Chapter Ten #2
How can you even think to ask me that? After everything I’ve been saying to you for months, telling you that you need to improve this cottage, explaining just how important it was that you increased your income—and you ask me to marry you? You’re a joke!
For a moment, just a moment, Henry closed his eyes. Georgiana hadn’t been the woman he’d thought she was. He knew that now, hindsight making it easier to spot. But at the time…
‘Just, no?’
‘I mean, she did not exactly have a speech prepared,’ said Henry warily. ‘Not that it stopped her. But yes, she was clear in her decline.’
All too clear.
‘But you’d offered marriage,’ said Ditty quietly. ‘I mean, you must have thought your courtship was tending that way.’
Henry breathed out a heavy sigh, watching it blossom in the cold air. ‘Yes, I had thought so. I thought we both were. I mean, I was courting her, it was just…’ His voice trailed away.
He’d never done this before. Explained it to another person. He’d had enough difficulty explaining it to himself.
But his mother had never pressed him, and Henry thought Charles would rather pull his own arm off than have a heart-to-heart. So he’d never tried to articulate it all.
‘I wanted to marry her,’ he said finally, noticing Ditty perking up as he started to talk. ‘And she wanted to marry me, just not the me I was. I mean, she declined my proposal because I was a poor doctor and she wished to live in town.’
‘London?’
Henry chuckled. Only a Londoner would think it was the centre of the world. ‘No, Marchester.’
He grinned as Ditty’s jaw fell. ‘You call that “Town”?’
‘Well, around here, it is!’ he pointed out. ‘It was where she was from, we met while I was training to be a doctor. When I returned here, we continued to court. I thought she would wish to join me one day.’
Ditty nodded and a lurch crept up Henry’s chest. She understood, of course she did. Would not a lady such as Miss Oliver have a gentleman caller of her own—would she not be eager to return to him, in London?
At least that simplified matters. She was not going to get the wrong end of the stick here, Henry tried to tell himself. Ditty wasn’t interested in him, certainly not in that way. She was curious, but she had her own suitor. That was the only reason she was asking.
‘I bought an expensive ring from a jeweller out in Marchester, on credit,’ Henry said, trying to inject a laugh into his voice. He couldn’t. ‘This huge emerald, you had to see it to believe it.’
‘And I’m the one who says you can manufacture romance,’ Ditty said dryly.
He shot her a glance but there wasn’t any malice in her words. Quite the contrary, she had an understanding wry smile on her lips.
‘You didn’t want to use a family ring? Or not offer a ring at all?’
Henry’s jaw tightened. ‘It never occurred to me. I suppose I wanted to impress her. And part of me didn’t want her to have one of my mother’s rings. Perhaps that should have been my first sign I wasn’t as committed to her as I thought. Perhaps I was forcing things.’
He’d never thought of that before. Strange.
‘I suppose I thought she would always be happy to move here, to Brexley,’ he continued.
‘And it turns out…she wasn’t. This place wasn’t enough.
My income wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough.
And then,’ he said with a dark laugh, ‘a duchy fell into my lap. Suddenly I was no longer Mr Paisley as I had been when we first met, or Dr Paisley as I had become, but the Duke of Glanyrafon. All of a sudden, Georgiana was very interested in making my acquaintance again. All of a sudden, Georgiana was hopeful of receiving my addresses again—at least, receiving the addresses of His Grace, the Duke of Glanyrafon.’
Ditty winced, wrapping her scarf a little more tightly around her. ‘Ah.’
‘Ah, indeed,’ Henry said with a heavy sigh. ‘She was not the woman I thought she was. Perhaps that is what hurt the most. Without the title, I was not enough.’
He looked over at Ditty.
‘I don’t think it was that you weren’t enough,’ she said quietly.
Henry did not understand why hearing her say that meant so much. ‘You think so?’
‘Some people just aren’t suited,’ she said calmly, as though she were some sort of expert. Which, Henry reminded himself, she was. ‘I see it all the time.’
Now, that was surprising. ‘You do?’
She nodded. Henry tried not to notice the way her lips quirked into a smile. ‘You know those 109 proposals I’ve planned, that I told your brother about?’
Henry grinned. ‘How could I forget?’
‘Well, there’s a reason that number isn’t higher,’ Ditty said covertly, lowering her voice. ‘I—I’ve actually turned down about fifty clients or so.’
Now, that was surprising. Henry didn’t understand it; she was a proposal planner, she needed the customers. She had said so herself, this proposal of Charles’s had to be perfect.
‘Why on earth would you do that?’
‘You can tell, just by meeting someone, whether the relationship is right for matrimony,’ said Ditty with a wry smile.
‘Just meeting one of them is usually enough. I have a sense for it, this knowing sensation in the pit of my stomach. I will not put a lady in a tricky spot, especially if the gentleman is not even courting her. If I worked with everyone, my percentages would be far lower.’
