“Was it terrible, then?” Raina asked, frowning.
“Quite the opposite,” she admitted. “It was wonderful.”
Indeed, the wordwonderfulwas pitifully inefficient as a descriptor. A paltry means of describing an experience that had been beyond anything she had ever imagined it could be.
“If it was wonderful and you are in love with his lordship, then why are you so distressed?” Melanie asked in her candid, pragmatic way.
Excellent question. But then, Melanie knew what she wanted from life. She would open her own department store, and it would thrive with Melanie’s business acumen and single-minded devotion. Someone as shrewd as Melanie would never allow something as foolish as love or a man to interfere in her future. Charity, however, had no plans for herself beyond her trip to the Continent with Auntie Louise. True, she had intended to remain. To never return to England.
But now she wondered at the wisdom of such a plan. What would she do? Where would she live? In a hotel forever? Surely Mama and Papa would require her to return.
“I am distressed,” she managed at last, attempting to answer Melanie’s question, “because I have no intention of marrying. And even if I did wish to marry Neville, he did not ask me.”
“I do believe he may be about to ask you now,” Clementine said quietly, casting a meaningful look over Charity’s shoulder.
Awareness crept up her spine.
It washim.
She knew it instinctively.
“He is approaching us, then?” she asked her friend.
“He is here,” said a voice at her back.
Strong, mellifluous,beloved.
Neville had found her.
Chapter 9
Neville had never asked a lady to marry him before, and the fact that he had gone about this process altogether in the wrong order did nothing to assuage his nerves as he guided Charity down a meandering path leading to the gardens. She was clinging to his elbow, and the combination of her nearness and the summer sun beating down upon them filled him with heat. It occurred to him that he was hauling her away from her friends with no true intended destination.
Privacy seemed of the utmost importance.
“Where are you taking me?” Charity asked at his side, breaking the silence and seeming to sense the direction of his own thoughts.
“When is the soup most likely to run out of the saucepan?” he asked.
“Truly? You are telling a joke now?”
Yes, he was. Blast it all. Because he was nervous. His tongue was as knotted as his stomach. This was new territory for him.
“When there is a leek in it,” he answered for her grimly.
“Did you drag me away from badminton for more puns?”
Of course not. What the devil was the matter with him? He had not been this jumbled since… Well, sinceever.
He continued to lead them away from the court. “It did not look as if you were playing when I approached. I assumed the game was complete.”
She sighed. “I suppose it was.”
He stopped them by a convenient set of hedges where a fountain gurgled happily and an accommodating bench awaited. They were out of sight of her friends and fellow houseguests, but in close enough proximity to allow for a reasonable amount of propriety. Not that he had been concerned with such a thing yesterday. Neville winced at the reminder of his lack of control. But still, he could not regret what had passed between them. He only hoped she did not.
Neville gestured to the bench. “Would you care to take a seat, my dear?”
“Thank you.” With prim care that was so at odds with her customary flamboyance, she perched on the edge of the bench, arranging her skirts about her.
