Chapter 37
“Helena, this isn’t a joke!” Gabriel fumed, pounding on the door. “You open this door at once!”
“No,” Helena said calmly. “I’m not going to, Uncle Gabriel.
You talk to her, since we have her here.
The way things currently stand between the two of you is utterly ridiculous, and the fact that you imagine for a moment that I would sit back and not do anything about them when you know how much I care for Lady Agnes is equally ridiculous.
You came to Benjamin’s house and dragged me out.
I know you did that because you love me, even though I disagree with your brutish tactics. ”
“My tactics were not brutish, Helena. Nobody dragged you anywhere.”
“Not the point,” Helena said coolly, and Gabriel understood. She was young, she was bridling at the fact that he had made an attempt to control her, and now she was giving the same back to him.
And she wasn’t going to let him out of this room. Not until she was satisfied that he had spoken with Agnes.
He turned back toward her.
She was standing several feet away from him, but her eyes were on him. “She knows what she wants,” Agnes murmured.
“Yes,” Gabriel agreed, a strange tiredness coming over him. “Helena has always known what she wanted.”
“Are we going to give it to her?”
He sighed and raked a hand through his hair.
“Perhaps we had better sit down,” he said.
“I don’t see any other option but for the two of us to at least have a short conversation.
If she hears us talking for a while, if she hears our voices, she may decide that we’ve met with her demands and release us. It’s the best we can do, I think.”
He walked over to a chair and sank into it, and after a moment, Agnes joined him.
It seemed impossible that they would ever get any sort of conversation s tarted. He had no idea where to begin, and it was abundantly clear that Agnes didn’t either. She looked at him, then looked away, and a shiver wracked her frame.
“Agnes,” he said at last. “You know…we don’t have to be enemies.”
She looked up at him again, her eyes narrowed. “Are you going to say that we can be friends?” she asked bitterly. “I hope you’re not going to say that to me, Gabriel.”
“You don’t want to be friends?”
She scoffed and didn’t reply.
He supposed he couldn’t blame her for that response.
“Agnes,” he tried again. “I know that things didn’t exactly end well between the two of us. I know you’re upset with me.”
“You’re upset with me,” she countered. “You’re the one who kissed me and then left.”
“What—Agnes, you told me to go,” he protested. “You’re upset with me for leaving after that kiss? You told me that it was time for our arrangement to come to an end. I was trying to honor what you wanted.”
“You were angry when you left,” she fired back. “Don’t try to tell me otherwise, as though I didn’t see that look on your face. I know you were angry.”
“All right…maybe I was, a bit, in the moment,” he said.
“But only…it was such an abrupt ending to everything, that’s all.
I was shocked by it. I thought you were cold.
I thought that you were sending me off because you’d gotten everything you wanted from me, and…
well, to tell you the truth, that hurt.”
Her gaze fell.
For a moment, he thought she might have changed her mindset—that she might have heard him say he had been hurt and decided to be gentle.
But when she lifted her head again, her eyes were flashing.
“You can’t say that,” she said. Her voice was tight.
“You can’t accuse me of being cold because I was only in it to get what I wanted.
You were in it for the same reasons. You only cared about putting on a show of courtship to drive away the people who were trying to work their way into your life.
Though, if I’m honest, Gabriel, I’m at a loss now to understand what the point of it all was.
How can you claim to have cared about keeping people away from you when at the earliest convenience you’ve turned around and decided to seek a marriage after all? ”
Her cheeks were pink. Gabriel couldn’t help staring. Even roused to anger like this, she was beautiful. Even now, he found himself aching to take her in his arms and kiss her again.
If I didn’t know better, I would think that was Helena’s goal in locking us in here together! But it couldn’t be, of course, because she knows nothing of the kiss we shared before.
“I’m not seeking a marriage,” he said, and the moment he spoke the words, they were true.
He had allowed himself to believe that he needed to throw his attention into other endeavors, that that was what Helena needed from him.
But she didn’t. Of course, she didn’t. She would get through the coming seasons just fine.
She was strong and carried herself well.
And it’s Agnes she wants, not some random woman to stand in her place.
And it’s Agnes I want as well.
The realization rendered him silent for a moment. He regarded her, pondering the idea. Was it too foolish a thought, or was there a chance it had merit? Was there any way she could still be his?
“If you’re not seeking a marriage, why did Helena say that you were?” Agnes asked, and there was a slight tremor in her voice.
“Helena knows that I’ve been unhappy,” Gabriel said quietly. “She’s been unhappy too.”
