Chapter 7 #2
Port Royal, 2 miles
A strange fluttering of nerves started in her stomach, and Nerissa placed a hand on it to calm herself down.
She wanted to tell her father everything, of course – but it was to be a difficult conversation.
How did you break it to your father that you were to marry the man that, just a few days before, had taken him to court and attempted to take all of their money from them?
Anthony seemed to notice her reticence. “Are you quite well, Nerissa?”
A smile curled across her face, but it was a wry one as they started down the road. “It is just…I am unsure exactly how I will go about broaching the subject of…of us. With my father.”
“You do not have to tell him if you do not want to,” he replied, quicker than she would have expected.
The trees were starting to thin now, and after a few minutes of silence Anthony added, “It would only pain him.”
Something twisted in her heart, and Nerissa sighed. He was right; it would only pain her father, and yet she did not want to lie to him. He could hardly be invited to their wedding and not know!
“I would much rather tell him,” she said finally, slipping her hand into Anthony’s. “Otherwise he could hear it from someone else.”
She could feel the shudder in Anthony’s body at the thought of her words. “You make an excellent point. If anyone is going to tell him, it had best be you.”
For a moment, Nerissa stared up at him, confused. It seemed unlikely that they would be able to hide their marriage from her father for any sort of time at all, but then she remembered something that her mother had once told her.
“Men do not like getting married,” she had said with a knowing smile, “but they love being married. ‘Tis the idea of matrimony that they detest, but the comforts of marriage that they seek.”
Even if a man truly loved his wife, the moment up to the wedding day itself was often fraught with difficulties, Nerissa thought and remembered her letters from Adena Garland as she was forced to endure matchmaking from her parents.
That must be it. Anthony obviously wanted to be with her; he was holding her hand right now as tightly as he could. He was just nervous.
Nerissa had been so preoccupied with her thoughts that she had not noticed that they had arrived at the end of Port Royal’s main street.
Anthony dropped her hand. “Are you ready to return to civilisation?”
She sighed. Every step into civilisation would mean a step away from that magical evening last night, when she had given herself away to him but gained so much more.
“I suppose so,” she sighed.
They continued to walk side by side, and Nerissa could not help but notice the strange stares that they received from others as they walked.
The first few times, she stared back, but after the sixth person to whisper to their companion as they passed them, she found her cheeks colouring with embarrassment.
Anthony chuckled. “We must look awful, Nerissa, after our ocean catastrophe and then unplanned stay in the forest overnight!”
They arrived at the place where Anthony had quartered himself before she knew it, and Nerissa felt a pang at the thought that they were going to be separated already.
He already had his hand on the door when he paused, and turned to her. “You know,” he said in a quiet murmur, “‘tis the middle of the day. My quarters will be empty, and rather lonely without you. Why do you not join me for an hour? I am sure we can find…something to do.”
Nerissa felt her heartbeat quicken. He was close, very close, whispering in her ear, and all the wonderful sensations of the night before were rushing back to her. It was so tempting, the idea of going upstairs with him and losing herself in their love.
“I…I cannot,” she breathed. “I must tell my father…he must know that I am safe.”
His lips were so close to hers that she was sure he would kiss her, and leaned forward welcoming the kiss, but –
“Until next time, then,” he growled with a grin, and with that the door was closed behind him.
Nerissa swallowed down the retort that she had and tried to calm down her breathing. A smile grew on her face. That man was going to be her husband. One day soon, she would not have to say goodbye to him.
It took but two more minutes of walking before she entered her home, a strangely quiet and empty shell of a place without the patterings of other human beings.
She stepped across the hall to the library, where her father was almost certain to be found at this time of day, but it was empty. Just as she was about to turn and try the study, the door flew open and her father stormed in – and stopped dead at the sight of her.
“Ne-Nerissa?” He managed in a strangled voice.
Before she was able to say a word, Mr Fairchild rushed across the room to hug his child.
“Where have you been?” He asked frantically, clutching her to him. “The captain said that you and that odious count had both drowned – oh, Nerissa!”
Nerissa was surprised to feel a flicker of anger as she heard her father speak ill of her future husband, but managed to pull herself away from her doting parent so that she could speak to him.
“The captain lied,” she said gently, holding her father’s hands in hers. “He was far more interested in saving his own skin than anyone else’s. We managed to swim to shore, and then of course it was too late and too dangerous to try and get back to Port Royal, and so here we are. I am.”
Mr Fairchild’s eyebrows raised. “Should I be concerned? Was that man rude to you – Count Andrew, or whatever his name was?”
“Anthony,” she corrected, a slight tingle on her tongue just saying his name, and a blush rising in her cheeks. “And I think the only thing that you need to worry about is paying for a wedding. Anthony proposed, and…and I have accepted.”
Her father let go of her hands and fell back into his favourite armchair, completely speechless.
Nerissa watched him carefully, slightly worried that she had given him too great a shock. A few strides across the room brought her to the medicine cabinet, as her father called it. The port bottle inside was almost full, and she took a large glass of it to her father.
After swallowing the majority of it, Mr Fairchild looked up into the eyes of his daughter. In a quiet voice, he said, “I am…I am very disappointed and angry, my dear, to tell the truth, to hear that you have aligned yourself with…him.”
Nerissa felt the disappointment in his words, but it did not dissuade her. The burning light of her feelings for Anthony were stronger than it.
As she spoke, she realised the truth of her words: “I am sorry, father. That is something that I cannot help, because…because I love him.”