Chapter 20 #2
“He is just so altered. He was always serious, but still…warm, welcoming.” Shaking my head, I walked toward the garden I’d seen earlier. Mr. Ashby followed, as I expected he would.
“So what were you speaking about?” I asked him.
“You, actually.” He met my gaze and I noticed his eyes were different than usual. There was a strange hesitation in them. I hadn’t seen an expression like that since Edleroy.
“I absolutely demand that you elaborate.” I crossed my arms and watched him expectantly.
He laughed. “I will.” Then his face dropped slightly and I saw tension around his eyes. “I just wasn’t sure…if you’d want to hear it.”
“It’s like you don’t know me at all.” I smirked.
He nodded. We had reached the garden and began walking in a circle as if in the pump room in Bath. “He asked if you were actually betrothed.”
“He doesn’t believe me?” Exasperation laced my tone.
“I wouldn’t say that. He just wanted to be sure, I think. He wanted to know how long you’d been engaged and why you’d come to get him personally.” He stopped and bent down, plucking a large yellow flower. He handed it to me as naturally as if he’d done so a hundred times before.
But he had never given me flowers before.
We had never been in a position where he could do so.
The only gift he’d given me was a pistol.
Somehow, this flower seemed to convey a new kind of closeness between us.
I held the flower between two fingers and smelled it.
Sweet. Aromatic. Like an expensive cologne.
“What did you tell him?” I asked, holding the flower delicately.
He had been watching me appreciate his gift, seeming pleased with my reaction to it. “I said you were a uniquely determined woman who would do anything for those she loves.”
A slow smile spread across my face as I looked at him. “Of course you would use the word unique. It’s almost like a compliment, with a slight edge of disapproval.” I held up two fingers pinched tightly together.
He laughed. “You are unique. It’s not a criticism. It’s a truth no one can deny.”
I bumped into him with my shoulder, sending him stumbling to his left.
He returned the gesture, but much lighter than me.
I laughed at it as I stumbled slightly to my right.
After a moment of thinking, I said, “Still, at least you said he was someone I loved. Hopefully that will spark something in him.”
His smile faltered then. “Yet another truth we cannot deny,” he said quietly.
Butterflies danced in my stomach, startling me.
What he said couldn’t have sparked that reaction, not the words themselves.
It was his melancholy tone. It wrote volumes of unspoken feelings that I hadn’t considered until now.
Somehow, he made it sound like my love for Graham had become a painful truth, as if it got in the way of another truth that threatened to take over…
“Miss Findlay?” I heard Mr. Ashby say.
Apparently, I had stopped walking and, instead, had been staring blankly in front of me, though not seeing anything. His face came into focus, and those butterflies were alive once more. No. I battled with the feelings growing within me.
His blue eyes, those clear and expressive eyes that had grounded me when there was no ground under my feet, bore into mine and made me shiver from the overwhelming connection between us.
Then his hand came up to my cheek. His thumb brushed against it and I felt the tear he’d caught.
While his gaze was on his thumb as he continued to wipe away the moisture underneath my eye, mine was on his face as I attempted to decipher his emotions.
His frown and pinched brows only hinted at sadness, but it seemed far deeper than that.
The lines around his eyes were tense, as if he were holding back, restraining some emotion or…
reaction. Before I knew it, he was looking into my eyes again and my breathing hitched.
Longing—that was the kind of sadness I’d recognized.
I leaned into his hand, pressing my cheek against his palm.
He seemed shocked at first, then hopeful.
A painful, hesitant type of hope that caused a lump to form in my throat.
His fingertips pressed the soft spot beneath my ear, lightly, as if to pull me closer.
I wasn’t sure if he was pulling me, or if I was moving toward him of my own will.
To push him away seemed like the right answer. I placed a hand on his chest in order to do that, but instead my fingers gripped his shirt and I tugged him toward me. I had gone completely mad. I heard a short gasp escape him, and our lips met in an explosion of feeling.
Reason screamed at me to stop, but a conversation with Melody played like a concert in my head.
I heard her heartbroken warnings to not allow fancy to overcome reason, telling me how painful love can be.
But I’d insisted she had never truly been in love.
Love awakens you, I’d said. Back then, I truly felt as if I’d been awakened when Graham came back into my life.
Only three years ago, but it seemed an eternity.
Waiting too long in a tower must have made me delusional.
Because even as I was wishing for Graham to remember me, even as I recalled my promise to marry him, everything outside of this moment felt like a dream. Because at this moment, I felt completely and vividly awake.