“You knew I was out walking?” she asked.
“I did. Your maid told me this morning and I saw you from my study window not long ago. I thought you had headed to the beach, though, so I believed I would not disturb you if I took my exercise in the woods.”
She nodded. “I intended a walk along the beach, yes. But when I started down the dune path, the wind was too high.”
“Ah,” he said. “Say no more. The breezes can be fierce on the water this time of year, even when it feels still above. I shall leave you to your place here.”
He turned to go, though he ached at the idea of leaving her, but her soft voice kept him from walking away. “I am not ready to discuss our…situation,” she said.
He forced himself to turn slowly. “I would not dream of asking you to advance whatever timetable you need, Jane. That is why I will not trouble you.”
“We could walk back up together,” she suggested. “If the topic of your letters, of our separation, will not be one that requires pressing.”
He stared at her, with her wide blue eyes and her soft lips. The woman he loved. Truly, deeply. She was offering him a connection, despite her misgivings. He would be a fool not to take it. To take anything she was willing to give and hold on to it with both hands.
“I would be very happy to walk with you,” he said softly, and stepped forward to offer her a hand.
She blushed as she placed his letters into her pocket and then took the hand he held out. He tucked it into the crook of his elbow, and together they turned back toward the house. For the first few moments, he let the silence hang between them. It was not entirely uncomfortable, to walk with her and not chatter on, though she glanced at him from the corner of her eye more than once.
At last she said, “You have a fine property, Colin.”
He nodded as they crested the hill and the castle rose up before them, gray and craggy and mysterious. “I loved it here as a boy. I imagined a thousand ghosts running through the halls, found a dozen hidden places to explore.”
She smiled. “It is hard to picture you as a child, my lord. You are such a…aman.”
He laughed. “When you say it like that, it does not sound like a compliment.”
Her smile broadened. “I only mean you are so very serious.”
“I am that,” he said with a sigh. “I took on a great deal of responsibility at a young age. I had to behave in a way that was seen as ‘right’ or feel the consequences. I put away the ghost stories and hidden passages a long time ago.” He glanced at her. “I admit, I…miss that. Miss being carefree.”
She turned toward him as they entered the garden maze with the house looming up above them. “You could always be carefree when you chose to be. No one has to be serious at all times.”
He could not help himself. Slowly, he reached out a hand and traced her cheek with his fingertips. She tensed, but didn’t pull away and he saw her pupils dilate with pleasure, with desire, with even more. It gave him hope.
“Perhaps one day you can help me better remember that.”
She swallowed hard. “Perhaps,” she said.
That one word, said so softly, almost so that it didn’t carry on the breeze, had so much power. Enough to nearly knock him off his feet because it held in it all the promise that there could be a future. That there could be forgiveness.
That there could be a marriage to this remarkable woman.
“I will take that,” he said, stepping back. “Thank you for the walk, Jane. If you…if you need me, I will be here. Waiting.”
She nodded slowly and then turned toward the house, leaving him to watch her as she stepped up the stairs and onto the veranda. Just before she disappeared from view, she stopped and looked back at him. Her blue gaze held his, and then she slipped away.
Leaving him to hope, to pray, that the future was closer than ever.
Jane nodded at Laura as the maid gathered up the gown she had been wearing that day and folded it over her arm. “Will that be all, my lady?”
Jane nodded. “Yes, thank you. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Laura bobbed out a curtsey, then stepped from the room, leaving Jane alone. Alone as she had been most of the day. Her walk with Colin aside, she had not seen him otherwise. She had eaten alone, read in the parlor alone, walked the halls alone. Like her husband wasn’t haunting these halls like the ghosts he had described imagining as a child.
She smiled at the thought of a young Colin, playing here. Wished she had known him then, before whatever harshness and responsibility that had been laid upon his shoulders had changed him.
Laura had drawn her covers back, and Jane threw herself onto the bed without pulling them up. She flopped an arm over her face, trying to calm her wild mind before she allowed sleep to come.
