by Vincy, Mia
Perhaps he’d send the flowers and a thank-you note then.
And she’d send them right back. It was not his gratitude she wanted.
She wanted to be in that house with him, sharing his troubles and triumphs. She wanted to be the one he came home to. The one he confided in and teased and quarreled with and kissed. She wanted to be the one on his arm when he entered a ballroom, exchanging looks down the table when they hosted a dinner. Riding beside him through Hyde Park, nestled against him in a cozy parlor at the end of the day.
She wanted to be the one he opened his arms for, the one who made him smile. The one he looked for when he had news. The one he held against him when he slept.
But more than that, she wanted him and that great big heart of his to be happy. She wanted him to create the warm, peaceful home he craved, to have the freedom to love whomever he wanted and marry as he pleased.
That, at least, she could do for him.
“Leo is leaving for Lincolnshire shortly to visit his mother and younger sister. Lord Hardbury will accompany him,” Juno said. “Lady Gisela is making her come-out next year. Leo says she’s very pretty. I wonder if Lord Hardbury will think so too.”
“You are not subtle, Juno.” She turned back. “Is Lady Gisela amiable and pleasant? That’s what Guy wants in a wife.”
“I thought what he wanted was you.”
Juno handed her another finished sketch. This one showed an old woman, with sharp cheekbones and finely arched eyebrows. Her haggard face was creased with lines and frowns.
“That is a portrait of you,” Juno said. “When you are old and miserable and lonely, all because you’re too proud to talk to him.”
“It isn’t pride this time.” On the paper, her miserable future self scowled at her. “He is going to Lincolnshire, you say?”
“Soon.”
“Then it is time for me to stop dithering and leave London too.”
Chapter 28
The carriage was loaded, the coachman was fidgeting, and a groom held the door open, waiting for Arabella to climb in.
She would climb in. Of course she would. She had marched out of the house with every intention of jumping straight into that carriage and letting it carry her away west.
Yet, curiously, in the short distance between house and carriage, she had lost her way. As if compelled by an unseen power, she had walked around the horses in their clinking harnesses, and now stood in the middle of the street, turning her bonnet and gloves in her hand, staring at the park.
At Guy.
He was with Ursula and Freddie, the three of them watching the little robin redbreast again. They must know she was there, but they paid her no mind. Clearly, a robin was much more interesting than the comings and goings of proud, foolish Arabella Larke.
Perhaps she could draw near him, for one more moment. For one more word, one more smile. Her body would not turn away. It was as if a force of nature was pulling her toward him, the way migrating birds were pulled across the world.
How could she fly off to her friends in the countryside, when all she needed was right here?
Arabella shoved her bonnet and gloves onto a footman and was crossing the road before she even knew her own intention. She was dimly aware of Freddie taking Ursula away, but all she saw was Guy, straightening, turning, tensing, watching her approach.
Oh, to keep walking, right into his embrace, to press her face into his neck, and know that she had come home.
She stopped some six feet away from him. His hair was still golden. His complexion still tanned. She had seen that face laughing and sad and angry and passionate. Now it was inscrutable. Unwelcoming. A closed door to the home she sought.
He could have been mine.
Until he regretted his honorable actions, and resented her presence.
She had made the right decision, for both of them. She had. She had set him free to find the true happiness he deserved.
It was just that she had to break her own useless heart to do it.
His gaze flicked past her, to the abandoned carriage. “Running away again, Arabella?”
“I didn’t—”
“You—ran—away.”
“I set you free.”
“Did you expect a thank-you note?”
Habit had her retreating. “Some flowers, also, would have been nice.”
She stopped herself. Not now, pride.
How her heart ached to see him so close, his unsmiling, untouchable face. He could never be hers, but perhaps she could salvage something from the debris.
“Let us put this behind us,” she said. “We can be civil to one another, acquaintances who—”
“No. We cannot.” He fairly scowled at her as he withdrew a letter from his pocket. “This is from my solicitor. It needed only my signature before he sent it, but since you’re here, I might as well give it to you now.”
The thick creamy paper was slightly crumpled as if it had been well handled. More interesting were his bare hands. Were his palms still rough, or were they already smooth? She had given up the right to know.
“What is this?” she asked.
“That thank-you note you wanted, I suppose.” His voice was dry, mocking. “Thank you for setting me free.”
He shoved the letter at her impatiently, so she took it and tore it open.
He began to explain, speaking faster than usual, as if he wanted this over with as quickly as possible. “In the breach of promise suit you brought against me, your solicitor argued—”
“I ended the engagement,” she interrupted, baffled. “I never brought a suit against you.”
“And highly annoying that was too. I had to do it on your behalf.”
Confused, Arabella unfolded the letter and stared at the neat, indecipherable writing. The first words were in legal language. She was good at legal language. She read case law for fun. It was incomprehensible nonetheless.
“You sued yourself on my behalf,” she repeated.
“Yes. Do keep up. Your solicitor’s petition notes that—”
“I have a solicitor?”
