Allan flinched. He had left them open only a crack overnight so that he might allow the barest amount of sunlight in—so he could have some concept of what time it was without his room filling up with light. Now, though, it did, and he felt like a creature that had been living underground for too long without seeing the sun, incapable of coping with it.
His grandmother turned to face him.
“You cannot do this,” she said. “You cannot hide from the world.”
“I’m not hiding,” Allan protested.
“Oh, really? Returning to your room immediately after breakfast?”
“I hardly slept, Grandmother. I feel unwell.”
“You can’t fool me. You feel unwell because of the news about Lady Edwina, so let’s you and I have no misunderstanding between the two of us about that,” his grandmother said. “I know what’s happening here. I know you’re distraught because of her sudden departure. And I don’t blame you for it. But Idoblame you if you choose to hide from it.”
“Grandmother, what would you have me do? She’s gone.”
“I would tell you to go after her. She hasn’t vanished into the mists, Allan. She’s on the road to her country house. She will be the easiest person in the world to find, if only you choose to make the attempt. You should go now before it’s too late—before she makes up her mind that she never wishes to see you again.”
“She’s already made up her mind,” Allan said. “She has told me several times that she has no desire to see me.”
“Lady Edwina is very young,” his grandmother told him. “It doesn’t surprise me to learn that she struggles to understand what she wants from life and from the world.”
“You think you know better?”
“I think we both do. I think you know as well as I that she wouldn’t have left the way she did if she wasn’t running from something. You are not the only one who knows how to hide, Allan.”
“Perhaps it’s Lord Kentrow she’s running from. He’s the one who proposed marriage to her last night.”
Allan’s grandmother snorted. “That man? No one would run from him. I’m confident that when she turned him down, he smiled at her and thanked her for her time, told her to have a nice night, and went to get himself a drink.”
“You don’t think he cared for her then?”
“I’m sure he cared for her, but I’m just as sure that there was no real passion there.”
“You certainly seem to think yourself the expert on everyone else’s business, Grandmother.”
“Maybe I’m wrong,” his grandmother allowed. “But I have lived a long time, Allan. And in that time, I have discovered a few things. I know that real love, real passion, is a very rare thing. I know that when it occurs, it ought to be honored.”
She gave him a sharp look.
“What are you getting at?” he asked her.
“You love her,” his grandmother informed him.
The odd thing was that, as of last night, Allan would have given anything for someone to provide him with the answer to that question. He would have loved to be told.
Now, though, he felt irked. How could she claim to know? How could she say it so easily, as if she was telling him the color of his eyes or whether or not it was raining outside? This question that had tormented him, she answered as if it was nothing at all.
“You can’t know that,” he told her.
“I can, as a matter of fact,” she countered. “I’ve seen you around her, Allan. I’ve paid attention to the way you are. And what I see is that knowing her has changed you. You’re not the same man you once were. You think of her all the time. All the choices you make are centered around what would be best for her.”
“I don’t know that that’s true,” Allan countered.
“Well, I do. And you would too if you truly paid attention to yourself, Allan. Just look at what you’re doing right now. You haven’t chosen to go after her. Why not? What’s your real reason for hiding in your room instead of following her? Because it isn’t that you don’t want to follow her.”
“How can you claim to know that?”
“Answer the question, Allan.”
