CHAPTER 19
Somehow, Freddy ended up in a carriage with Silas and Dot for the full day’s ride out to Chipping Camden.
Ordinarily, this might have been tolerable, but Silas had a terrible, lifelong habit of being rocked to sleep by a moving carriage, even if he insisted he had work to review or things to discuss. Without fail, about an hour in, he’d be knocked to the side, gently snoring into a window curtain.
Freddy knew it was coming. Dot knew it was coming. They both let him believe it wasn’t until the thing was done.
She touched him once on the arm and gave a resigned little sigh. “There he goes,” she said with a little shrug. “Off to nod.”
“Nodding right off,” Freddy agreed with no small amount of envy. “So, that leaves us, then.”
“Does it?” Dot replied, and stood to retrieve the little purple box she’d brought with her, presumably full of material with which to entertain herself beyond the scope of Freddy’s influence.
He chuckled. He could not help himself.
It drew a curious look from Dot, her big green eyes blinking up at him with a polite interest, like a naturalist who’d accidentally stepped on a new species of beetle and now must investigate the underside of her boot.
“It’s nothing,” he said, waving his hand. “You just confirmed a suspicion I had.”
“Oh? What suspicion is that?” she asked, tossing the top of the box off and turning to dig inside of it, as though she did not need to look at him to hear his answer.
“That you accepted my apology,” he answered, propping an arm behind his head and leaning back, “but never really forgave me.”
“Forgave you?” she repeated, drawing out a stack of papers with many folded corners and different colors of ink in the margins and turning to him, a faint curve on her lips. “For jilting me, you mean?”
“That, certainly,” he confirmed. “All of it, really. The me of it all.”
She laughed softly, threading her fingers through the stack of papers in her lap. “Freddy, I haven’t thought about you as my one-time fiancé in years. The matter is largely forgotten as far as I am concerned, I assure you. I thought I had made that perfectly clear back when I married Silas.”
“Forgotten is not forgiven,” he said, raising a brow. “They say that the opposite of love isn’t hate, Dot. It is indifference.”
“Do they say that?” she asked, tilting her head to the side. “I suppose it is true. But I am not indifferent to you, Freddy Hightower. I might have been, if our lives were not so inextricably interwoven by now. I likely would have been. But they are, so I am not.”
“Ever the barrister, aren’t you? You would be such a dangerous man.”
“Probably,” she agreed with a sigh. “I do well enough as a woman, don’t I?”
“So you don’t love me, hate me, or feel indifferent toward me?” he pressed, flashing her a smile, which got a roll of her eyes. “How do you feel, then, Dot?”
“I think the real question isn’t how I feel,” she replied, meeting his eye with the sort of unwavering intensity that had always made him feel just a little bit unsafe in her presence. “It’s how you do.”
Freddy glanced once, quickly, at his brother, as though he might need to kick him awake for protection.
Dot immediately saw it happen and smiled again, a soft little titter escaping through her breath. “You started this conversation, you know.”
Freddy frowned, adjusting the cradle of his head in the arm crooked behind it. He had never considered the question in reverse. No one much cared how he felt about any of them, as far as he knew. Freddy had had to navigate the last several years by making himself fit into their worlds, by finding his own avenues to amends and peace.
Howdidhe feel about Dot Cain? He was going to marry her, once. He had liked her. Respected her. Thought she’d be a damned good countess. He’d even found her reasonably attractive, though truth be told, he’d chosen her specifically because she was pretty without being his particular flavor of tempting.
He had been trying to be sensible in his twisted way, back then.
“You make me uncomfortable,” he said without thinking, winning a look of what appeared to be genuine surprise from the lady. “You remind me of all the things that are wrong with me.”
“Do I really?” she said, as though she was not displeased by it. “I assure you it is not deliberate.”
“No, I know it isn’t,” he replied, still stuck in his frown. “You know I couldn’t have made you happy like he does. You know that, don’t you? I could have never kept up, and you would have started hating me the first time I lost the thread in an argument.”
She blinked. “You aren’t stupid, Freddy.”
