Elation unlike anything she’d ever felt had exploded in her chest. Now that she was of age, they could marry. It would take some convincing of her parents, of course, but Erienne was confident that together, she and Collin would make them see how deeply they loved each other, and how intent they were upon spending their lives together.
The first night after Collin’s return, Erienne found the little scrap of paper tucked into a knot outside her bedchamber window. Meet me at the sycamore tree. That afternoon after church, she gathered her skirts and ran there.
Collin was there, as always, but now twenty-one years old, and looking as handsome as ever. Her heart skipped a beat. This was it. Their future could begin. They would never be separated again. She ran into his arms and he spun her around like he had two years ago, only this time when he let her down into the grass, he immediately kissed her until her head spun, too.
“It’s time,” she said breathlessly. “Time to tell my parents we intend to marry.”
He gathered her anew in his arms and kissed her once more. She hadn’t known it at the time, but it was to be their last kiss. God, if only she’d known. If only she’d been older, wiser, she would have handled the entire thing differently.
“I love you, Erienne,” he’d breathed. “I’ll always love you.”
“I love you too, Collin.” Her brow furrowed as she stared at him. The way he’d spoken sounded strange, off.
He hung his head. “But we cannot marry.”
“What?” The word came out of her throat in a whisper. She was certain she hadn’t heard him correctly. She couldn’t possibly have.
“We cannot marry, Erienne.”
She searched his face. Surely he was only teasing her. “What? Why not?”
“It wouldn’t be fair to you.”
“Collin …” She clasped a hand to her breast, struggling for air as if she were drowning. “What are you saying? You love me, don’t you?”
“I’ll love you forever, Air.” He traced the line of her cheek with one finger in that old, familiar way of his.
She swallowed hard. “Then why are you saying this? Why can’t we be together?”
“My life … in the army. It’s difficult, and I won’t be home much. I’m soon to be shipped off to the Continent. I will be in danger.”
She shook her head impatiently. “I know all of this, Collin. You’ve told me. I don’t care.”
“But you will care, Air. You will care eventually. You deserve someone who will love you and be with you, treat you like a princess. You deserve one of those suitors who has money and … a title.” His throat worked.
Tears stung her eyes like needles. She fought against them, clenching her jaw. “You know I don’t care about titles.”
“You deserve the best,” he said low, turning away to push his hands through his hair in a gesture of firm but melancholy resolution. “That’s not me.”
Tears flowed freely down her face. It was him. It was. Why did he refuse to believe that? She shook her head. “Don’t do this.”
“I should go.” His voice was flat, hard. He turned back to her abruptly, grabbed her hand, and pressed a small slip of paper into it. And then, just like that, he was gone.
She hung her head, hot tears squeezing through her lashes, and waited until she could no longer hear his bootsteps crunching through the twigs. Only then did she open her palm and flip over the tiny slip of paper.
Three words. Each one ripped through her heart anew.
Let me go.
Chapter Eleven
Collin couldn’t recall the last time he’d been nervous. Bloody hell, a seasoned spy didn’t succumb to nerves. Ever. But as he sat next to Derek in his brother’s dining room, waiting for Lucy and Erienne to join them for dinner, he felt as unsettled as he had when he was a young man, the day he’d first kissed Erienne by the sycamore tree.
Erienne. He couldn’t believe he was about to see her again after all these years. The day he’d told her he couldn’t marry her had been the most excruciating of his entire life. But he’d known then—just as he knew now—it was the right thing to do. The best thing. Perhaps not for him, but certainly for her. He loved her enough to let her go. He always had.
In the months leading up to her debut, she’d written to him all about the fancy gowns her mother had bought her for her debutante ball to be held in London. Clearly, Erienne was meant for that life. Her father was a baron, and she was gorgeous and perfect. She shouldn’t waste herself on the likes of him, the boy from the bad family in town. It had been selfish of him to love her. He had to let her go.
