Chapter Four
Caroline tucked herself away near the empty fireplace in the library that evening, unable to force herself to join the family for dinner.
Should anyone walk in, they would see nothing more worrisome than a very calm and sensible young lady reading a book.
They would never guess her heart and mind were in turmoil.
A quick knock echoed off the library door. Caroline dropped her gaze to the open book in her lap. “Come in,” she said calmly.
“I commandeered your dinner tray.”
Her gaze snapped upward at the realization that George, of all people, had stepped inside. Her tongue tied in knots, though whether by embarrassment or emotion or simple confusion, she couldn’t rightly say. Gone were the days of feeling utterly at ease in his company.
George set the tray on the end table beside her chair.
“Thank you,” she whispered, not looking at it or him. She settled her gaze on her book once more.
“Would you be terribly put out if I stayed for a moment or two?”
Yes. No. She wasn’t at all certain what she wanted where he was concerned. But tossing him out on his ear seemed inexcusably immature. “Of course you may stay.”
He wore the earnest expression she’d seen so many times: when she had been ill, when he’d helped her search for her missing kitten, when he’d found her hiding in the orchard to avoid her brothers’ teasing.
He did care about her—she did not doubt that—simply not in the way a husband ought to care for his wife.
George sat gingerly on the far end of the sofa.
He had left the library door ajar, and they were affianced.
Given the circumstances, few would have found anything amiss in his sitting directly beside her, but this long, awkward distance was more fitting.
A chasm was growing between them, one they didn’t seem likely to span.
“I understand your father and Edward are due to descend upon us from London tomorrow.” It was as innocuous a comment as a mention of the weather or the general state of the countryside.
“Yes, I believe their business in Town is now complete.” Father had, after all, found her a husband and, in so doing, had secured money enough to pay off the estate’s debts and return home with hardly a care in the world.
“Have you ever wished to visit London?” George asked.
“It does not do to wish for things one can never have.” That had been her reasoning for years.
“I spend a portion of every Season in Town,” he said. “If you wish, you can as well, after we— once we are—”
He couldn’t bring himself to even speak of their marriage in solid terms. How lowering.
“My family and my governesses were forever treating me as though I hadn’t the intelligence for nuanced and layered conversations or the endurance for hearing uncomfortable news. But you, George. You never treated me that way. Until now.”
He didn’t speak but neither did he look away.
“Is this what I am to become to you? A lady with whom you cannot speak plainly, with whom you will never again be at ease?”
He slid across the sofa and sat directly beside her. “I am sorry that I am making such a mull of this. But, my dear friend, things have changed between us, and I do not yet know what our new footing is.”
He was as lost as she was. That only served to cast more doubt on the success of this arrangement.
“Do you remember my first visit to Downy House?” he asked.
“Certainly, I do.” She remembered every one of his visits.
“Do you remember what you said when you were first told that I would be spending the school holiday here?”
She shook her head, unable to recall her exact words in that moment.
“You said that you found it difficult enough sharing a house with two boys and could not possibly be expected to endure a third.”
She likely had said that, as those had been her exact sentiments at the time. “I was only eight years old, you’ll remember.”
“And, yet, in many ways not much has changed.” He took her hand in his, a gesture of reassurance.
“My first arrival here was an adjustment for you, for both of us. By the end of that holiday, we had made our peace with one another. We were even marginally fond of each other’s company.
By the end of my next visit, we were very nearly friends.
As the years passed, we became precisely that, dear friends, in fact. Did we not?”
“We did.” She heard the wistful note in her words. No doubt, he did as well. Did he mourn the impending loss of that decade of friendship as much as she did?
“We found our footing, Caroline, and I believe we can again.” He bent low enough to catch her diverted gaze. “Will you allow us to at least try?”
She raised her head to look at him more directly.
“Three weeks is all I ask,” he said. “For three weeks, permit us the possibility of changing what has always been between us—not throwing it away, but building on it. See if in those three weeks you can find reason to believe we can make this a success.”
“And if I cannot?”
“I could never be happy in this marriage if you were miserable. I will not force your hand, you have my solemn vow.”
His words were so unexpected, she didn’t at first know how to respond. “You would release me from our engagement?”
“I have only ever wanted your happiness.”
She stood, thoughts colliding with one another at too fast a pace for sitting still. Her feet carried her to the fireplace, then the window, then past the sofa once more.
“I am certain Father has already spent the money he received.” Being perfectly honest with George seemed the best course of action.
“If you truly believe that money is more important to me than you are, then I have a greater task ahead of me than I realized.”
He actually sounded disappointed in her. But how could she have believed otherwise? Her marriage had always been about securing the family’s future. Always.
“What is your decision?” he asked. “Am I to have three weeks, or are we to go on in the uncomfortable fashion we have today?”
She stopped, facing him from her new position near the window. “Will you answer me one question first?”
“Of course.”
