Chapter 18
Saying it was easier than doing it.
Gabriel paced back and forth in his study the following day, trying to decide whether or not he was too great a fool to trust his own judgment.
It’s Agnes. I know her as well as I could possibly know anyone in this scenario, he reasoned with himself.
I know how she’s going to respond. I know exactly what’s going to happen here.
Yes, it’s easy to worry that something will go wrong—but nothing will.
I’ll do my part, and she’ll do hers, and by the end of the day, everything will be exactly as it is right now. Nothing is going to change.
Still, his heart pounded with anxiety.
He had never thought he would find himself in the position he was in right now. He had never believed that something like this would happen to him as long as he lived. In fact, he had done a good job of going out of his way to ensure that it didn’t happen. He certainly hadn’t wanted it to.
There was a knock at the door.
“Who is it?” he asked, his voice a little sharper than he had intended it to be. Could she be here already? He wasn’t ready.
“It’s me.” The voice belonged to Helena.
Some of the tension left Gabriel’s body. “You may enter,” he called back, and a moment later, Helena came into the room.
He couldn’t help noticing how much more grown- up she seemed with each passing day.
When she wasn’t right in front of his eyes, he forgot sometimes.
He fell back into the old memory of the nine-year-old girl who had come to live with him after the tragic deaths of her parents, wide-eyed and frightened and so very, very small.
That wasn’t who Helena was anymore. She was nearly a lady, almost ready to go out into the world.
Her gaze told as much as anything else about her did. She was watching him shrewdly, clearly having noticed something. “You’ve been in here all day long,” she told him. “And I know that you haven’t been working, because when you’re working you don’t pace.”
“How do you know I’ve been pacing?”
“The floorboard squeaks,” she said mildly, pointing to the offending place. “My bedroom is just over this study, and I hear that board every time you step on it. Why are you pacing?”
“I have things on my mind,” Gabriel said. “The movement helps me to think.”
“What things?”
He shook his head. “Grown-up things.”
“You can’t keep saying that every time you don’t want to tell me what’s going on, Uncle Gabriel,” she said. “I’m not a child anymore. One of these days, you’re going to have to include me in grown-up things.”
Don’t I know it. “Today isn’t that day, though,” he said. “What I want you to do now is to go back to your wing of the house and remain there.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I think you’re having Lady Agnes over again. Are you?”
There was no point in lying. “Yes.”
“I heard the two of you were courting. Is it true?”
He turned. “Where did you hear that?”
“I’m not going to tell you.”
“Helena…”
“If I tell you who told me, you’ll punish them,” she said serenely.
“So it was one of the staff, then?”
Helena shrugged. “Think what you like.”
It had almost certainly been one of the staff. But she was right. If she wasn’t going to tell him, he couldn’t do anything about it.
He wouldn’t have done anything about it anyway, he realized. He had gone out of his way to make people think he was engaged in a courtship. He couldn’t be angry that word had reached Helena. But did he lie to her or tell her the truth?
“It isn’t a serious thing,” he told her at last. “Your life isn’t going to change.”
“You mean, you aren’t going to marry her?”
“That’s right.” A strange laugh started to well up within him, and he pressed his lips together to hold it back.
“You could marry her if you wanted to,” Helena said. “I mean, don’t think you have to stop yourself for my sake. Because I wouldn’t mind, if it would make you happy. I did know something was going on between the two of you, you know. I’m not a fool, Uncle Gabriel.”
“I know you’re not,” he said. “Will you please go to your room like I asked? I’ll be happy to speak with you about all this later.”
“All right,” she said dubiously. “But you’d better answer all my questions when the time comes.”
She scampered out of the room before he could speak to remind her that she didn’t give orders around here.
He turned to resume his pacing, but the next time he faced the door, his butler was standing there. “Your Grace,” he said, “Lady Agnes to see you.”
Gabriel nodded. “All right,” he said. “Show her in to the library and I’ll meet her there.”
The butler disappeared. Gabriel took another moment to gather himself, then realized there was no amount of gathering that would prepare him for what lay ahead. He was just going to have to walk into that room and face what he had agreed to.
She was sitting on the settee, but she jumped to her feet when he came in. “Gabriel,” she said warmly. “It’s good to see you.”
There was a maid in the corner. “Will you excuse us?” Gabriel said.
The maid gave him a surprised look, but she nodded once and hurried from the room.
Agnes watched her go. “That’s sure to start talk,” she observed. “People will wonder what you were doing in a room alone with me.”
“For once, the truth will be more dangerous than the rumors,” he said. “It’s unlikely she would ever guess at what’s really about to happen in here—and that isn’t something we want spread around, I think.”
