Chapter Nineteen
Fletcher met Louisa in his drawing room. At least it wasn’t the middle of the night—she’d arrived at his home in the early afternoon—but it was probably still inappropriate. She braced herself for Fletcher to say as much, but she didn’t care anymore.
Maybe propriety didn’t matter anymore.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, even though must have known.
“I told my mother I was calling on Lady Adele, and she allowed me to walk outside without taking my maid.”
“Foolish of her.” But a small smile played across Fletcher’s lips.
“Indeed. But I needed to speak with you.”
He sighed. “I don’t have much to report. I spoke with your father.”
Louisa sat on the sofa and motioned for Fletcher to do the same, but he stood.
Every emotion seemed to be displayed on his face at once.
He shot Louisa a sad smile, like maybe he was happy to see her but unhappy about the circumstances, but he also looked distressed, like he thought the meeting with Louisa’s father had been futile.
But it hadn’t, at least not from Louisa’s perspective.
“I know you talked to Father,” Louisa said. “He told me.”
“I want you to know, I feel terrible that you feel trapped in the engagement, and I believe that it’s not too late as long as you aren’t legally wed to Rotherfeld, but I walked away from the meeting with your father convinced that the only way to end the engagement is for me to spend some money.
So I spent the morning trying to find out how much that would cost me, and I finally just got word that it’s a hefty sum. ”
“You mean father’s half of the business arrangement. Do you intend to buy out Rotherfeld?”
“That’s an option on the table. That is, I could pay Rotherfeld’s half of the farm that he invested in and go into business with your father. It was my initial instinct to do that.”
Louisa hadn’t known it was a farm. Father invested in a farm? An expensive one? “But it’s a lot of money,” she reiterated.
“It is. Not an unsurmountable amount, but enough that I’m hesitant to part with it. I have my man of business looking into it now, though. He’s also investigating a few other options. Beresford, of all people, had an idea about what I could do instead, but it still involves spending some money.”
“I don’t want you to have to buy me.” Louisa could not understand what the men in her life were about. “I’m a woman, not a parcel of land or a fancy trinket.”
“I understand that, and I agree with you, but I can’t see another solution. Can you?”
Louisa was angry and frustrated and she stood so she could pace back and forth across the room. In point of fact, she could not figure a way out of this, hence feeling trapped. “I didn’t know Rotherfeld was so…nefarious. I had no idea.”
“I know you didn’t.”
“I feel like a fool.”
“You shouldn’t. You couldn’t have known. He fooled all of us.” Fletcher tracked her with his gaze as she paced. “And I don’t think he’s a bad man. He’s just not the man for you.”
“He tricked me. Made me think he could love me. But I wasn’t much more than a mark to him.”
“So maybe he is a bad man. It’s not too late to, I don’t know, leave a snake in his house. Preferably a poisonous one.”
“Fletcher. Be serious,” Louisa said, although she giggled. She was angry, though.
She stomped across the room. Fletcher stood in the middle and stared at her as she paced.
She was mad at him, too, angry that he didn’t speak up for her sooner, sad that they’d missed an opportunity by being fools about each other and not recognizing their own feelings.
If she could have married Fletcher a year ago, she wouldn’t be in this predicament.
“I hate this,” she said. “I hate that I as a woman have no power to choose who I marry because I happen to be a little older than most women are when they get married, I hate that Daniel took advantage of my need to find a husband, I hate that it took my engagement to make you realize you had feelings for me, if you even do or if you’re just saying you do to rescue me as a friend, and I—”
Fletcher grabbed her arm, and she abruptly stopped pacing. “I do have feelings.”
“And I hate that I have to keep you at arm’s length because of my engagement to Daniel, because all I want to do all the time is kiss you.”
Fletcher stared at her for a long moment, his expression unreadable. “Louisa.”
“I hate that Daniel is preventing me from starting the rest of my life because he needed a bride.”
“I can’t change the past,” Fletcher said, sounding like he regretted that fact.
“I want it to be you at the church Saturday. I don’t want to see Daniel ever again.”
“I’d marry you tomorrow if I didn’t think Rotherfeld would retaliate by ruining your father.”
“Fletcher, I—”
Suddenly, he swooped over and kissed her.
This was what she’d wanted. Fletcher’s lips were warm and firm, he tasted a bit like tea, and kissing him made her chest warm and her skin tingle.