He’d begun writing her less often, trying to wean himself from the joy of her regular correspondence, although he knew it would nearly kill him to stop receiving her letters. Those letters had been the only things to get him through some very dark days. He’d worked his arse off, doing his best to rise through the ranks as quickly as possible to be worthy of Erienne, to be someone her parents could accept, someone she could be proud of. But that summer, after her debut, he’d received a letter from Erienne’s father, dashing all of his hopes.
Baron Stone had begun the letter cordially enough. He asked after Collin’s health and indicated he’d heard Collin was doing quite well for himself in the army. But quickly, the baron made the purpose of the letter quite clear.
It seems Erienne has a schoolgirl infatuation with you. I think we would both agree that she should be with someone of her status. Quite simply, she has received multiple offers of marriage and refused them all because of you, Lieutenant Hunt. This is to her detriment. Her mother and I ask that you desist in your correspondence with her in order to allow her the space she needs to find a suitable husband.
The word suitable had sliced like a dagger through Collin’s heart. Of course he wasn’t suitable, and no matter how high he rose in the army, he never would be. To the Stones, he would always be the Hunt boy from the tiny, ramshackle cottage on the far side of town.
He’d written back, agreeing with Baron Stone that Erienne deserved the best husband in the world. He’d told the baron he would tell Erienne in person during his next leave, which was coming up. He refused to tell her in a letter like a coward. Baron Stone had agreed to that stipulation.
The afternoon Collin had written Let me go on that slip of paper and pressed it into Erienne’s hand was the worst day of his life.
He’d left the next morning, gone back to the army early because he couldn’t stand to be so near her and not see her. Worse, he didn’t trust himself in the same town with her. He might forget himself and go find her and tell her he’d been insane and hadn’t meant a word of it. He took a swallow of his drink. It burned a path through his insides as he stared out the dining room window at the night. He saw nothing in that dark glass but his own reflection, and for the first time, he recognized a hardness to his features he knew wasn’t put there by war with his fellow man, but by war with his own traitorous heart.
Erienne had been the only wonderful thing in his childhood. She’d been the promise he’d kept in his heart all these years, and he’d been forced to let her go. It was for her sake, however. That was the only thing that comforted him. He’d always believed that someday she would thank him for giving her the chance to live the life she truly deserved.
His mouth twisted in a humorless smile. He’d had a moment of insanity, however. After that day, he hadn’t received another letter from her, but he’d come home that Christmastide and rushed to her house, wanting to tell her he’d been a fool, wanting to ask her if she would forgive him and marry him after all.
He’d been shown into the Stones’ drawing room by their house steward and waited with his hat in his hands, his palms sweaty, before Lady Stone came marching into the room, her face tight. “Lieutenant Hunt,” she intoned, not sounding particularly pleased to see him. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I’ve come to see Erienne,” Collin replied.
“Erienne?” A brief look of surprise flash
ed across the woman’s face.
“Yes. Is she here?”
Lady Stone composed her features into a mask. “She is not.”
“May I wait?”
The lady lifted her chin. “I’m afraid you’d be waiting quite some time, Mr. Hunt. Erienne no longer lives here. She’s moved to Shropsbury.”
“Shropsbury?” A mixture of surprise and concern clutched at his throat.
“Yes.” The woman’s gaze dropped to the floor. “To live with her husband.”
The statement gutted him. Collin nearly doubled over in pain. “She’s married?” he asked to clarify the news to his own stumbling brain.
“Yes.” Lady Stone folded her hands together. She still didn’t meet his eyes.
“Who? Who did she marry?” He couldn’t stop himself from asking the awful question.
“Ah … Viscount Tinworth. Do you know him?”
The name was completely unfamiliar to Collin. But he’d hardly taken stock of London’s finest. “No.”
“They’re quite happy together. I expect news of a baby any day now,” Lady Stone added.
