“You always said I was the worst of the lot.”
“Are you going to let me speak?”he asked with a raised brow.“Perhaps you were, but you were also so incredibly lovely.It was all I could do to keep my distance from you.What would you have preferred I do?”
There were many things Fiona might have liked to happen differently.For the most part, those wishes all included Harry on his knee with a ring in hand and a promise on his lips.That hadn’t happened, and whathadhappened was the complete opposite of what she hoped for.Still, she could see his point.While he was an easygoing man, he was also an honorable one.He wouldn’t look where he couldn’t touch...even when temptation was flung—with humiliating frequency—in his face.
“Fine then,” she conceded.“I can understand the undesirable position I put you in.”
“A position I’m no longer in,” he said.“You’re older now and out in Society with the expectation of marriage.I’ll take on your brothers one after another if I have to.I’ll also risk that friendship if needed because I want you for my own.I want to marry you.”
Fiona stared at him, using the repeated jolting of the carriage as it stopped once again to take a moment to steady herself and her jumbled emotions.Her heart wanted to sing with joy at his words, but she held herself in check.They were just words.“You wanted to marry Moira, too, didn’t you?And by all accounts, you wanted to marry Abby as well.How many others were there?How many others did you want to wed?”
“My parents were very much in love,” he said suddenly in what Fiona thought was a very random subject change.Still, it was such an unusual segue from the topic that she was curious to hear what might follow.“Unusual for a peer and certainly more so for a marquis.My father was overwhelmed with sorrow when my mother died, drowning in grief and alcohol.Another much younger woman came along and played him for a fool with talk of taking care of his poor, poor son who needed a mother to replace the one he—I—had lost.It was a travesty.
“It’s a long story in itself, but when Father died, I was compelled into society not six months later with the expectation that I find a wife and produce an heir.A home to raise my sister in.I promised Piper I would do so in all haste so she could live with me as she wished.I was young—just twenty-two—wanting to do my duty but found I could not bring myself to wed for anything less than love after Father’s debacle...or at least a strong affection, something to build on.I first met Abby and liked her stubborn courage.The same spirit I see in you.Yes, I asked her to marry me.I liked her very much.I still do.But even by that point, I knew she loved your brother,” Harry explained.“I offered for her out of my deep affection for her and to save her from ruin, but even then, I knew I didn’t love her as I should.”
“But what of the others?”And the one who really mattered.The courtship she had witnessed.“Moira?”
“I fell in and out of what I thought might be at least the stirrings of love many times—the potential for more, you understand?Something to start with—but could never bring myself to propose,” he told her.“As for Moira, in the end, I realized that I loved her but as nothing more than a sister.”
Fiona raised a skeptical brow.
“Or at least like a distant cousin.”
A huff of disbelieving laughter escaped her.“Ha, very distant, I should say.”
He shrugged indifferently as if it did not signify either way.“I might have been content with her as my wife.”
There was that word again.
“But if I were honest with myself two years ago, I was never so relieved as when she married Vin.Otherwise, I never would have had a chance with you.”
The laughter that escaped her then was even more disbelieving.
“You may laugh if you like,” he said.“You had gone from a lass to a young woman in just a few months.Of course, I had known many beautiful women.Enough to know that beauty is nothing without character behind it.But you had that, didn’t you?All the qualities I had known in other ladies were combined in you.I was taken by you straightaway, though I refused to acknowledge it.”He laughed.“To be honest, you frightened the hell out of me.”
Fiona recalled Richard’s words at St.Andrew’s the previous month.“I’ve heard I do that.”
“As for your...er, declaration...”Harry winced apologetically at her blush.“I hadn’t believed your feelings were deep and true, and well, to be frank, looking back, the possibility that theywereterrified me even more.I was a fool, Fiona.Short-sighted and full of denial.I’ve apologized for it and I shan’t do it again.All I can say is that the timing was against us.”
She stared silently through the window, absorbing everything he’d told her.He wanted to marry but only for love or the potential for more and had made repeated declarations of his intention to marry her.It fell to reason then that Harry loved her.
He loved her, her heart sang.
Or, her more analytical mind argued, only that hemight.
“Fiona?”
She blinked and found him watching her expectantly.Clearly, he was expecting a response, some reaction to his tale and his proposal...No, he hadn’t even really proposed, had he?
“So, the timing is good for you now?”she asked evasively.“How convenient that I arrived in London just in time.”
Instead of being upset, Aylesbury had the gall to laugh then.“Don’t worry, I would have come about sooner rather than later.Perhaps it might have been later, I regret to say,” he sobered as he spoke.“I don’t think I’ll ever truly accept Piper’s disappearance as a permanent thing.I would have continued to look for her, sacrificing my future to save hers if you hadn’t come along again.”
And she could forgive him that, Fiona realized.She could even forgive his reasoning for all the times he had cut her short in Edinburgh if avoiding an entanglement with her had been his noble purpose.If their flirtation had indeed tempted him to act in a way he would consider dishonorable.
As for the rest of it, she wasn’t certain whether to believe Harry or not.Perhaps because she had been so badly burned by him before, she had to wonder if it was all just flim-flam.A tall tale to gain forgiveness.
Darting a glance back at him, she found him leaning back against the corner of the gondola, his arms crossed over his chest as he watched her.Turning away again, she stared sightlessly out over the city.
