Letters between Hughand I had been superficial, with a forced casualness that left far more unsaid than said. I spent nearly a full day attempting to find words to announce my return.
Far too much wasted parchment later, I settled on a cursory, “I am returning to Kent. I should arrive in a week’s time, perhaps eight days.”
I signed it simply, Kate, as I had all my letters. Anything else was too formal or too intimate. If there was one thing I did not want to be, it was “too.”
As the carriage pulled to a stop in the round drive, I could not help but recall my first visit to Thornton Hall.
My honeymoon.
How imposing the redbrick building once was, with its stories, wings, and towers. Now though, it was familiar, welcoming. Even though my reception there was likely to be far from pleasant, I was glad to be home. Uneasy, nervous, terrified, but glad, nonetheless.
I had barely stepped from the carriage when the door flung open. Hugh skidding to a stop in the gravel before me. Out of breath and gasping for air, he stared at me. His hair was overlong and scraggly. His beard, too, was overgrown and unkempt. Wrinkles were etched into the linen of his shirt and the silk of his cravat.
Quite frankly, he looked like rubbish. Unbearably handsome rubbish.
Seeming to remember himself, he straightened slightly before saying simply, “Welcome home.”
And just the smallest bit of my unease melted at his words coupled with his painfully earnest expression.
* * *
HUGH
Her letter arrived only a few hours before she did.
Forty-eight days. And, somehow, the three or so odd hours between receiving her letter and her arrival were the longest of them all.
I lived more than twenty years without her. Somehow forty-eight days had seemed an eternity. And now she was in front of me, close enough to touch, and I had no idea what to say.
I had raced out here, slipping on the gravel drive and nearly landing on my face. Surely, I looked like a schoolboy desperate for a present when his father returned from travel.
She had nothing to say in response to my daft greeting. Instead, she surveyed me, a slow perusal from the tip of my head down to my feet.
Though it lacked physicality, that look burned, low and interested in my belly. Distractedly I ran a hand through my hair. That’s when I remembered just how slovenly and disordered I looked.
No wonder she was staring in astonishment, it was not interest but disgust. “Sorry. I, uh, I did not receive your note until a few hours ago. I had not yet found the time to set myself to rights.”
“Don’t.” The response seemed more reflex than thought, and she looked as shocked to have said it as I was to hear it. “I mean, no need on my account.” Her cheeks were flushed most fetchingly and her eyes downcast.
“I should have put more effort into my appearance before your arrival, it is disrespectful.”
She was staring somewhere in the vicinity of my creased cravat when she answered, quiet and low, “I… maybe keep the beard?”
She wanted me to keep the beard? She liked it?Stevens could shove his lectures then. I ran a hand across the growth of several days. It would be inappropriate in town, but here, in the country…
The early autumn breeze tossed her scent my way. It was even lovelier than I remembered.Shewas even lovelier than I remembered. Unlike me, Kate was in perfect order, her deep teal gown was pristine and wrinkle free, not a curl out of place, not even a smudge to be found on her leather gloves.
How could I have thought her “too” anything, unless it was too exquisite to be beheld?
She shifted, adjusting her weight, transferring her bonnet from one hand to the other, discomfited. The movement shocked me from my inane silence. “Of course, if it pleases you. It will certainly vex Stevens, which is always amusing. He will be unhappy though, he was counting on your influence.” The half joke, half statement of fact earned me a small, gapped tooth smile. I missed that gap, it was quite charming really, lending a sweetness to her countenance that matched her heart.
“Send him my way. I shall endure his wrath.”
“Oh no, it is my wrath to endure. I just got you back—I could not bear for anything to send you away again.”
I recognized the intimacy implied in those words only after her eyes widened slightly in response. I could not bring myself to regret them. The sentiment was certainly true.
Rather than draw further attention to my slip, I offered her an arm to escort her into the house.