Collin’s jaw turned to marble. “I see.” He turned on his heel and headed toward the door. “Thank you, Lady Stone. I’ll show myself out.”
He walked all the way home without a coat, kicking his boots through the newly fallen snow. It had been madness for him to try to come back after all these months. Erienne had married someone of her class. She was out of his reach. As it should be, for the best.
That had been the last time he’d ever attempted to contact Erienne Stone.
And now they were about to meet again, a hapless reconciliation hardly of their own making. For some insane reason, he’d decided to wear his uniform to dinner tonight. As if the medals on his jacket could protect him from ... what? The decisions of his past? He clutched his drink. God, but his nerves felt as if they could wind up his insides and strangle a cry of utter frustration from his throat. He took another long draught to stifle it, to set those nerves afire and destroy the emotions. He emptied his glass.
And he waited.
Chapter Twelve
At last, the moment came.
Such moments are always less than one expects, Collin thought later, and somehow so much more.
At the flash of movement in the dining room doorway, Collin immediately pushed back his chair and stood to greet the duchess and, finally, Erienne.
She wore an ice-blue gown, one worthy of a fine lady. The kind of gown he’d always pictured her in when he thought of her married in Shropsbury.
Apparently she was a governess now, however. He’d half-expected her to be wearing a serviceable gown with an apron like the ones he’d seen Miss Langley sport a time or two. But Erienne stood there looking heartbreakingly beautiful in that gown, and for a moment he thought this meeting, the one where he stood in his dress uniform and she in ice-blue perfection, was as it should have been all along if he’d been able to attend her debut, to court her as he’d always desired.
She was thinner than she used to be. But the same knowing, lovely blue gaze shined from her delicate features. There were slight, dark smudges under her eyes as if she were tired. Diamonds clung to the fragile bones of her neckline and matching diamonds hung from her ears. Her golden hair was up in a chignon and her lips, pink and full, rested in a straight line, neither smiling nor frowning.
But he recognized the apprehension gathered in the lines of her familiar face.
She glanced at him and then away, so quickly he’d barely seen it. He wouldn’t have noticed at all if he hadn’t been watching her so closely.
“Collin.” Lucy came to his side of the table and gave him a hug. “It’s lovely to see you again. It’s been far too long.” She turned to Erienne. “You remember Miss Stone, I believe.”
He cleared his throat, not trusting his voice, but having no choice. “Of course.”
“Erienne.” Lucy turned back to face her. “You recall General Hunt?”
“General?” Erienne’s startled eyes flickered to meet Collin’s, and the words seem to die on her lips before she found them again. “I’d no idea.”
“Yes,” Derek said as he held out Lucy’s chair, leaving Collin to hurry around the table and pull out Erienne’s seat. “Collin is quite a high-ranking official at the Home Office now. Of course the position has come at the expense of his social life.”
They all took their seats. Derek at the head of the table, Lucy at the foot, with Collin to Derek’s left and Erienne to Derek’s right, directly across from Collin. The footmen rushed to place napkins on their laps and fill their wineglasses for the first course.
Erienne kept her eyes trained on her plate, though her chin took on a subtle, stubborn set that Collin instantly recognized. “Yes,” she said primly, “I do seem to recall Mr. Hunt placing emphasis on his position in the army over his own personal interests.”
And off went the warm light of sentimentality he’d foolishly been entertaining. Collin grabbed the half-poured wine glass in front of him and nearly downed its entire contents.
Lucy’s bright eyes glanced back and forth between Collin and Erienne. “Yes, well, Collin’s been forced on holiday. That’s why he’s here at the moment, isn’t that right, Coll?”
“Indeed.” He couldn’t stop glancing at Erienne. Despite her apparent state of pique, she was even more beautiful than she’d been when they were young. More so, even, with the tiny lines near her eyes and the sides of her mouth, borne of too many smiles—and perhaps too many frowns. She looked as if she’d seen pain. He hoped he hadn’t been the cause of it.
