“I am asking for an answer.” He squeezed her hands and earnestly searched her face. “Not about him. About me. Can you see a future with me? A life?”
She looked at him. He was a good, kind man with steady hands and warm eyes, for his love was comfortable and uncomplicated. He would never hurt her. He would never call her nothing in front of a crowd. Yet, he would never make her feel like she were burning alive, or the way her skin were too tight for her body, or as if she might die if he didn’t touch her.
He would be safe. He would be steady and reliable. And she would never love him. Not the way he deserved.
“You are a good man.” She said it softly, her fingers tightening briefly around his before she began to pull away. “The best man I know.”
“But?” He heard it coming. His expression shifted, his shoulders squaring like bracing for a physical impact.
“But I cannot.” Her throat closed around the words, and she had to force them out into the cool air of the storeroom. “I am sorry, Edmund. I cannot marry you.”
He didn’t flinch. He simply nodded, a slow and resigned movement, the way he’d known this was coming all along.
“Because of him.” It was not a question. He let his arms fall to his sides.
“No.” She shook her head, finally pulling her hands completely free and tucking them into the folds of her apron. “Because of me. Because I would be settling. And you deserve more than a woman who is merely settling for a life she doesn’t truly want.”
“You love him.” He said it flatly, without inflection. He watched her with a piercing clarity.
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t. The words stuck in her throat like shards of broken glass.
“You don’t have to say it.” He released her and stepped back, reaching for his hat where it sat upon the sugar barrel. “I saw it that night. I saw the way you looked at him when you thought no one was watching.”
“I refused him.” The words scraped out of her, raw and ragged. She gripped the edge of a shelf until her knuckles turned white. “I told him no.”
“I see.” Edmund settled his hat on his head, his movements deliberate and graceful. “But refusing someone and not loving them are not the same thing.”
“Edmund.” She reached out a hand toward him, but he was already moving toward the door.
“I hope you find what you are looking for, Nell.” He paused at the threshold, looking back at her with a gaze that held bothsadness and a quiet acceptance. “I hope he makes you happy. Truly.”
He left then. He moved quietly and gracefully, like the gentleman he’d always been. Nell stood alone in the storeroom, her whole body shaking with a chill that the kitchen fires couldn’t warm.
She’d refused Edmund. She’d turned away the safe choice and the sensible choice. She’d rejected the man who would have given her stability, security, and a future she could count on.
And for what? A man she’d slapped and told to stay away? A man she hadn’t seen in a week? She didn’t love Dominic. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t. But she couldn’t say yes to Edmund either. She couldn’t condemn him to a loveless marriage, nor could she use his kindness as a shield against her own cowardice.
Daphne appeared in the doorway. “He is gone?”
“Yes.” Nell replied.
“And?” Daphne leaned against the doorframe.
“I said no.” Nell pushed past her, heading back toward the shop and the safety of her work. “I said no, and that’s the end of it.”
Daphne didn’t follow. For once, she let Nell go without further questioning.
The day went by in a rush of customers, bread, and copper coins.
Nell smiled when she was supposed to smile, while she spoke when she was supposed to speak. She moved through the motions of her life while, inside, she felt a hollow stillness. She didn’t think about Dominic. She refused to. She didn’t think about the ball, or his hand on her waist, or the way he’d bent lowto breathe against her ear. She didn’t think about the study, or the shock in his ashen eyes when she’d struck him.
She thought about nothing at all.
Night came, and the children went to bed. Lily went with her stack of books, and Oliver with his quiet, heavy watchfulness, yet Martha retired to her room. The shop grew quiet, and the fire crackled low in the hearth. Daphne lingered by the door, her cloak already fastened and her basket over her arm.
“You did the right thing.” Daphne said it quietly as she looked at her friend. “With Edmund.”
Nell looked up from the counter she was wiping, her hand stilling on the worn wood. “Did I?”