His heart was racing. Suddenly, everything had shifted. Suddenly, he knew exactly what he wanted, and he knew that he was going to name it out loud. Once he did, there would be no going back. Maybe she would be his, or maybe she wouldn’t, but either way, he would have to accept it.
It seemed vitally important that he find the right words to say. But at the same time, he couldn’t begin to fathom what those words might be.
It will come to me. It will have to. My heart knows the words, surely, even if my mind does not…
“Why have you been unhappy?” Agnes asked. “Why has she?”
“Because you matter to us,” Gabriel said. “Because…because we love you, Agnes.”
No. Not good enough.
“Because I love you, Agnes.”
She sucked in a breath and stared at him, her eyes wide.
“I knew it the moment I kissed you,” he said. But that wasn’t right either. “No, I knew it before that. I knew it when I danced with you in the rain. I knew it when I asked you to marry me and I was secretly hoping that you would say yes, even though I knew you wouldn’t.”
She shook her head slowly. “No, you weren’t hoping that.” Her voice broke. “You weren’t.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because…because it was a farce. You said so yourself. You would never have asked at all if it hadn’t been on my list.”
“No,” he agreed. “If it hadn’t been on your list, I wouldn’t have.”
“So how can you say you were hoping that the answer would be yes?”
“I didn’t know it until that moment,” he told her earnestly.
“I didn’t know it until it was happening.
Suddenly I was saying those words to you and I realized I wanted a different answer than the one we’d planned on.
And it terrified me, Agnes, because it wasn’t the plan, and because my whole life has been about following the plans I set out for myself.
And because I knew what you were going to say, so hoping for anything else was foolish and frightening.
What could I do? How could I allow myself to want something I knew I would never have?
And yet I did want it. From that moment on, I wanted it—I wanted you. ”
Her eyes filled with tears. “Don’t say these things,” she breathed.
“Why not?” He leaned forward, reckless now that the words were finally coming out.
“Why shouldn’t I say what’s true, Agnes?
Why shouldn’t I tell you what you mean to me?
What’s the worst that can happen now—you reject me?
You’ve already done that. You’ve already told me that there’s no point in our continuing on together.
Well, I don’t agree with it. I think there’s every point.
I think there’s every reason, because I am in love with you.
I never meant to fall in love with anyone in my life, but it happened just the same, and now here we are.
I won’t pretend otherwise. I’m going to say it, and whatever happens will just be what happens. ”
She shook her head vigorously. “If you don’t stop, I won’t be able to keep my feelings to myself.”
His heart pounded. “Don’t keep them to yourself,” he urged, heat racing up and down his spine.
“If you feel even a fraction of of what I do, you must tell me. If you truly feel nothing for me then I’ll call a carriage at once and have you returned home, and I’ll never trouble you again.
But if you’ve shared any of these thoughts, if you would be happy to continue on with me—to maybe even become my wife in reality, not as a trick to fool people—please tell me.
Please let me know that I’m not throwing my heart away. ”
The few seconds before she answered were the longest Gabriel had ever endured. Nothing had ever been more excruciating. Whatever she said next, he knew, was going to define the shape of the rest of his life.
“Gabriel,” she murmured. “How can you not know? How can you have any doubt? When I kissed you—you couldn’t tell? You didn’t realize then what you meant to me, how much I love you?”
Her words flowed through him like cool water, and yet he hardly dared to believe it. “Say it again,” he commanded.
She met his eyes, and now she was smiling. “I love you,” she murmured. “I’ve loved you all this time.”
He rose to his feet, crossed the room in a single step, and pulled her from her chair. The next moment, his mouth was on hers. He kissed her like a drowning man getting his first taste of oxygen, realizing that he was going to live after all.
Once more, her body melted into his, and Gabriel couldn’t believe his good fortune.
He separated from her just enough to look her in the eyes.
She was smiling now, though tears were streaming down her cheeks.
He caught one on his thumb. “It’s all right,” he murmured.
“Everything’s going to be all right now.
We let this get away from us, but I’ll never let you get away from me again, I promise you that. ”
She embraced him, and he relished a moment of holding her close.
He was thankful for his own courage in daring to confess his feelings for her, and thankful for how quick she had been to respond to him.
She had never been the sort to leave anyone in doubt about her feelings—he should have known he would receive an answer right away.
“Do you suppose Helena will let us out now?” she asked, laughing through her tears. “I would like to tell her what’s happened.”
“Yes, I think she’ll want to know.” Gabriel let go of Agnes, but he couldn’t release her completely. Not now that she was properly his at last. He took her by the hand, led her over to the door, and knocked on it.
“Helena,” he called, “you’d better let us out now. We’ve got a wedding to plan.”