“No,” Agnes agreed. “I see no reason why people should need to know what’s about to happen. And I assume you won’t be telling Helena about it?”
“Assuredly not,” he said. “Not Helena, not your brother—no one must know.”
“If I didn’t know better,” she said, her lips quirking slightly, “I would think you were ashamed of me.”
“This might be entertaining for you, for reasons I can’t imagine,” he said. “But I don’t think this story would make either one of us look very good if it got out.”
She looked down at her feet. “It isn’t entertaining,” she told him.
“It’s empowering. You can’t imagine what it’s like, being a spinster by choice…
but always wondering. Never knowing for certain what you might have said or done if things had gone differently.
After today, I’ll know. I’ll have something I can point to and say that this was my choice.
That I wanted the life I have all along. ”
“I didn’t realize you were uncertain about what you wanted.”
Her cheeks colored. “I’m not.”
“But you need to prove it to yourself? Because this isn’t going to prove anything to anyone else,” he reminded her. “No one else will ever know it happened.”
“It will put something inside me at ease,” she said, lifting her chin. “That’s all. And I think that’s more than enough.”
“All right,” he agreed. “If it makes you happy, we’ll do it.”
He turned away from her for a moment.
“We don’t need any ceremony about it,” she said. “You can just…do it. And I’ll do my part, and then it will be done.”
He nodded.
“So…whenever you’re ready,” she urged.
He sighed. “It isn’t easy, you know,” he told her. “I’ve never done anything like this before. I’ve never even thought about doing this before. It was never an idea in my mind. And now I’m supposed to just stand here and say these words as if they mean nothing at all…”
“They do mean nothing at all. You know that. You know this isn’t going to change anything.”
He nodded again.
Suspicion crept into her voice. “I know I said you’d have to trust me, but…you do trust me, don’t you? Enough for this, at least? You don’t doubt the way I’m going to respond?”
“I don’t,” he assured her. “Not really.”
“Not really?”
“Of course I thought about that,” he said. “Because you could give me any response at all, and then what would I do?”
“I’m not trying to trick you,” she said sharply. “I’d have thought you would know me well enough to know that I don’t want that.”
“I do know that,” he said. “It’s just that…this might be the only time I do this. I’m not afraid of how you’re going to respond. I think it’s that…I want to do it in a way I’m happy with.”
Her voice softened a little. “Oh,” she said. “I guess it’s going to be the only time for both of us.”
“Something like that.”
“That makes it…” She paused. “Not real. It isn’t real. But…”
“But there’s something real about it,” he finished. “There’s something about it that matters.”
“Yes,” she murmured.
“You’ll forgive me for wanting to get this right,” he said. “For treating it like…something I care about.”
She bit her lip. “When I came over here, I thought it was going to be just…a game. You say your line. I say mine. Then it’s over, and we go our separate ways and never think about it again.”
“But I don’t think I will never think about it again,” Gabriel admitted. “I think I’ll always think about it. For the very reasons we just discussed.”
She frowned, her eyebrows coming together in worry. “Am I asking too much of you?”
“You’re not,” he said, and as he spoke the words, he knew that it was true. It wasn’t too much to ask. He had thought it might be. But now that they were here—now that they were in the moment and he was actually about to help her cross this item off her list—he realized that he wanted to do it.
Her list, she had told him, was all about giving herself experiences that she wouldn’t otherwise have had.
Enriching her life and living it to the fullest. And for the first time, Gabriel understood that.
Because the item they would check off the list today would be something he wouldn’t have experienced either.
They would both enrich their lives…even though it was an experience he had never guessed he’d want.
He cleared his throat, feeling awkward and foolish—and yet, also, somehow sure of himself. This was what he needed to do.
He fell to one knee.
“What are you doing?” She took a step back and frowned.
“You know what I’m doing.”
“But you don’t have to…”
“Shh,” he said. “I’m going to do this right if I’m going to do it at all, Agnes. Is that all right with you?”
Agnes closed her eyes and hesitated, but then she nodded.
Gabriel reached out and took her hand in his, and she shivered ever so slightly. He almost wanted to rise to his feet, to reassure her that it really was all pretend. But he was in too deep now.
I’m doing this. We’re doing this.
He cleared his throat. “Lady Agnes,” he said, “I have enjoyed getting to know you immensely, and our courtship has meant more to me than I ever thought it would.” And that was all completely true, he realized. So much of this was real.
“It’s meant the world to me as well,” she whispered. He thought she meant it.
“I’m asking you to make me the happiest man in the world,” he said, gazing up at her. “Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”