I was.
As if anticipating my reaction, Miss Lyons was standing very close to Owen, grinning at me with a catlike resemblance to her mother. She must have taken my quip that afternoon personally, and it seemed she was out for revenge of some sort. My gaze shifted to Owen, who looked at me with a question in his eyes. The memory of our last conversation flooded me with discomfort.
And that was only the beginning.
Soon he would know that I had been pretending to be engaged to him, and I would die from the mortification.
I stood from my chair, not even attempting a false smile. The effort wouldn’t do any good. The truth was coming out tonight whether I liked it or not, and that was certainly not something to smile about. I stopped a few feet too far in front of Owen and tipped my head down in a polite bow. His hesitant eyes made my heart fall to my stomach. The room was painfully quiet.
“Well, I should expect a bit more affection from you two!” Alice said with a laugh. “You are engaged, after all.”
There. She said it. My face burned with humiliation.
I couldn’t look at Owen, so instead I looked at Mrs. Everard. She stood far to the left near the fireplace, and I was surprised to see a twinge of guilt in her expression. I wanted to run away. I could feel the heat from my face tingling on the tips of my ears. How could I have let this happen? I should have contradicted Mrs. Everard the moment she told this lie. Instead, I had spent two days living it.
I dared myself to glance at Owen. He was looking at Alice, his brow knit in confusion. Only a second later, he met my gaze.
His expression was impossible to read.Why isn’t he denying it? And why is Mrs. Everard not explaining?I shot a desperate glance at her, but she remained silent, as if waiting to see how Owen would react.The silence in the room was too thick; I was suffocating in it. So without permission, my feet carried meforward, around Owen, and out the door where the air was fresh and I could drown in my humiliation alone.
I didn’t stop walking. Not when I heard the creak of a door opening, not when I heard footsteps falling behind me, and not even when I heard Owen call my name. I didn’t stop walking until I was outside and Owen’s hand closed around my elbow.
He didn’t speak, he only breathed and waited for me to turn around.
The silence outside seemed greater somehow, filling a larger space than just a small room. Sweeping up every last bit of courage I could muster, I turned to face Owen, grateful that the dim moon was our only light.
“It was your grandmother,” I said, my voice too quick. “The moment everyone arrived, she-she told them that we were engaged. Every opportunity I had to contradict it was interrupted in some way, so it carried on for far too long.” I paused to breathe. “I told her to confess, but she refused. I think she took pleasure in torturing me.” The parts about Miss Lyons were absent from my explanation, but I was too afraid to say her name—to see his reaction.
I stared at the buttons on his jacket for a long moment before I was brave enough to look up.
A flash of hurt crossed his expression. “Was it truly such torture to be engaged to me?”
His question caught me off guard, burning my face and making me increasingly flustered. “No, I mean—it was the fact that Mrs. Everard continued to lie about it. Everyone was put under false pretense, and that was what tortured me. You did not, in fact, offer a proposal, and everyone assumed that you had.”
I hated the way my heart raced talking to Owen about this, standing so close to him in the dark, with only the tiny starsas companions. I hated the way he was standing, with his arms folded tightly, looking down at his boots with a scowl on his face.
When he finally looked up, he stepped toward me at the same time, making my breath stop in my throat.
“Well, suppose I had?” His voice was careful, quiet enough to match the silence around us.
My heart flipped in my chest and I stepped backward almost frantically. “What do you mean?” I asked with a fake laugh. My voice shook.
Owen’s eyes didn’t abandon their softness and determination as they searched my face. He repeated himself, slowly, and in a low voice that made chills travel down my arms. “Suppose I had proposed to you. What would it have been?”
I fought against the pain spreading through my chest. I had wounded him with my words in the library, and now he was testing me again. It was clear that he was probing for an answer that might heal the injuries I had inflicted on his pride. I was not trained in the matter, but I understood enough to know that this was the moment a lady might offer encouragement to a gentleman. She might give him reason to hope that a real proposal would be well-received. My heart raced, and a strong sense of longing overtook me.
I had read Aunt Ruth’s letter over and over that day, and the words were still etched in my mind.If you do not come back and marry Mr. Frampton, I will be sure to keep Peter and Charles apart from you in the future by any means necessary.
My gaze dropped to Owen’s jacket again. It was impossible to look at his eyes, not with his closeness and that question lingering in the small space between us.
When I didn’t answer, he slipped a bent finger under my chin and nudged it up, forcing me to look at him. It was the very thing I knew would unarm me entirely. The moonlight cast his face dark in shadow. His jaw was clenched tight in anticipation, hiseyes searching every inch of my face. Silence thrummed between us, heavy and insistent. It was devastating to consider that Owen might have chosen me, yet I could not have him.
I could not have him.
I felt the foreign threat of tears as a knot in my throat. I pushed it away, replacing my longing with a sense of duty.
“Please do not continue like this.” My voice cracked as I spoke. “You are my friend, and I—I need you.” I swallowed. “I need you to remain as such.”
He swallowed, and a muscle jumped in his jaw. My heart broke open inside me, but I crossed my arms to keep it together. Owen’s eyes lacked their usual playfulness, but harbored an anguish that I didn’t know how to fix. There was nothing I was at liberty to say that could make it go away.
