Chapter 22
That Ladies Journal article hasn’t proved useful even in the slightest. Ignoring Harry hasn’t seemed to help at all. In fact, he seems somewhat relieved!
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The wheel ground into motion, and Fiona watched from the window as they slowly rose above the rooftops, their four companions shrinking as they went.
“Incredible, isn’t it?” Coming to her side, Aylesbury slipped an arm around her waist and nuzzled her neck. “Almost as incredible as you were last night.”
Flushing scarlet, she shrugged off his arm and went to the opposite window. From here, she could see the iron spokes of the wheel and the giant iron beams of its inner workings.
“How long does it take?”
Harry remained on the opposite side of the cart, watching her with his arms crossed over his chest. “Twenty minutes or so. Is that too long to spend in my company? I thought you were enjoying yourself.”
“I was,” she answered. “I am.”
The wheel continued to rotate, sending them upward. Fiona stared out over the city, not really seeing it. She was aware of nothing but Aylesbury and the steady gaze that never left her.
A soft sigh broke the silence. She wasn’t sure if it had been her or him.
A dim reflection in the glass let her watch him without turning his way.
He removed his derby and ran a hand through his hair as he slapped the hat against his heavily muscled thigh.
She wanted to run her hands through his shiny hair again, to feel it between her fingers.
There were many things that she wanted to experience once again.
“Are you embarrassed by what we did?” he asked, reading her all too well. “You needn’t be. I thought you were magnificent. Did you think I would poke fun at you?”
“You poke fun at everything, Harry.”
“Do you believe I intend to gloat? I wouldn’t humiliate you like that.” He shook his head in disbelief. “You would trust this contraption more than you would trust me?”
That was what it really came down to, wasn’t it?
“Have you nothing to say?”
Fiona swallowed. There were many things she wanted to say, things she wanted to do. Already, she was losing her will to keep him at arm’s length.
Now that she knew the rapture he could provoke, she tingled with every whisper of a touch, her rich imagination postulating all sorts of delightfully inappropriate scenarios that might have been, were it not for Pembrooke’s timely interruption.
Similar imaginings had consumed her once before, long ago.
More innocent, filled with gaps that had been filled in two years later.
Scintillating as it was, she knew that her reluctant heart was filling once more as well, beating just for him.
All the promises she’d made herself, all the tenacity in the world, hadn’t kept it from happening again. Just as it had once before.
How many different ways would history find itself to repeat itself? Fool though she was, Fiona wasn’t keen on finding out.
But he was wearing her down with his persistence.
She ignored him studiously, pacing the perimeter of the carriage. Looking down and about, she saw a small crowd of spectators gathered around the foundation of the Ferris Wheel and wondered desperately how long it would take to get them down.
The carriage jerked forward only to stop again with a jolt. Aylesbury let her go as she turned to look out the window. “Is something wrong, do you suppose?”
“There’s something very wrong,” he grumbled. “And since you seem to have nothing to say about it, perhaps you will just listen.”
As if she had a choice. In that carriage alone with him and with no escape to be had, she was a captive audience.
Aylesbury rolled the brim of his hat between his hands as he pondered where to begin. “You continue to hold this grudge against me. To harbor this resentment over the things I said and did. Though you said you cannot forgive me for it, you’ve yet to ask for an explanation.”
“I know what happened, Harry. I was there,” she said tightly. “I am willing to look past it. Isn’t that enough?”
“Hell, no. It is not. You see only your side of it. That I was an ass, as I have already admitted and apologized for it.” Running one hand through his hair, Aylesbury slapped his hat against his thigh again. “Ah, Fiona, you haven’t a clue what a spot you had me in, do you? You were so young...”
“Eighteen!”
