Chapter 13 #3
From the corner of my eye, I caught a blustering movement. I looked up to see a smattering of snow falling from the sky. A few large flakes drifted to the ground, then a few more. I held out my free hand to catch one, but the second it hit the warmth of my glove, it melted.
So beautiful and so short-lived.
Just like our engagement.
David’s grip on my hand tightened, and he pulled me off the path leading to the front door. “You can’t go in yet,” he said.
“But I must.”
“No.” He was firm. “At the risk of sounding like Mr. Green, once again—” He glanced at Mama’s coat. “You owe me one thing.”
If he told me we hadn’t met our quota on kissing, I didn’t know what I would do. I held firm in the belief that kissing him once hadn’t been a mistake, but to do so twice? How would I ever leave him?
“What is it?” I asked, uncertain I could say no if he asked me. Uncertain if I wanted to say no at all.
“A dance.” He motioned with his free hand toward the path that led to the rear of the cottage, away from the eyes of the footman and where Mama was unlikely to see us through a window. “The last thing on our list.”
“You said we should skip over that one. And Mama already knows we aren’t engaged. We don’t need to convince anyone of anything anymore.”
David’s eyes were serious. “I convinced everyone the moment they walked into the drawing room and found you in my arms. That list has never been about anyone else but us, and I want to finish it.”
He motioned with his hand again. I sighed and allowed my feet to take a few steps in that direction.
He pulled me gently forward until we reached the back garden.
With a quick glance, David strode behind a large beech tree, placing it between us and the view of the house before he stopped and turned to me.
“Will you dance with me, Anna? Please? One waltz, perhaps two. Then we can officially dissolve our engagement.”
I took a steadying breath. Dancing in David’s arms was going to be the sweetest pain, second only to kissing him.
But I couldn’t say no. Mama and I would be isolated again in Lincolnshire.
After receiving my inheritance, I could try to find love, but with a broken engagement and not enough funds for a Season, I couldn’t count on ever having another chance to be this close to a man.
He’d shown me what it was like to be loved by him, and even though none of it had been real, I didn’t think I’d ever be satisfied with anything less. No one but David would ever be enough.
I wanted more memories. I was greedy for them. David was my one chance to fill a jar of tender moments, and I wanted his arms around me one last time before I closed the lid. “We don’t have any music.” My protest was weak—a protest I meant for him to overcome.
His mouth slowly slid into a grin, and he took an unfaltering step toward me. “I’ve heard the music you make. I think we will manage without it.”
I gave him a look of mock indignation. The world shifted, and I found myself back in our comfortable place of jesting and pretending.
This dance didn’t have to be painful. I wouldn’t allow it to be.
David had been drawn to me as a boy because, he claimed, I’d been a bright spot in his otherwise unhappy childhood.
I would dance with him and be brilliant so when he looked back on this time of ours together, he could feel the same way again.
“This from the man who needed reminding of the words to Polly Put the Kettle On.”
He lifted my hand toward his shoulder with a question in his eyes. I nodded, and he let my hand fall onto the warmth of his coat. “This from the woman who thanked me multiple times for the rock I gave her but never for the flowers.”
An edge of sun broke through the clouds, and snowflakes burst into bright spots of light.
David put his hand on my shoulder blade, and even through Mama’s thick coat, I was immediately warmer under his touch.
“I didn’t mean to disparage your voice earlier,” he said.
“Your voice is what I will miss the most. I would actually love it if you sang for us.”
I blinked and saw David as he’d been eight years ago—a scrawny boy holding his dying hound. He hadn’t cared then that I couldn’t carry a tune, and he wouldn’t care now. “I don’t know any waltzes with words.”
“Then perhaps you could hum?”
I nodded and began humming one of Chopin’s waltzes, at least to the best of my abilities.
I was stiff in my first few notes, but when David exhaled deeply, as if he’d released all his worries out into the world, I let my worries slide away as well.
The hand at my back tugged me closer, and I sank into his arms.
Torture was a strange beast.
