to her sides, clutched her skirts, and curtsied silently.
“Miss Bridwell—or rather, Mrs. Bromley.” He bowed. It was a curt, bobbing gesture that must have revealed the depth of his bewilderment if his strangled speech had not already done so.
“It is Miss Bridwell, Mr. Fletcher.” Her voice was so low he didn’t recognize it.
She is unmarried. He froze in place. She never married, he thought again, the words spinning through his mind in a loop. His family never told him that the marriage had been called off. Unsurprising, he supposed, since his father had been against his attachment to her.
“Why are you here?” It was curt to the point of rudeness, but he was not capable of hiding his emotion behind pretty words.
She raised her eyes to his, her face a dull red. “My father wished to tour the Continent, so we have come. We are residing in Spa for five months. Perhaps more, if my father’s treatment requires it.” She shifted her gaze to stare at a spot on the wall behind him.
“I see.” His throat felt tight, as though his cravat were choking him, and the detestable wig he wore suffocated his head. Numbly, he leaned down to pick up his satchel. He could not bring himself to ask about her broken engagement.
The depth of emotion in seeing her surprised him after all these years. It was dashed inconvenient. He had nothing else to say to Amy and must show her a cold and reserved front. If only his knees were not so weak he feared they might buckle.
“Did you know I was here?” he asked instead.
Her eyes darted to his again as she dipped her head.
Oh, for heaven’s sake! She’d known it! Did she persuade her father to come to Spa because she knew I resided here? What a waste of a journey—what a fruitless endeavor! Another insidious voice whispered inside of him, If only she had come a month ago.
“I saw you in the dining room yesterday before we were led to our rooms.” She glanced at the door she had just come from and then at the stairwell as though plotting her escape.
Oh. She had not come to Spa in search of him.
Of course she had not. That had been a foolish notion.
His head spun so that his thoughts could not keep up.
He could not decide if it was better or worse that she had not.
It must certainly be better. Perhaps she had forgotten all about him, and he was the only one plunged into a sea of regret by the chance meeting.
“If you will excuse me,” she said after the silence stretched. She glanced at the stairwell again. “My maid is waiting for me downstairs to retrieve our calling cards from Mr. Gaetano.”
“Please.” He stepped aside and gestured to the stairwell where he had been going. She curtsied, her body half turned from him, and he scrambled to remember his manners as he gave a more proper bow. “Good day, Miss Bridwell.”
As quickly as she left, he spun on his heel and marched to the obscurity of the stairwell he had just quit.
When the wall there hid him from sight, he leaned against it and stopped to catch his breath.
It was just the surprise of seeing her here that had caught him off guard.
He did not have any lingering feelings for Amy.
After all, a connection so many years ago was no longer a connection; it was merely a cumulation of memories.
If only the memories were not so visceral.
He could see everything as though he were there, watching it unfold before his eyes.
He remembered every moment of Mrs. Waiting’s ball where they had fought—where they had ended things with a vicious plunge, as sharp as a knife separating joint and marrow.
Memories of the day preceding it swam before his eyes as well.
It was the day he had kissed Amy Bridwell.
Not just kissed a loose curl wrapped around his finger or kissed her cheek or her hand . . . he kissed her.
He had just arrived from Oxford with his diploma, exultant at being free from classes and having the school of life wide open before him. He had come to know with a surety that he wished to spend the rest of his life with her and was ready to lay his heart down at her feet.
In his anticipation, he had gone looking for her by the pond on her family’s property bordering his. This was where they had taken to meeting in fair weather. It was not precisely clandestine, he used to tell himself, for anyone might walk that way and see them.
She had been there. The setting sun shone on the water, turning it an amber color. Even from a distance, he could see its rays reflecting off the ripples and onto her profile.
His lips stretched up as he walked toward her, wondering how he was going to surprise her.
Should he shift his path and embrace her from behind?
No, that would be too forward. Then, she turned and saw him coming, spoiling his surprise.
Her face lit with pleasure as she dropped the flowers she was holding and hurried toward him.
When she came to stand in front of him, she lifted her face up to his, her full lips drawn into a smile.
Her orange blossom scent had enveloped him like the warmth of the lingering rays of sun.
The young man he was six years ago could not resist such an open invitation, and he leaned down to place a kiss on those lips.
Just a chaste kiss, nothing more—except that his lips lingered on hers, and when she did not pull away, the kiss became something else.
Something warmer. The flare of passion that landed on the intimacy of their friendship was like a spark on gunpowder, and a conflagration burst behind his eyelids.
When he drew back at last, slightly stunned by what had just happened, she blinked slowly.
He could not move. Even now, his heart hammered in his chest just to remember it.
“Mr. Fletcher,” she had said, her husky voice and shy smile quite different from what he had yet seen. It hinted at a layer of closeness he longed to delve into. “Is that how they teach you in Oxford to greet young ladies?”
She was all shyness and innocence, but she had not lost her head in that kiss, it seemed—not in the way he had.
Amy, serious and practical, had yet been able to make him laugh.
He had done so then, carefree and delighted at her wit, intoxicated by the kiss and the future it promised.
He had turned to take her arm in his and begun recounting all of his news since he had last seen her.
The day had been near to perfect, and its charm continued through until the next night, when everything had come crashing down.
The noise of a door opening on the floor above echoed through the stairwell.
James lowered his gaze to the narrow wooden railing and the steps leading down and exhaled.
His composure far from restored, he descended.
His mind was filled with that day—remembering the sweet innocence.
Remembering how it felt to laugh and release the joy bubbling over.
It dawned on him that he could not recall feeling as carefree as he had then at the Bridwells’ pond, not in a long while.
But it was too late to hope for remedy or restoration now.
She had come crashing back into his life too late.