His gaze flowed over her, heated and focused, but then he shocked her by shaking his head. “No. No, that isn’t what I came for.”
“What did you come for, Hugh?” she whispered.
“To talk,” he said, moving forward. “To try to make you see.”
She backed away with a shake of her head. “But I already see.” Her anger made her voice tart, and it was bubbling up stronger and stronger in her chest. Emotions she had never been allowed to feel or express. “You are going to keep me on the outside, and that is where I’ve always been. My lot, it seems, is toalmostbe part of a family. Toalmostbe loved and cared for. I thought I could have that with—”
She broke off and turned away, blinking at the tears that swelled in her eyes. She gripped her fists against the desk and tried to control the weakness that seemed to dictate everything in her body and soul.
“You thought you could have what you wanted with Aaron Walters,” he said, finishing her thought in a dull, empty tone.
She faced him slowly. “Yes,” she admitted softly. “And your hatred for him, for whatever reason you had it, took that away from me. Now you refuse to give me that desire here. So…I’m alone. In a house full of servants and people, I willalwaysbe alone.”
He held her gaze, nostrils flaring, hands shaking at his sides. At first, she thought he was angry, pushed too far by her refusal of him, by her bluntness when she addressed their circumstance. But when he spoke, his voice wasn’t angry.
It was broken, laced with the same pain she felt.
“I know how that feels,” he said. “I know.”
“How could you?” she asked with a shuddering sigh that she couldn’t hold back for a moment more. The weight on her shoulders was too heavy to even try.
He hesitated, and then he reached out. “Will you come with me?”
She blinked at the hand, that hand that had brought her so much pleasure in the past. Attached to a man she did not fully trust or know.
“Why?”
He bent his head. “If you want to know me, if you want to be let in to my world, as you say, thenpleasecome with me.”
Her heart stuttered. Was he truly offering her a way into his mind or his soul? And did she really want that? To be connected with the man who had destroyed her hopes and dreams, who confused her and made her want to laugh and cry and surrender and scream all at once?
It seemed she did, at some base level, for she nodded slowly and took the proffered hand. “Very well. Lead the way, Your Grace.”
Hugh felt the weight of Amelia’s hand in his like it was a boulder. Her soft fingers pressed into his palm, and it made him question his plan with every step as they walked across the large estate together.
He didn’t want to do this. And yet he did. It was utterly confusing.
“The woods here are a bit thick, watch your footing.” It was the first thing he’d said in the past twenty minutes they’d been walking. Amelia hadn’t pressed, just moved beside him in silence, as if she understood he needed that silence to calm himself.
They exited the path and he slowly picked his way along what had once been a trail into the deepest part of the woods. He knew it like the back of his hand, despite the fact that it had been years, a decade, since he last came here.
“There,” he said, stopping and pointing across the tangle of branches.
Amelia caught her breath, and together they stared at the little building standing dilapidated in a clearing not ten feet away. He smiled despite the strange ache in his chest.
“What is it?” she asked.
“The place where I came to escape,” he explained. “I built it—rather poorly, as you can see from its condition—when I was ten or eleven, during a summer my father insisted we come to Brighthollow so he could start teaching me how to manage the estate.”
“But you built a playhouse for yourself instead,” Amelia said softly.
He nodded as he released her hand and crossed the steps to the worn-out little house. It was so very badly built out of warped branches and rusty nails. Had he stolen them from somewhere? He could hardly recall. He did remember crying some afternoons as he banged away at the thing.
“Looking at it now, I think I’m lucky it didn’t collapse down on me and kill me,” he said with a laugh as he touched a wall and felt it buckle slightly.
“Why did you need to hide?” she whispered.
He didn’t turn toward her. He’d been thinking about telling her this story all night, but he couldn’t look at her. Not yet. Not yet.