I let my years of dancing instruction slip away.
David wasn’t following the precise movements of a man who had spent his adolescence preparing to lead women out onto a ballroom floor anyway.
Whether that was because he hadn’t been trained or he was simply throwing his training out the window, I neither knew nor cared.
His hand slid lower on my back, and he tightened his hold on me.
I closed my eyes, allowing all the air in my lungs to escape, then dropped my head onto his shoulder.
During my one Season, I’d danced polkas and waltzes as well as a few country dances, but no one had ever dared hold me this close. This wasn’t a dance; it was an embrace. A farewell. One made only slightly more appropriate by being hidden within a waltz.
As he completed a turn, the weight of his chin settled on my temple, and I missed one of the notes in my song.
I couldn’t even remember what the next note should be.
A steady hum from David’s throat picked up where I’d faltered, and the song came rushing back to me.
We finished the last few strains together, our voices softening and slowing as we neared the end.
When we ran out of notes, David stopped dancing, but he didn’t release me.
With no song to hum and no steps to worry about, my mind went back to the place I had tried so hard to avoid.
This was farewell.
The garden blurred, and I blinked hard, willing myself not to cry. David was my friend. I was a joy to him, and crying wouldn’t leave him happy. It would leave him worried that he’d hurt me when, in fact, he’d been one of very few people to understand me and help me through my difficulty.
But my nose betrayed me with a sniff. David pulled back and searched my face.
I could pretend a lot of things, but there was no chance I could convince him I was unaffected by our parting.
He lifted a thumb to my cheek and wiped the smallest bit of moisture from it. “What is wrong?”
I closed my eyes. I couldn’t answer him.
“Anna, please.”
I wanted to laugh. Wasn’t it obvious? When a lady cried right before breaking an engagement and saying farewell to her fiancé, one would think it was obvious that she didn’t want to do either of those things.
And I really didn’t want to do either of those things.
We hadn’t even had two weeks together, so I knew I was being ridiculous, but days spent with David had meant the world to me. Tree climbing, walking together, singing, cleaning thatch, feeling as though someone appreciated me—I wanted all those things, and they were being ripped from me.
By the one person I couldn’t open up to about how much this hurt.
Or could I?
Was it so important that he remember me as a flitting brightness that came and went from his life that I couldn’t take a chance by telling him I didn’t want to end the engagement?
If I wasn’t going to end up marrying him anyway, did it matter if I told him how much I’d started to dream about staying with him?
Because if there was even the slightest chance David would want me to stay, I wanted to give that chance life.
I met David’s eyes. They were filled with concern. I inhaled his scent and forced myself to say words I would never be able to take back. “Do I have to end our engagement?”
David swallowed hard, but he didn’t look away. “Do you want to wait a week after all? I thought you said that would be more work.”
“No.” My hand slid up his arm and grasped at the fur on his collar.
“I mean, after carefully considering all the paths my life could take, I strongly prefer the one where this engagement doesn’t end at all.
Not unless it ends in the more traditional way,” I took a deep breath, hoping it would calm the racing of my heart. “With a marriage.”
Snow fell around us, but that couldn’t account for how frozen David stood. His eyes stopped moving, caught at a point somewhere just below my eyes. His back stiffened, and his fingers tightened at my waist.
It was obvious enough from his reaction what his answer would be, but still, I waited for it. I’d taken a chance—a bad one, it seemed—but I would not leave before hearing his response. He wasn’t the only one who could propose marriage at inopportune times.
The first part of him to move was his eyes. They came back into focus and searched mine. “That’s not what we agreed upon.”
I swallowed and straightened my spine. The tears, which had been threatening to fall only moments ago, had burned away in my determination.
“I know. And I’m sorry, but when we made that agreement, I had no idea how much I would love being your fiancée or how quickly I’d come to cherish my relationship with your sister.
How could I have known that the young boy I knew would redefine himself as one of the best men I have ever met?
You make me feel as though I have myself back, and leaving you is like watching the best parts of me slip away. ”