Fox pivoted and peered out the bow-window. A riot of wildflowers crowded before the glass.
“Yes, perhaps I could hire the help I require. But . . .” He paused and turned back to her, offering what truth he could. “I am tired, Miss Penn-Leith. Exhausted, soul-deep. I long for rest and quiet and possibly, I think, . . . a companion.”
The words sank deep.
A companion.
Yes. That was it.
How odd that it had taken him so long to arrive at this point—
He wanted a friend.
One who would never leave him.
Leah stared atCaptain Carnegie, framed in the bow-window, his blue eyes drilling into her.
His words landed hard.
I am tired, Miss Penn-Leith. Exhausted, soul-deep.
She believed him. He appeared . . . gaunt. Oh, not in his appearance necessarily, but in his expression, in his words—as if his good humor were honey spread too thinly atop a bannock.
Moreover, she instinctivelyunderstoodhim. His view of the world resonated within her, plucking at the strings of her own regret, of her own weary worry for the future.
In her memory of their long-ago meeting, she had been a fool to feel a deep connection with young Fox Carnegie’s kindness and charisma.
Yet faced with him again . . . she extended charity toward her youthful self.
The pull toward him was just as strong now as it had been then. She had not been naive or silly to believe they regarded life through a similar lens.
And now, here they stood, both yearning for surcease, yet desiring entirely different balms for their heartache.
Captain Fox Carnegie wished for a marriage of convenience.
Leah wished for—
Oh, what did it matter what she wished?
More fool her.
Leah, ye eejit.
Had she not learned long ago that Captain Carnegie preferred his women blond, buxom, and flirtatious? Things she was still categorically not.
Of course, a man like Fox Carnegie would not find heranythingenough to share his bed.
She was to be only a . . . companion.
I could be that for him.
The words drifted through her mind of their own accord.
That drattedlongingfluffed behind the words, stuffing her heart so full her ribcage constricted.
The problem, of course, was that she had spent the last twenty years wishing to be so much more to a husband than a mere companion. She wanted to be a man’s—thisman’s—everything. . . his wife, his lover, his equal.
Could she truly marry Captain Carnegie, knowing she would not receive all of him?
