Chapter Thirty-Two #2
“Perhaps you wouldn’t have needed to walk so much. You wouldn’t have been so lonely.”
She wrapped her arm more tightly around his arm, nearly embracing it. “I will be lonely again when I return to the Park. I rather dread it.”
“You will have the dowager for company and Lord and Lady Lampton.”
“It will not be the same,” she whispered.
“No.” He spoke as quietly as she did. “No, it will not be.”
“Will you miss me?” The question would likely have been viewed as overly bold by most of Society, but she knew too little of attachments and fondness to be at all able to guess at his feelings. A direct question seemed her best option.
“I missed you when I left Nottinghamshire,” he said.
“I missed you before you left Nottinghamshire,” she countered.
“Before?” He clearly didn’t understand.
She threw caution to the wind. “You sat with me every day when I was ill. You talked with me and laughed with me. Then, suddenly, I was more like a stranger than a friend. You seldom spoke with me or sat near me. I was the poor relation in the corner again.”
He stopped walking, so she did as well. He moved to face her. “People were gossiping. They were speculating about you and me.”
Oh, the misery of that explanation. “I realize I am comparatively insignificant, but I didn’t think I’d given you reason to be ashamed of me.”
“Arabella.” He took her hands in his, his gaze earnest and pleading. “I could never be ashamed of having you my life. I consider it an honor.”
She struggled to believe that. “Why, then, did the whispers drive you away?”
“I know the power of rumors. If the gossip took hold, we’d have had no choice but to . . . I did not wish for either of us to be forced into a situation not of our choosing.”
That was a better explanation than the one she had imagined. “You didn’t object to me personally?”
He raised her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers. “I didn’t object in the least.”
She tried to breathe but wasn’t entirely successful. She had dreamed of his affection. The realization of those hopes was proving almost overwhelming.
“I have something for you,” he said.
“You do?”
He released her hands and fished about in the pocket of his outer coat.
They’d stopped beneath the wide branches of an old oak tree.
The air was cool. Tiny pockets of light broke through the leaves above.
After a moment’s searching, he presented her with a small drawstring bag made of simple muslin.
It was tiny enough to fit in the palm of her hand.
“This is for me?” Her heart thudded against her ribs. “Thank you.”
“You don’t even know what it is yet.”
She lifted a single shoulder. “I happen to be very fond of muslin bags.”
Linus leaned one shoulder against the thick tree trunk and watched, waiting.
The bag was light and nearly flat. Whatever was inside was not large. What could it possibly be? She tugged the top of the bag open and glanced inside. She couldn’t see anything.
She met his eye once more. “Is it really just the bag?”
He laughed. “No.”
Arabella turned up her palm and tipped the contents of the bag onto her hand. Two beads, deep green and no larger than the tip of her smallest finger, poured out.
“They’re jade,” he said. “I saw them in a shop years ago in a port in the east. I can’t say exactly what I, a then fifteen-year-old boy, saw in a pair of jade beads, but I returned to them again and again. Most of the baubles I picked up over the years were subsequently gifted to my sisters.”
“But not these?” Had his sisters not wanted them? Arabella couldn’t imagine they wouldn’t; the deep-green stone beads were gorgeous.
“There was always something special about these beads, though I never could say with certainty what.”
She closed her fingers around them, pressing the spheres into her palm. “I can’t possibly accept them.”
“Why not?”
She set her fist, the beads clasped inside, against her thudding heart. “They are special to you.”
He pulled away from the tree and closed the gap between them.
He leaned close and dropped his voice to a whisper.
“You are special to me, Arabella Hampton. You have been from the moment I met you. I suspect you have been since before I met you, since I was fifteen and standing in a shop on the other side of the world knowing without realizing that somewhere, someday I would meet you.”
She looked up into his eyes, very nearly the color of the beads.
Sincerity filled his gaze. He ran his hand the length of her arm.
“I am not good at expressing what is in my heart—I never have been—but these were always meant for something greater than a mere token. I held on to them for years, waiting . . . for you.”
He slipped his hand around hers. “I missed you while we were apart. And when you return to Nottinghamshire, I will miss you again until I am able to be there with you and see you again.”
“You would come to Nottinghamshire?”
He raised her hand to his lips. “If need be, I would sail the world to be with you.”
“And would you walk with me?”
“Every day.” He kissed her fingers. “And would you make paper boats with me?”
She laughed lightly. “Every day.”
His arms wrapped around her, pulling her fully into his embrace. “Will you wear my beads?”
“People might whisper,” she said.
“We’ve time yet before you must return, time enough to decide our own futures. Then they can whisper all they’d like; we will know what we want.”
Arabella leaned into his embrace, fully wrapped in his arms. They had time, yes, but she already knew her heart.