Fletcher put his hands on her waist and pulled her close, and she was reminded that he had experience with women, but she had no experience with men.
She trusted him, though, trusted him to show her what to do, trusted him to care for her and not to hurt her.
He’d know what to do on their wedding night, though, something she looked forward to experiencing, especially since kissing him was so good.
She put her arms around his shoulders and kept him close to her so they could keep kissing.
“We shouldn’t,” Fletcher said when he pulled away slightly. “Rotherfeld…”
“To the devil with Rotherfeld.”
Fletcher chuckled softly. “I quite agree, but I don’t mean to cuckold the man.”
Louisa took a step back. “On my growing list of resentments of Rotherfeld is the fact that I want to kiss you and see what comes next, but you keep stopping me because of my engagement.”
“Trust me, if I had any less integrity, you’d be naked on my settee right now, but I am trying to be a gentleman.”
“I wish you wouldn’t.”
“Louisa.” His tone was reproachful but amused.
“You truly want me?”
“More than anything.”
Louisa frowned at him. “Do you think I’m beautiful?”
“Yes.” No hesitation.
“Have you always thought so?”
“Perhaps not when you were a child, but especially since we started attending the opera together? Yes. I noticed you were beautiful. You have that yellow gown you wear sometimes, the one with the little flowers embroidered on it?”
Louisa was surprised Fletcher had noticed her that much. “What about it?”
“When you wear it, it shows of your… bosom, in a quite appealing way. Since the first time you wore it, I wondered about that. I didn’t want to leer at you, but…yes, I find you very attractive. But I also thought we considered each other siblings, and what sort of lech lusts after his sister?”
“The one who is not actually related by blood.”
“Fair. But for me, half the fun of going to the opera with you, or going to garden parties or dinner parties or balls, is your company. I would like the opera far less if you didn’t attend with me.
I would enjoy other social occasions far less if we could not gently mock the other attendants together.
I always enjoy myself more when I am with you.
That is how I know we will have a very good marriage, if that is what you are worried about. ”
“I think you are very handsome. You like to wear your breeches in a way that is…clingy.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Clingy?”
“As in they cling to your thighs in a very appealing way.” She felt heat flood her face, but she pushed forward. “And I like your hair now that you’ve grown it a little long.”
“Oh.” He touched the edges of his dark hair.
“And I am staring down a wedding to a man who does not desire me, but do I not deserve to be desired?”
“Yes, you absolutely do.”
“I desire you, Fletcher. Do you desire me?”
“Like a man on a hot day desires a glass of water.”
And then they were kissing again, despite Fletcher’s protestations.
He was fully dressed for the afternoon, wearing a crisp white shirt, beige waistcoat, and a black jacket and trousers. And even through all those layers of fabric, Louisa could feel the heat of his body when she put her hands on his shoulders.
Heat. She felt hot everywhere, but she welcomed it.
Fletcher pulled away again and sighed. “You’re really testing me.” Then he pulled her close. He placed a hand on the side of her head and gently pressed her against his chest. He was quite a bit taller than she was, so her ear pressed just below his shoulder. He held her there for a long moment.
She trusted Fletcher implicitly. She felt safe with him. They’d never really touched this way before, but something in Louisa understood that he would never push her farther than she was willing to go, and that he’d take care of her if she needed it. Hell, he’d been doing it their whole lives.
“You remember when we were children,” Louisa said, mostly into Fletcher’s shoulder.
“Some summer in Cornwall, the Earl of Courtland was visiting, and he had a daughter who was about my age. So we were playing outside, but she was really mean. She kept calling me ugly and skinny and we ran out to the pond.”
“Oh, I remember this,” Fletcher said. “She tried to push you in the pond.”
“Said I belonged with the other toads. And you saw her chasing me, and you ran out to intervene. You talked her down and you took me out of there. You saved me.”
“Not my greatest feat of strength.”
“Perhaps not, but it meant a lot to me at the time. Especially when you accidentally stumbled and sent her into the pond instead.” She smiled at the memory.
“Or the time you told Amelia Featheringworth where she could put all the ostrich feathers in her hair when she said my gown was hideous the night we went to see Die Zauberflote.”
“She was just being petty. As I recall, the shade of green she wore that night was reminiscent of mushy peas.”