“I had to hire one for you. He’s good but expensive. I’ll send you the bill.”
“Guy, you are making no sense. I released you. You could have brought a breach of promise suit against me.”
“In his will,” he continued testily, “my father named three properties that would come to me if I married you, and to Sir Walter Treadgold if I did not. Your solicitor’s petition successfully argued that, given our broken engagement, those properties should go to you.”
“You gave me houses.”
“Yes. It’s all there in the letter.”
She still couldn’t make out a word of it. “Three houses.”
“They have some land attached. Cows and crops and so forth.”
In an effort to clear her head, Arabella looked past him, to where glossy ivy wound around the iron fence. She watched its leaves tremble in the breeze and still did not understand. Apparently, in breaking her own heart, she had also broken her brain.
“Why would you do this?” she asked. “I stated very clearly that you owe me nothing.”
“Indeed, your note was exceedingly clear.” His dry tone forced her eyes back onto him, but still his expression gave nothing away. “This settles it definitively. We are completely free. No debt, no duty, no honor, no obligation. I can’t do much to salvage your reputation, but that’s mostly your fault, so I refuse to feel responsible for that.”
“Completely free,” she repeated.
“Completely free,” he agreed. A thread of tension hummed under his light tone. “I owe you nothing, you owe me nothing. I am now free to choose my own bride. Someone I love, someone who knows me, someone who makes me happy. I can choose whomever I wish. And you can too.”
Arabella didn’t feel free. She felt the tightness of her corset, and the breeze in her hair, and her silly, sorry heart breaking all over again. How eager he was to sever all ties! Yet he could have severe
d those ties without granting her financial independence. Why did he have to be so wretchedly decent?
“I entangled you in my problems, and nearly ruined your life, and you do this.” Her fingers tightened on the page, tempted to tear it to shreds. “I gave you no end of trouble and you gave me three houses. Do you want nothing from me?”
“You have nothing,” he said sharply. “You gave it all up.”
“True, but—”
“But there is one thing you can give me.”
Anything, she wanted to say. She waited.
“An explanation,” he said. “Tell me why you ran away. Why you preferred to lose everything rather than marry me.”
“I didn’t run—”
“Tell me.”
His features were implacable, his stance as welcoming as that of an enemy soldier at the gates. Nothing about him invited her to lower her guard and surrender her frightened heart.
“You want this finished with,” she said.
He closed his eyes briefly. “So help me, but I want this finished with.”
If he wanted an explanation, then that was what she owed him.
She let her eyes wander back to the ivy-wreathed fence. The robin redbreast was perched there now, a puffy ball of feathers on little legs. She might not like all birds, but she liked that one, she decided. She admired its gumption, the way it chirped so merrily, oblivious to cats and cages and the myriad other dangers that came with simply being alive.
“You fought against being forced to marry me,” she said to the robin. “But suddenly, you were trapped. You put a cheerful face on it, because that is what you do, but we both know the day would have come when you tired of me. After all, you did not truly want me. You would look at me and see what you had lost, the life and home you had dreamed of and had to give up. I did it for you, because I want you to be happy. But I did it for myself too. Because there is something worse than losing everything.”
The intensity of his silence called her gaze back to him. Once their eyes met, an earthquake could not have made her look away.
“I have spent my life amid resentment and hostility, all the while longing for love. I could not bear to spend my marriage that way too.”
His eyes narrowed. “Why would you be longing for my love?”
“Good grief, Guy, you cannot possibly be that obtuse.”
“Why not? You are.” When she added nothing more, Guy raised his eyebrows. “Your explanation is not good enough. There’s more.”
There was more, but her words failed. Behind them, Freddie and Ursula went back inside. Guy twisted around to watch them go, then turned back.
“I know I have not always been good at listening to you,” he said, “but I promise to listen to whatever else you have to say. But Arabella—” His gaze skewered her. “This time, you will actually have to say it.”
“You aren’t making this easy.”
“You don’t deserve for me to make this easy.”
Fair enough. She did owe him. Because he had gone to the effort and expense of looking after her, despite everything being her fault.
So he could set himself free. Free to choose, he had said. Free to choose a wife whom he truly wanted.
Free to choose her.
Hope swelled within her, foolish, vain hope. He would never choose her, not with her mistakes and flaws, not after his efforts to sever all ties. If only she could command him to love her. If only she could buy or bribe or beg his love.
What a pity love did not work like that.
Love could not be bought or forced or demanded or taken. Love could only ever be given.
Then she would give him her love, whether he wanted it or not. It was the only thing she had left to give.
Do not tell him, her pride warned. He will mock you, dismiss you.
From somewhere deep inside came the whisper of her heart: Don’t be absurd. I would never love a man who mocked love.
Leave now, her pride insisted. He doesn’t want you. Get in that carriage and go.
Shut up, pride, said her heart. I’m in charge now.
And suddenly, it was not hard. The words were there, in her heart, where they had lain since before she was born, and all she had to do was speak them. This time, her mouth did not betray her, and the words emerged, pure and true.
“Because I love you,” she said.