‘Bad for business.’
Ditty nudged him in the arm and Henry grinned, loving the closeness that gesture created. ‘You know, I don’t just say all this for the effect. I truly mean it, I live by it!’
Henry examined her for a moment. ‘Is that a fact?’
Well, she had asked a rather personal question of him, hadn’t she? Evidently their friendship, or whatever this was, had grown to such an extent where he could do the same.
Even if it hadn’t, Henry was sure his curiosity couldn’t be held back any longer. ‘What about your own gentleman caller?’
There was absolutely no chance he could have mistaken that—a flash of hurt, or something like it, swept across Ditty’s face. ‘What did you say?’
‘Your gentleman caller,’ he persisted. Well, in for a penny… ‘I thought—I suppose I presumed—a woman such as yourself—’
‘You thought wrong,’ said Ditty shortly.
Henry swallowed. All the camaraderie in the air had gone, and it was his fault. How had he managed to spoil such a—
Ditty sighed heavily. ‘He… Thomas, I mean. He sent me a relationship cessation notice just before I came here.’
It took Henry all his self-control not to allow his jaw to drop. He must have heard incorrectly. Though the wintery air was silent, there was no possibility he could have heard right.
‘I’m sorry,’ Henry said weakly. ‘Could you say that again?’
A slow smile crept around one corner of Ditty’s mouth. ‘A relationship cessation notice,’ she repeated. ‘He ended our courtship.’
‘I’m sorry, with a—’
‘A relationship cess— You’re just making me say it again,’ Ditty protested, nudging him with a laugh.
Henry resisted the temptation to pull her into his arms for a comforting embrace. She looked like she needed it.
A relationship cessation notice? ‘That sounds like the sort of thing Charles would draw up for two business partners.’
‘I suppose it was like that, in a way,’ Ditty admitted, her cheeks pinking slightly. ‘It was notarised by his solicitor. I told you, I live what I preach. When I said the other day a relationship should be more businesslike, and you hope love comes—’
‘So that is your idea of romance?’
Henry could hardly believe it. This vibrant, passionate, creative woman being given a relationship cessation notice? The idea of anyone deciding to cease courting Ditty was bizarre, but doing it in such a cold manner?
‘Did he sign it and just—just hand it to you?’ he said, trying to wrap his head around the whole thing.
Ditty hesitated, and Henry immediately wished he hadn’t asked. ‘He sent it to me by post.’
‘No!’ He almost laughed, it was so ridiculous. ‘You cannot tell me you miss that idiot.’
Why did it matter how she replied?
Because it did matter. Try as he might, Henry could no longer deny to himself that Ditty was…important. Precious. Her hurts mattered in a way like no one else’s, not even his residents.
His hands started to clench into fists before he forced them to unclench. He wasn’t going to get anywhere by getting angry at this gentleman, this Thomas, whoever he was.
‘I suppose we were more like business partners,’ Ditty said quietly. ‘I don’t think you can miss something that isn’t there.’
‘Business partners?’
She looked, not uncomfortable, but rather, a little surprised at what she was saying.
‘Yes, I… I knew that love hurt. That it was painful, that loving meant accepting grief, and so—so I proposed something more akin to a business arrangement. I organised the courtship. It all sounds so cold now I say it aloud.’
Henry’s heart broke for her. ‘Not cold. Detached, certainly.’
Ditty’s smile was rueful. ‘Detached, but safe. Safer than… I feel with you,’ she finished softly.
Henry had reached out before he could stop himself. His hand enclosed around Ditty’s, his cold fingers intertwining with her own. Their warmth, or perhaps the warmth of their contact, Henry didn’t know, sparked heat up his arm.
Ditty looked up at him.
She was close. Standing right beside him, their hands together, he realised her breathing seemed to change, though he could not describe how. His own did not appear particularly regular, now he came to think about it.
Henry looked into her eyes. There was so much he wanted to say, but he hardly knew where to begin. He hardly knew what he would say once he opened his mouth.
‘Thank you for telling me,’ Ditty said softly. ‘About your proposal.’
‘Thank you for telling me about that blagg—idiot,’ Henry amended hastily.
She chuckled under her breath. ‘Is this what you call companionship, then?’
Companionship. Connection. Warmth.
He had thought he’d known those things, understood those things, but Ditty Oliver was incomparable to Georgiana.
This was different. This was comfortable, and yet his whole body was on fire whenever he was near her. This was a connection that he did not understand and yet yearned to become an expert in.
This was warmth; of growing familiarity, to be certain, but that could not fully explain the warmth in his chest, in his loins, in that part of him that he had never truly given to another before.
Henry swallowed. Oh, this was far much more. ‘Why not.’