Chapter 4
W
“She likes to help those in need, and if she knew my family’s name, she might think I don’t need her. But I need her more than anyone.”
The silence in the room was deafening and intimate. We hadn’t thought to bring a lamp, and the room was dim, with only the soft moonlight from the window illuminating the walls of books and bathing the man in front of me in silken shadows.
“Mr. Tate,” I said.
“David,” he corrected, motioning to the door with a tip of his head and a flash of his eyes.
His message was clear. Someone could be listening there, and he wasn’t wrong.
Unless Mr. Preston had physically restrained Mama, she was certain to have pressed her ear against the barrier between us.
He leaned forward, and as he was at most two inches taller than I, it brought his face level with mine.
“You should call me David. And not only because of what just happened. Mr. Tate feels wrong coming from you.”
I sighed because he was right. I’d tried and failed to think of him as Mr. Tate ever since learning his surname; our past made it a nearly impossible task. He was David, the young boy who’d followed me around for a summer.
I grabbed his hand as I might have when we’d been young and pulled him to the tall windows on the other side of the room, where our voices would be less likely to carry into the corridor and more light would get the romantic idea of an actual engagement out of my head.
Once there, I took two steps away from him.
“David.” His Christian name flowed much easier. His lips turned up at the corners, and his shoulders seemed to relax at my use of it. “You shouldn’t have done that. You were less impulsive at fourteen.”
“If you recall,” his voice was barely above a whisper, “I was just as impulsive at fourteen.” His eyes flashed in the moonlight. Having more of it wasn’t actually helping, and the way his eyes raked over me wasn’t either.
“We don’t need to be so quiet,” I said, not matching his tone. “We will be explaining ourselves to everyone within minutes. Mama and I are in unfortunate circumstances, but I will find a way out of it.”
He dropped his hands to his side and glanced at the door, his jaw tightening. “Would your way include a union with that man?”
I shuddered. “No.”
His eyes darted to mine, then slid to the window. “Because it seemed as though you were considering it.”
I shook my head hard, even though at the moment, David wasn’t looking at me. I placed a hand on his arm. “I faltered. Mama has been so distraught. But that won’t happen again. Even if Mama ran after him, he wouldn’t have me now, not after that scene.” At least any self-respecting man shouldn’t.
His eyes narrowed. “He would have you.” His voice was gravelly, as if he’d spent the past eight years swallowing rocks instead of kicking them along the roadside. “He would have you no matter what it took.”
My face heated, and my hand on his arm went from feeling like a friendly gesture to something I should be careful of.
I loosened my grip until I couldn’t feel the planes of his arm under his jacket anymore.
David spoke about me in a way that made me feel valuable and desirable and anyone would be an imbecile not to think the same way.
No one had ever treated or looked at me that way. Not even Mr. Green.
Since Papa had died, I’d obviously been lacking in good company.
“Even so . . .” Why wasn’t my voice stronger? I sounded like I’d only just awoken and my throat was not used to the idea of talking yet. I forced more air into my next words. “I cannot hold you to what you said in the drawing room.”
“You actually could.”
“But I wouldn’t.”
He smiled. “You aren’t even considering it?”
“Why would I consider it? You saw that I needed help, and you gave it, but now that Mr. Green is gone, we can stop pretending.”
“Can’t you let me be the hero for a change and remain engaged to me? We would keep it temporary, of course, only until you received your inheritance or found a suitable place to live.”
I dropped my hand from his arm. I wouldn’t receive my inheritance for a year and a half. “David, we aren’t getting engaged. There is no reason for it.”
“You don’t have a place to live; there is every reason for it.”
I gritted my teeth. There were quite a few options better than this preposterous plan of his.
It wasn’t even a plan. Neither of us had thought anything through.
He’d simply jumped in to save me, and I would have latched on to anything in order to get Mr. Green to leave.
“How would being engaged to you help me find a home?”
“My friend James is a doctor in town. He would happily put me up while you stayed with Julia in my home. Julia could use the company so you would actually be helping me. It is a brilliant plan.”
“I’m not going to send you out of your home.”
