“She truly is lovely.”
Hugh turned to find his sister coming to the terrace wall to stand beside him. They watched Amelia for a moment, and then he sighed, “She is that. Beauty personified.”
Lizzie shot him a look. “You would never be interested in mere beauty personified, but with no depth. So I know she is more than that.”
Hugh nodded. There was no denying her words. Amelia was far more than her exquisitely beautiful face. She was light and intelligence. Kindness and frankness. She was everything.
And he didn’t like acknowledging that. It felt so damned dangerous to let himself feel it after such a short time. After all the lies.
“She told a pretty story of being swept away by you,” Lizzie pressed. “Very romantic. But I know you, brother dear. I know you are not the kind of man who is carried away by heated emotion.”
Hugh shifted. It seemed every woman in his life was determined to look through his hard shell and poke at the hidden soft spots beneath. “You make me sound cold as ice.”
Lizzie’s lips parted and she grabbed for his hand. “You know I think you nothing of the sort. I know your warmth and caring, your deep capacity for love and patience. I only meant that you ponder, you consider, you weigh options.”
Hugh couldn’t argue with that. His sister knew him far too well. “And so?”
Lizzie’s gaze shifted back to Amelia below them. “I cannot believe that you simply saw this woman across a crowded room and decided to leap into a lifelong commitment within days.”
Hugh almost laughed, though her description gave him no pleasure in the slightest. Nor did the truth, at present. “It wasn’t a room. I looked at her from a terrace much like this one and knew what my future would hold.”
She wrinkled her brow. “Why?”
“I wanted to…” He sighed. “Protect her. Be near her. Save her.”
“Save her?” Lizzie repeated. “What did she need saving from?”
Hugh glanced at her. He could see Lizzie’s worry clear on her face. And if she knew the truth…oh, how it would devastate her. It had been over a year since her ill-conceived escape with Walters, and he sometimes still caught a shadow of grief, pain, fear, regret on her face. She held herself utterly responsible for her decision, to the point that he suspected it kept her up nights.
If she knew Amelia had been engaged to Walters, herself? If she found Hugh’s new marriage had been undertaken merely to thwart that bastard’s cruel intentions?
He had a feeling his sister would spiral back into a deep and powerful sadness that had terrified him for months. And he feared it would damage her budding relationship with Amelia, who his sister seemed to like so much right away.
So she could not know the truth. Just as Amelia could not know the truth. The lies were difficult—they went against what he’d always believed to be his nature. But that was how it had to be.
“You worry too much,” he said with a smile as he took her arm. “I appreciate it more than you know, but it is unnecessary. Amelia is my bride and I am…” He trailed off and glanced down at her again. “I am discovering every day what that means to me.”
His words didn’t seem to fully appease Lizzie, but she rested her head briefly against his shoulder. “I only want you to be happy.”
He leaned down to kiss the crown of her head and barely held back a sigh. “I am doing my best to be just that. Come now, let’s join Amelia in the garden, shall we? I’m certain no one could give her a better tour of this estate than you.”
Lizzie worried her lip, and he could see she had a hundred questions, a thousand fears. Only she said none of them. She shrugged and said, “Very well.”
She had surrendered, because it was in her sweet nature to do so, to trust and believe in him even if he didn’t deserve it at present. So as he took her down the flight of stairs that would lead them to Amelia, he felt worse than ever. For deceiving her, for deceiving his wife.
And perhaps, if he looked close enough, too close, deceiving himself, too.
Amelia sat on the settee in the parlor, slippers off and legs tucked up beneath her, and laughed as Hugh and Lizzie put on a shadow puppet show of epic proportions on the wall across from the dancing fire. It was clearly something they had done many times before, for they were truly wonderful at it, twisting their hands into fish, fowl and animal alike. They even had characters and laughed together as they made them interact in funny voices.
It was yet another side to Hugh that Amelia had never expected to find when he stormed into her parlor and made his devil’s bargain with her father. She’d tried so hard to harden her heart to any of his good qualities in London, despite the desire he engendered deep within her.
But now…here in his home with his sister near him, there was no denying that the man she’d reluctantly married had much more depth to him than the stern surface she’d been so frightened of when they first met.
All day she’d seen his many faces. He’d been quiet as Lizzie took her on the grand tour of the estate, smiling as his sister waxed poetic about the library and the music room and chiming in here and there as tales were told of their childhood in this place. Sometimes she caught him watching her, a look of anticipation on his face, and she was drawn back to the moment the night before when they had looked up at this beautiful manor house and he’d asked if she approved.
He wanted her to love this place as much as he and Lizzie clearly did. Even though it didn’t really matter what Amelia’s opinion was. This was her home—circumstances dictated that to be true. But he still wanted her to connect to it.
And she did. How could one not? It was beautiful, sophisticated, but still somehow warm and welcoming. The servants were kind and seemed happy and well taken care of. The grounds were vast and beautiful. She had never dreamed of such a lofty situation when she dreamed of her future as a girl, but somehow she didn’t feel out of place here.