“A general and high-ranking officer in the Home Office,” Erienne echoed as the footmen set a bowl of turtle soup in front of each of them. “How ever did you manage that, Mr. Hunt?”
“Years and years of hard work, Miss Stone.”
“And what about your wife?” Erienne’s polite but pointed query held the edge of a knife. “Is she resigned to the amount of time you spend away from home?”
“I’ve never married,” Collin replied, meeting her gaze. Was it his imagination or did relief glint in her eyes?
“Collin was a spy in the wars,” Derek added in an obvious attempt to change the subject.
The briefest flash of concern passed over Erienne’s face before she seemed to school her features. “I did not know that. In fact, I haven’t heard any details of Mr. Hunt’s life since we last saw each other in Brighton. What’s it been? Fourteen years now?” She took a deep sip from her wine glass.
Fourteen years, one month, and sixteen days, Collin thought, but who was counting? “Something like that.” He lifted his spoon. “Speaking of work,” he continued, “I was surprised to hear that you’ve been employed as a governess, Miss Stone.”
“Yes, I left for Baron Hilltop’s house the summer after I turned eighteen,” she replied sweetly, as if they both didn’t know precisely what that summer had meant to them. “I’ve been there since.”
Collin frowned, his soup spoon paused halfway to his lips. “What about the viscount?”
“The viscount?” Erienne’s brows lowered. “I never worked for a viscount, only Baron Hilltop.”
Collin ate his soup in silence for a few moments, allowing that news to settle in. She’d been in Shropsbury working as a governess all this time? Never married to a viscount? Why, that would mean ...
Her mother lied. Of course her awful mother had lied! And he, the young fool that he’d been, had believed her. But why had Erienne not married? Why had she taken a position as a governess instead of accepting one of the offers from the many gentlemen who’d courted her that year?
Collin stared unseeing into his soup bowl and swallowed the hard lump that had formed in his throat. He had a terrible feeling he knew precisely why.
Chapter Thirteen
Erienne could barely breathe. Being this close to Collin again, even after all these years, was too much. She wasn’t over it. She wasn’t over him. She never had been. An
d what in heaven’s name had he meant, asking her about a viscount?
Lucy might think this little dinner party was a good idea, but Erienne now realized it was anything but. She had to get away. She glanced over at Collin again. She’d been trying to eye him surreptitiously when she thought he wasn’t looking, but he kept catching her. It hurt to look at him, but she couldn’t stop herself. The years had been nothing but kind to him. He was even more handsome than he’d been in his youth, his cheekbones more pronounced, his green eyes even more thoughtful and wise, and he had an air of confidence and authority about him that hadn’t been there when they were younger.
The man was a general now, and a high-ranking official in the Home Office. She wasn’t surprised, not truly. Just as she hadn’t been surprised to learn Derek had become a war-hero duke. But Collin wasn’t in the papers the way his brother had been. His exploits hadn’t been famous for good reason. He’d been a spy.
She shuddered to think about how much danger he’d probably been in over the years. No doubt he’d been in mortal peril a time or two. He’d been promoted to the rank of general, and from the look of the large number of medals on his red woolen jacket, he was quite someone. She didn’t know a great deal about the Home Office, but being an official there had to mean he was both valued and powerful.
“What are your plans while you’re here, Collin?” Lucy asked, clearly attempting to keep the conversation afloat.
“My orders are to relax,” Collin replied with the ghost of a laugh. “I’m not certain that is possible.”
“You should go fishing.” Lucy signaled one of the footmen to refill Collin’s wine glass. “The creek is full of fish this time of year.”
Collin inclined his head. “I might.” He glanced at Erienne. “I would also like very much to see the children.”
Erienne froze. Of course he would want to see the children. She tried not picture him filling the nursery space with his wide shoulders and appealing presence.
Mr. Hunt, I Presume: A Playful Brides Story Page 6