The robin fluttered past in a panic and a gust of wind rustled the leaves. But the sky did not collapse. The sun went on shining and Arabella went on breathing, albeit with a little more difficulty.
Guy said nothing.
“There is more,” she said. “I accepted that I must surrender you to someone else, someone who can better give you what you want, and that I could only love you from a distance. Which is not ideal, because one does like to be near the object of one’s affection. But also, I need you.”
Still he said nothing.
“Of course, I would survive without you,” she added.
Was that a smile? “Of course.”
“I need you in order to…to be myself. I realized I have shut myself away for so long, holding onto my childhood, seeking the family and home I wanted but foolishly looking in the wrong place. It is thanks to you that I am able to grow up and start my life anew. My own life, my own way. I am making a dreadful hash of it so far but… I will never regret loving you, or being the way I am. I regret only that I am not what you want in a wife. Because you are everything I desire in a husband.”
He closed his eyes and muttered something that sounded like a curse.
“There. That is your explanation,” she said hoarsely. Her throat was achingly tight. “Now I owe you nothing either, and there really is nothing left for us to say. I’ll not keep you.”
She whirled around to leave, before she shattered at his feet. He seized her wrist with his bare hand. Heat jolted through her. Her limbs froze. She could not turn to face him. But she felt him, standing behind her. He touched only her wrist, but she felt him all the same.
She heard his deep, shuddering breath. Felt its warm release on her neck.
“Oh thank the stars, I had hoped that was it,” he said, his voice shaky.
Blood rushed through her, blood and something else, something that coursed through her veins and made her muscles weak. Still she dared not turn. He laid his hand over hers and entwined their fingers. She closed her eyes, surrendering her senses to his presence, until he was all she knew.
“I cursed you, you know,” came his low voice in her ear. “I cursed you so long and hard it’s a wonder you don’t have a cloud of locusts swarming around your head. Cursed you and your blasted pride. Debt and duty, you wrote: That’s what you believed, isn’t it? And anything else I said, you would have dismissed as a gallant lie.” His other hand landed on her hip, as if they were ready to waltz, but she was facing the wrong way. “You started thinking, didn’t you? You and that brilliant diamond mind of yours. But thinking is like walking: If you begin in the wrong place, facing the wrong way, you’ll head in the wrong direction, and end up falling off the edge of the world.”
He eased closer; his chest brushed her back. She could not have turned, he held her so firmly in their backward dance.
“I’ve been carrying that blasted letter around in the hope you would come to me first. I wanted you to come to me. I needed—” His voice broke. He breathed in sharply. “I needed you to come to me.”
His grip relaxed. She pivoted in his arms, to stare into those eyes of his, eyes like summer rain.
“But you never wanted me,” she recited, stunned. “You deserve to have the home you dream of. You deserve to have what you want.”
“A home,” he repeated. “A safe, welcoming place to come back to, a place where I feel comfort and passion, joy and delight.” He cupped the back of her neck, as if to hold her in place. “Arabella, you proud, impossible fool. You are my home.”
His words stole her breath, but it seemed she did not need air, for all her shakiness was gon
e. Her legs were strong and her arm steady, as she pressed one hand against his beloved face. He let his forehead drop to meet her own.
“It took me so long to see it,” he continued softly, their breaths mingling. “My struggle against my father made my thoughts rigid. But finally I understood: I had to travel the world and become myself, so I could see that what I most needed was here the whole time.”
“You mean…”
“I mean, I love you too. I meant to tell you, but I didn’t get a chance.”
She lifted her head to search his eyes, needing to believe it, to find a way through her fear.
“I’ll make mistakes,” she said. “I’ll say the wrong thing. I’ll—”
“Of course you bloody well will. As will I. Will you leave me when I make a mistake?”
“Of course not.”
“Then why not grant me the same grace?” He smoothed back a tendril of her hair. “I know you, Arabella, and I am choosing you. This time, surely, you can have no doubt. I choose to share my life with you, because my life is better with you in it. I want you to choose me for the same reason. Stop fighting, for once in your life, and spare me this wretchedness.”
Pain sliced her tender, battered heart. Oh so help her, what had she done?
“I hurt you,” she said, tears pricking her eyes as she hurt with him. Urgently, she pressed her hand to his face, to his neck, to his shoulder, as if she could heal him. “Oh, Guy, I didn’t realize. I never wanted to hurt you. I never realized I could. I only wanted you to be happy.”
He shook his head with a short, mirthless laugh. “You were wrong. You were so—bloody—wrong.”
“I am so sorry. Will you forgive me?”
He brushed her cheek. Cool air danced over the dampness left by her tear. “Everything was a mess between us. It took some untangling. Just promise me: Don’t do it again.”
I can fix this, she thought, as her hands rested on his chest. I just need a plan.
Guy laughed lightly. “Beautiful, brilliant Arabella,” he murmured.
“Why are you laughing?”
“Because you are trying to make a plan, aren’t you?” he said. “Very well: Tell me your clever plan. How do you mean to fix this?”
