She blinked, wondering if she were somehow trapped within a dream. But he was still standing before her, gilded by the sun and unfairly handsome. Worse, his expression had become expectant. As if she ought to respond.
How? He had rendered her quite speechless. Because marrying him was everything she had ever wanted. But not this way. Never this way.
Julianna cleared her throat, searching for words and composure both. “Forgive me, but I am certain I must have misheard you.”
“I am equally certain you did not. After everything that happened between us, marriage is the only sensible recourse.”
She took a step back. Her palms were not perspiring at this moment. They were dry. All she felt was fury.
“No,” she snapped.
“Julianna.” He reached for her.
She dodged him, feinting to the side, because she could not afford to feel that hand upon her, so perilous. One touch from him, and all her defenses would fall. “No one knows what happened. You need not burden yourself or act in haste. It was nothing.”
How she detested her tongue for swiftly giving voice to that particular lie.
Calling what had happened between themnothing…why, it was sacrilege. It had been the sum of everything. A thousand times over.
“Nothing,” he repeated, his expression stark. His jaw was rigid. His eyes dark. Mouth firm.
He was not pleased; she had seen these shadows on his countenance before. She knew them well. Knew him well. Better than she should. Better than he knew. Better than was good for her, it was certain.
She wondered again how he had noted when she ordinarily broke her fast. More questions rose, swift, endless.
“Yes,” she forced herself to say. “It was nothing. How did you find me here?”
She wanted him to say it had been a guess. A coincidence.
“You have been walking this way every morning since you arrived,” he said calmly, as if he had not just revealed something so significant her heart was about to burst from her breast and gallop down the rest of the path on its own triumphant trajectory.
“How do you know?” she asked, needing him to say the words. To reaffirm what she was beginning to suspect.
Because it was the stuff of dreams.
Herdreams.
Years of them.
“You like sunshine,” he said. “And water. White roses, also. And long walks. Swims, as I have recently learned.”
Shelovedsunshine, water, white roses, walks, and swimming. And cats. Also, birds. Birds made her ridiculously happy. They were so cheerful and small, so delightfully free and colorful. So much enthusiasm in such remarkably tiny bodies, to say nothing of their abilities. Flying? Oh, to fly. But that was neither here nor there.
Her mouth went dry. “How… How should you know such details about me?”
“Because I want to know everything there is to know about you.”
Also what she wanted to hear. But confusing. Terribly confusing. He was Viscount Shelbourne. His mistresses were the most beautiful, talented women in London. And she was nothing but Lady Julianna Somerset, the awkward daughter of two people who hated each other.
“I do not understand,” she blurted. “Why?”
“You fascinate me.”
Three words. Words she had never imagined possible of being spoken to her, by Shelbourne.
“I fascinate you,” she repeated stupidly.
“More than that, if I am honest.” Once again, he closed the distance between them. This time, he sought her ungloved hands, tangling his fingers in hers. “It was poorly done of me yesterday, what happened. You deserved far better. You are a lady, and I ought to have been a gentleman, and yet, I lost control. Because you are…you. And I cannot seem to help myself when in your presence.”
