Chapter 2 #2
The low timbre of his voice made her shiver despite her warm layers.
She chided herself for her reaction. “True, but may I speak candidly, Lord Brenton?” At his nod, she continued.
“I feel as though I am standing beside a stranger. The last time we saw each other was shortly after your father passed.”
Raw emotion flashed across his face. Kate instantly regretted her words. Before she could apologize, his expression shuttered like a window slamming closed. He released her and resumed their pace.
“That was some time ago,” he admitted. “But even though we have certainly both grown since then, I am not so different from the James you knew.”
If he believed he was the same, then perhaps he did not truly see her either.
Fighting the brim of her bonnet, she tilted her head so she could study his profile.
No, he was not the same James. The gravity in his demeanor belonged to a stranger.
Gone was the boy she had once devotedly followed. What would it take to bring him back?
“So you have plans to build a raft of fallen logs and row me out on the pond?” she teased.
A genuine laugh broke from him, turning the somber earl into a reflection of her childhood friend.
“Do not forget that, though guilty, I had two accomplices in almost every act of mischief.” A spark of amusement flashed in his eyes. “In fact, I believe you were the one who dared Hugh and me to smuggle Mr. Brown’s goat into the drawing room without your aunt noticing.”
She laughed despite herself. Those childhood days had been idyllic, and she wished she could reclaim even a little of the freedom she had enjoyed then. She met his gaze, her eyes crinkling with amusement at the memory.
“Yes, I suppose I did. Though I shall never understand why two boys ever permitted a young girl to follow them about.” Her smile came easily now. Speaking of their childhood had erased some of the awkwardness between them, and in its place, a comfortable ease was forming.
“I do not think we could have stopped you if we had tried. You always spoke your mind and shared your schemes, even if they usually ended with us in muddy clothes and animals in our pockets.”
“I am thankful the frogs were the last live creatures I discovered in my bed.”
His smile faded into a wistful curve. “Yes, well, for that, you can thank my father.”
When she said nothing, he continued. “After he heard about the frog incident, my father pulled me into his study and lectured me for close to an hour regarding a gentleman’s conduct.
” James straightened, as if giving a recitation.
“‘A gentleman does not ever mistreat a lady, especially not the one he is expected to marry.’”
Kate stiffened at his words. Expected. Even now, it sounded less like a choice and more like a duty already decided.
She did not wish to steer the conversation in this direction, but she could not help her curiosity.
Despite all the talk amongst family and friends, the two of them had never openly discussed their parents’ matchmaking schemes.
“So was that when you learned of your parents’ wishes for our union?”
“That was the first day either of them spoke to me about it openly.”
“And did you consider the idea . . . disagreeable?”
“Disagreeable?” James’s brows shot up. “Not at all. You were a friend, and I was an eleven-year-old boy whose mind was occupied with thoughts of fishing, sneaking tarts from the kitchen, and leaving for Eton with my best friend. Marriage seemed far in the future.”
“And how do you view it now?” She dreaded his answer, but she needed to hear it. She needed to understand why he had re-entered her life at the most inconvenient time.
James regarded her thoughtfully and nodded toward a weathered wooden bench at the edge of the path. “Perhaps we should sit?”
The crunch of their footsteps on the frozen ground echoed in the stillness as the afternoon sun slowly descended.
James assisted her as they sat. She murmured her thanks, pale mist rising with each exhale.
The wood was cold even through her skirts.
James reached out, his gloved fingers covering hers, warm despite the winter chill.
The intensity of his expression held her transfixed.
She held her breath as the unanswered question hung in the air.
The playful ease between them had given way to something fragile like the thin layer of ice on the pond. One word, one misstep, could result in irreparable cracks, and the surface would shatter.
James blew out a slow breath, a slight tremor in his voice. “I presume Lord Sutherland told you why I asked to meet with him today?”
“Yes, Father told me of your letter.” She gathered her courage. “Lord Brenton, forgive my forwardness, but after so many years of silence, why are you here now?”
His attention fixed on something beyond the path, and his fingers shifted subtly over hers as the air grew heavy between them, thick with everything left unsaid.
She couldn’t name all the emotions that flitted across his face.
Grief, perhaps? But there was also a quiet anger, hidden just beneath the surface, something that seemed entirely out of place in a marriage proposal.
Finally, he answered. “I apologize for not visiting. Eventually, perhaps, I can explain my reasons. But there comes a time in a gentleman’s life when certain paths become . . . necessary.”
“Necessary?”
He cleared his throat. “Let us simply say I have found it to be . . . an opportune time to take a wife.”
A pause stretched between them, thin and brittle.
“You are speaking of an arranged marriage, then?”
Relief flickered across his features. “Yes, precisely. It is the sensible course, isn’t it? A steady one.”
A gust whipped the dead leaves across the path, and the chill bit through Kate’s pelisse as distant church bells echoed faintly across the estate.
Her heart sank, and the open fields that stretched past the hedges, wide and unreachable, called to her.
A practical arrangement. She was not surprised.
She had not expected love or adoration, not when they hardly knew each other.
She should be relieved. If that was all this was to him, it made following through with her decision easier.
She hoped to marry someday, but it would only be to a man who saw her clearly and accepted all of her. She did not know yet if this new James was that kind of man, but given their history, perhaps it was worth discovering. Time was the only honest answer she could give him now.
His hand gave hers a gentle squeeze, a familiar warmth that drew her back to him. “Kate, we have known each other since we were children. We were friends once, and I do believe we would suit as husband and wife.” He waited for an answer she was not ready to give.
If ever there was a time to be bold, it was now. Forcing her parents’ expectations from her mind, she withdrew her touch, her throat suddenly dry. James spoke first.
“Lady Katherine, would you do me the honor—”
“Wait!” she called out.
His brows rose.
The wind lifted the edge of her pelisse.
She spoke again, her voice soft but steadier than she felt. “I must speak before you proceed any further.”
James watched her with a sudden, quiet focus.
“I will always prefer your candor to your reserve, Kate. Tell me what is on your mind.” He removed his hat and raked a hand through his hair, an unguarded gesture that unsettled her composure.
It reminded her of the James of her youth, and it was far easier to resist a distant stranger than a man who mirrored the boy she once adored.
“I have a proposal of my own,” she forced out.
“A proposal? I was under the impression that was what I was doing.” A faint smile appeared. “Or am I unacquainted with a new custom that encourages the lady to do the asking?”
Kate’s determination wavered, then shifted into something sharper, more painful.
He sounded calm and composed, exactly as she feared.
That should have reassured her. Instead, it sounded a lot like certainty, not the kind that asked, but the kind that assumed.
And she could suddenly see what that might mean.
A marriage that would be safe. Proper. Carefully ordered. A life where risks might be carefully removed before she even reached them, whether she wished it or not. It would not be a marriage of cruelty or indifference, but rather a life where love might mean quiet restraint.
What if safe slowly became smaller? The thought landed with uncomfortable clarity.
This was not how she had pictured James’s proposal, and she had imagined it more times than she would ever admit.
In her dreams, the air had been warm, the sky bright and blue and filled with the scents of summer flowers.
He had looked at her with affection, or perhaps something softer, like understanding.
She had felt chosen. Valued. Seen. Not cornered or managed. Not gently guided into a life that left no space for the parts of herself she refused to surrender.
And in those dreams, she had said yes, forgetting everything that was at stake.
Now, bitter wind nipped at her skin, and the pale sun was losing ground to the heavy winter clouds.
No matter how often she had once believed she might love him, no matter how often she had dreamed of being his wife, she could not say yes.
Not when marrying him might mean losing the only part of her life that was truly hers.