Her courage nearly deserted her, but she rallied. “Do you truly want to marry me? I don’t mean do you want to marry in the general sense but do you want to marry me?”
He rose. Slowly, deliberately, and with measured step, he came toward her.
No one would argue that he was still the gawky boy he’d once been.
His movements had a masculine grace she could not ignore.
He moved with purpose, with confidence, with a presence that filled any room he entered.
And the way his gaze held hers without hesitation or uncertainty quickened her pulse with something bordering on nervousness but still leaning in the direction of anticipation.
“Caroline Downy,” he said once he’d reached her side. “I am not one to be forced into an arrangement not of my choosing—not by guilt or pity or intimidation. I asked for your hand because I very much wished to be granted your hand.”
“But why?”
He closed his eyes and shook his head. “Three weeks, Caroline. Give me three weeks, and I sincerely hope that will be a question you no longer need answered.”
He looked at her once more. The concern that had hovered in his expression when he’d first stepped inside the library had been replaced by sheer, unmistakable determination. He raised her hand to his lips and placed a kiss on her knuckles.
He’d never done that before. Not once. She would have remembered the tingling sensation and the way her breaths came in sudden spurts.
She would have remembered wishing he would brush those same lips along her cheek.
If he had ever done that before, she would have remembered feeling so entirely confused.
He held her hand a moment longer. “I will see you tomorrow.”
She nodded, unsure of what to say.
He’d already left the room when her eyes settled on the single white rose lying on the tray of food he’d brought for her. She knew the staff would not have placed it there. Her family certainly would not have.
He must have thought of the rose—a white one, her favorite.
The thoughtful gesture was reassuring. Perhaps he was correct in believing the awkwardness would ease with time and a little patient effort.
He had asked for three weeks. She did not want to give up on her happiness, on their happiness.
Three weeks seemed little enough to ask.
***
Caroline added another white rose to her growing collection in a vase beside her bed.
The chambermaid had brought one in that morning.
Another had been waiting for her in the breakfast room.
She’d found another just now tied with a ribbon to a small, folded bit of fabric left on the bench at the foot of her bed.
Including the rose she’d received with her dinner tray the night before, George had given her five.
He’d not told her the roses were from him, but she knew they were.
The small tokens meant more than he likely knew.
They served as reminders that he had a good heart, that she was fortunate to be marrying a man who was not unkind.
He might not love her, but he was unlikely to mistreat her.
That was more than many women could say of their spouses.
She returned to the ribbon-tied fabric on the bench, running her fingers along the silky length of it. The deep shade of blue was exquisite, shimmering with the slightest hint of purple. Tucked behind the ribbon was a calling card. Mr. George Carlton, it declared.
She pulled it loose, unsure why he’d placed one of his cards in the offering. A quick perusal, however, revealed a note scrawled across the back.
My dear Caroline,
I spied this in a shop in London, and its beauty immediately brought you to mind.
I hope you will enjoy it as much as I believe you will.
I further hope the weather this afternoon will prove mild enough for you to undertake your customary walk in the gardens, as I know being denied that pleasure is particularly painful for you.
~your George
“My George.” He had never before referred to himself in that manner. Neither had he spoken of her as beautiful.
She untied the ribbon and unfolded his offering.
It was not, as she’d assumed, a length of fabric, but rather a shawl with intricate embroidery along its edges.
She had seldom seen anything so elegant, and had certainly never owned anything that fell so firmly in that category.
This was not a gift a gentleman bought for a lady with whom he was merely a friend or acquaintance.
And he had purchased it in London, long before their discussion the evening before.
So he must have been thinking of her in more personal terms already.
But if she was not thought of as merely a friend, how was she thought of?
There were so many degrees between “friend” and “true love.” Where did she fit in his mind?
And where did he fit in hers?
She was indulging in dramatics again. She’d always prided herself on being focused and determined. How had she turned into this quivering mass of indecision so quickly? What was it about George’s offer of marriage that had overset her in a way she felt certain no one else’s would have?
Caroline wrapped the shawl around her shoulders as she sorted out her thoughts.
If she could understand why she was struggling with this so much, she might know how to best move forward.
When Father had left for London with his list of names, she had simply reconciled herself to the inevitability and formulated plans for making the best of her situation, for finding satisfaction in the usual, cold marriage of convenience.
Discovering she’d been promised to a gentleman with whom she’d never had a cold or indifferent connection, had upset those plans entirely.
With the others on Father’s list, she’d had nothing to lose. With George, she stood to forfeit a lifetime of affection.
She leaned her forehead against the window frame.
She might have found some happiness in a loveless marriage to a man she cared little for, but that would never be enough with George.
They would either be miserably aware that theirs was not a marriage of the heart, or they would love each other.
There could be no middle ground. She knew that.
Caroline wanted him to love her. She knew with sudden and terrifying clarity that anything less would be devastating.