“If my mother were alive, perhaps we could all live together, but with just my sister and me . . .” He paused. “It could damage your reputation.”
I scoffed. Did he think there were people worried about my reputation? At my age? No one would think anything of us staying with him. “I’m hardly someone people would be concerned about staying with you. I’m probably your older sister’s age, and my mother is with me.”
David rubbed his jaw and grimaced. “That might have been true this morning, but I just told a roomful of people I proposed to you.”
I put both of my hands on my hips and raised my eyebrows at him. The two of us seemed to have a talent for making a mess of things. “That can be remedied quickly with one conversation. You owe us nothing.”
He dropped his hand from his face. “If you truly believe that, you are mistaken.”
His eyes caught mine, his gaze intense. I swallowed.
I should have spent more time around handsome young men and less time around Mr. Green.
I should be able to look David in the eyes without feeling like something noteworthy was happening.
He hadn’t offered an actual engagement, only a false one to provide me with protection.
“Julia could use a friend,” he said softly. “She’s been isolated. She had two Seasons in London but didn’t do well, and I don’t think she will return.”
David or his family must have done very well in the past few years if they were able to afford two Seasons in London for Miss Tate. “She is a beautiful woman. I’m surprised she was not in demand.”
David grimaced. “Does my sister look like someone who would want to be in demand?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“It will be good for her to have someone besides me and our tutor, Mr. Allen, for company. If you could be a friend to her, like you were to me . . .” He paused. “She hasn’t yet learned how to live.”
I blinked, trying to follow exactly what David wanted from me. Did he truly think me capable of helping his sister? I didn’t even understand exactly what their situation was. Why did David and his sister have a tutor at their ages? Did it have something to do with his sudden ascension to wealth?
Still, knowing he wanted something from me in exchange for his protection from Mr. Green calmed some of my worries. If he needed me somehow, that made this agreement of ours better, didn’t it? “And you think I could show her how?”
“You showed me.”
I laughed. “I’m not certain I could have done that. I didn’t even know what life was at seventeen.”
He inched closer. A hint of lemon from the bakewell pudding we’d eaten earlier invaded my senses, and for some reason, it made my heart rate increase.
I wasn’t scared of David, even alone in a room, but he was so different from the boy he had been—now so strong and self-assured—that it was disconcerting.
Disconcerting enough to confuse my senses.
His eyes traveled my face. “I’ve never met anyone more alive than you.
Do not underestimate how much your brilliant light affected me back then.
I want that back in my life, not just for me but for Julia as well. ”
I swallowed. No one had ever said anything like that to me.
Not in my one Season in London and definitely not in Silverfork.
I closed my eyes, willing my heart not to be confused.
David didn’t even know who I was anymore.
I shook my head and forced my eyes open.
“You mean the young lady I was. Mr. Tate, I’ve changed over the past eight years.
Quite drastically. Perhaps more than you have, and unlike you, I can’t say that my changes have improved me. ”
A smile curled his lips, and he took a half step closer, standing as close as he could without touching my skirts. “You think I’ve improved?”
My face grew warm. He must know he had. One side of his mouth lifted higher than the other, and his absolute delight at my discomfort made his eyes brighten in a way that would make anyone want to join his amusement. He was most certainly improved. “Do I need to answer that?”
“You don’t need to, but seeing as how I was so cruelly rejected in my youth, it would be kind of you to assuage my hurt pride.”
I gave into his smile and grinned up at him.
“You’ve improved and are very different from when you were fourteen.
” I lifted a finger. “You’re taller.” Lifted another finger.
“More confident.” Lifted a third finger.
“Better dressed, and”—I pushed my three fingers into his chest softly—“slightly better at proposing.”
His lashes lowered as he inspected my three fingers on his chest. When he lifted his eyes back to mine, something in them had changed. “I haven’t proposed to you yet.”
“I suppose that’s true, but you were quite gallant nonetheless.”
His smile deepened. “I am relieved to hear that. All of it. You, on the other hand, haven’t changed at all. I should have known that when I finally saw you again, it would be in that tree, looking more beautiful and as wild as you ever were at seventeen.”