Damon shifted the reins into one hand and produced a handkerchief from the inner pocket of his great coat.
“Will you tell me what happened?” Damon said in a gentle voice.
I dabbed the moisture from my cheeks. “I would not know where to start.”
“The beginning is generally advisable,” he said with a small smile.
“That is the problem. I don’t know the beginning of my and Ollie’s story, only the end. And to recount that would be much too humiliating.”
“Would you have me guess what’s transpired?”
I shook my head. “It is best we both forget the entire scene.”
Damon ably maneuvered our conveyance around a large mud puddle. “I’m afraid you ask the impossible. You ran from the drawing room crying with my brother in full pursuit. Seeing as he thinksweare in the prelude to a relationship, I have half a mind to call him out.”
Ollie didnotthink Damon and I were in a relationship anymore, but I did not have the capacity to handle Damon’s ire just now. I would tell him everything later when my emotions had settled. I lifted my gaze to him. “You would not call out your own brother.”
“As a gentleman, I don’t rightly have a choice. Unless you tell me otherwise.”
He was only trying to make me smile, but I wasn’t in the mood to be teased. “I will tell you what happened. But from this day henceforth, we will never speak of this again.” I took my time folding Damon’s handkerchief, considering my words. But there was no way to make this story any less mortifying.
“Yesterday, after what you said about Ollie’s circumstance, I thought perhaps you might be wrong. I hoped that if he knew he had another choice in life, if he knew that I loved him, then he wouldn’t wish to marry Miss Digby. I thought—” My voice wavered. “It doesn’t matter what I thought. This morning I confessed my feelings to Ollie, and he informed me he does not feel the same. You were correct.” I paused. “He is determined to marry Miss Digby even though he’s admitted he does not love her. I shouldn’t have doubted you. I must apologize.”
“Please don’t.” Damon glanced away from the road to look at me. “You must know I take no delight in your pain.” Damon spoke with sincerity, but I heard only pity.
How silly I must seem to him. How naive. I spoke of love and marriage to a man who did not value them.
“Do you want to know what I think?” he asked. I shook my head, but he continued anyway. “I think you are in love with theideaof love.”
A laugh burst from my mouth. “That is absurd.”
“Is it?”
“Yes!”
“You love Ollie, to be sure, but you love him as a little girl loves a puppy—with naive innocence and far too much idealism. It is admirable you wish to save my brother from a loveless marriage, but he is his own man and must make his own decisions.”
I frowned. “Have you no words of comfort?”
“I promised to always tell you the truth.”
“Yes. But must you put it so bluntly?”
“The truth is often painful, but not without virtue. That is to say, now that the truth is out, you are free to move forward.”
“I don’t want to move forward. Not without Ollie.”
“Forget Oliver,” Damon said brusquely. “If he cannot see the strong, opinionated,beautifulwoman before him, then he does not deserve you.”
Warmth bloomed inside me like a rose on a summer day. No man had ever spoken such kind things to me before.
“And forgive me for saying this,” he continued, “but is Ollie truly the man you want to marry anyway?”
“You know he is.”
“I know hewas, but my younger brother is not the same person you knew as a girl.Youare not that same girl. Life, and all that it requires, has changed all of us,” Damon said. “I fear my brother would censure the things that make youyou.”
I shook my head. “He would never.”