“Young enough,” he said with a grimace. “As young as a sister I refused to see as a young woman. Admitting you were old enough to be courted would have been admitting that I should allow Piper the same as she had been begging me to. That I was certainly not prepared to do. Besides that, you were the only sister of men I admire and respect. To have dallied with you in any way, even if it was just a mild flirtation, was bad-mannered, to say the least. Each time I looked at you, I anticipated the beating I knew I deserved for the very shameless thoughts that were going through my mind. And they were quite immodest thoughts, Fiona. I wanted you right from the start.”
She stared at him disbelievingly. “Now that’s a boatload of hogwash.”
“It is the truth,” he said firmly, “though I refused to acknowledge it then. Especially when we first met that summer before. There you were just seventeen...”
“Almost eighteen,” she corrected.
“All right then,” the corner of his mouth kicked up in a half-grin.
“Either way, I felt like a degenerate for finding you attractive. Thankfully, for my sanity, I left you behind when I returned to London. But when I saw you again, it was like an arrow went straight through my heart. Even surrounded by the unruly lot of the MacKintosh clan...”
“You always said I was the worst of the lot.”
“Are you going to let me speak?” he asked with a raised brow. “Perhaps you were, but you were also so incredibly lovely. It was all I could do to keep my distance from you. What would you have preferred I do?”
There were many things Fiona might have liked to happen differently.
For the most part, those wishes all included Harry on his knee with a ring in hand and a promise on his lips.
That hadn’t happened, and what had happened was the complete opposite of what she hoped for.
Still, she could see his point. While he was an easygoing man, he was also an honorable one.
He wouldn’t look where he couldn’t touch.
..even when temptation was flung—with humiliating frequency—in his face.
“Fine then,” she conceded. “I can understand the undesirable position I put you in.”
“A position I’m no longer in,” he said. “You’re older now and out in Society with the expectation of marriage. I’ll take on your brothers one after another if I have to. I’ll also risk that friendship if needed because I want you for my own. I want to marry you.”
Fiona stared at him, using the repeated jolting of the carriage as it stopped once again to take a moment to steady herself and her jumbled emotions.
Her heart wanted to sing with joy at his words, but she held herself in check.
They were just words. “You wanted to marry Moira, too, didn’t you?
And by all accounts, you wanted to marry Abby as well.
How many others were there? How many others did you want to wed? ”
“My parents were very much in love,” he said suddenly in what Fiona thought was a very random subject change.
Still, it was such an unusual segue from the topic that she was curious to hear what might follow.
“Unusual for a peer and certainly more so for a marquis.
My father was overwhelmed with sorrow when my mother died, drowning in grief and alcohol.
Another much younger woman came along and played him for a fool with talk of taking care of his poor, poor son who needed a mother to replace the one he—I—had lost. It was a travesty.
“It’s a long story in itself, but when Father died, I was compelled into society not six months later with the expectation that I find a wife and produce an heir.
A home to raise my sister in. I promised Piper I would do so in all haste so she could live with me as she wished.
I was young—just twenty-two—wanting to do my duty but found I could not bring myself to wed for anything less than love after Father’s debacle.
..or at least a strong affection, something to build on.
I first met Abby and liked her stubborn courage.
The same spirit I see in you. Yes, I asked her to marry me.
I liked her very much. I still do. But even by that point, I knew she loved your brother,” Harry explained.
“I offered for her out of my deep affection for her and to save her from ruin, but even then, I knew I didn’t love her as I should. ”
“But what of the others?” And the one who really mattered. The courtship she had witnessed. “Moira?”
“I fell in and out of what I thought might be at least the stirrings of love many times—the potential for more, you understand? Something to start with—but could never bring myself to propose,” he told her. “As for Moira, in the end, I realized that I loved her but as nothing more than a sister.”
Fiona raised a skeptical brow.
“Or at least like a distant cousin.”
A huff of disbelieving laughter escaped her. “Ha, very distant, I should say.”
He shrugged indifferently as if it did not signify either way. “I might have been content with her as my wife.”
There was that word again.
“But if I were honest with myself two years ago, I was never so relieved as when she married Vin. Otherwise, I never would have had a chance with you.”
The laughter that escaped her then was even more disbelieving.