"I... was just wondering how to answer that." He sounded faintly amused. "After all, I'm not a duke. Or an earl."
"I won't hold that against you. After all, you look like an Adonis. Everything can be forgiven for that, apparently."
His coat rustled, as if he turned toward her sharply. "How did you—?"
"The maids are all aflutter. Even Cook commented about those pretty eyes, and the only thing I've ever heard Cook refer to men as is 'trouble,' or 'not worth it.' My companion seemed to prefer your thighs, though I'm not going to repeat any of that," she said firmly. "Mrs. Pendlebury should be ashamed of herself. She probably would be, if she'd known I was listening. There has never been a man like you at Tremayne Manor before, apparently, and considering the wealth of visitors streaming through the door inquiring after their futures, that is something to be said indeed." She tilted her head. "You're quiet again."
"I am actually wondering if there is some hole somewhere that I can crawl into and hide," he drawled. "You are... not at all what I was expecting."
"Were you anticipating a poor little blind girl, sitting in her attic, hoping nobody would pity her?" Cleo couldn't stop the tart hint to her tongue. Gravel stopped crunching beneath her feet, and she turned automatically, finding the path again. Another thirty or so steps to the lake and the folly.
"No, I—"
"And why would you be expecting anything at all?" she continued, hunting for truths. "I thought you were here to see my father. Why would you have even cast a thought my way? Most people generally don't. I think my father prefers it that way." Her voice roughened. "Then I can be his little secret, locked away in my secret garden."
All she could hear were the ducks, the buzzing of insects, and someone, perhaps one of the gardeners, yelling something in the orchard a mile away.
"Well, considering we're to marry, I did give you some thought."
Cleo dropped the basket. "What?" She couldn't have heard that correctly. Could she? And why on earth could her Divination not warn her that there was a handsome, taciturn stranger in her future, one who felt like danger?
Gravel shifted. He was picking up her basket and the items within it, kneeling at her feet she suspected. She couldn't move. She wasn't entirely certain what she was even thinking, or felt at this moment. She should have been angry. How dare her father do this to her? Not even a mention of it! Not even a by and by... Or at least an introduction.
She didn't know this stranger, this Sebastian. And now he was going to own her and make her decisions for her, and oh, my goodness, she hadn't thought it before, but he was probably going to expect heirs from her.
Mrs. Pendlebury's mutter about those thighs sprang to mind. She hadn't quite understood it at the time, though she had some idea, and now she was going to find out exactly what Mrs. Pendlebury had meant.
Knock me over with a feather...
"I'm sorry. My mother said a special license had been prepared, so I thought your father had told you that you were to marry, but you had no idea, did you?" Sebastian knelt at her feet, and she could feel his gaze on her face.
It was doing its best to rival a sunset, judging from the heat in her cheeks.
"I'm–I'm..."
"Speechless," he said. "Well, there's a first."
Cleo shut her mouth. Premonition had fallen willfully silent. There was not a single itch along her skin at all.
"I wanted to see what you were like," he murmured. "Might I enquire how old you are?"
That made the floodgates open. "What, you didn't ask? What kind of marriage is this?"
"This... wasn't entirely my choice. I discovered the fact only hours ago, when my mother sent me to deliver the letter agreeing to it. I forgot to ask about you. I was too furious, considering the wedding is set for tomorrow."
"Tomorrow? But— When... I don't—" She was speechless again. And livid with her father. Did he intend to simply inform her on the day and expect her to happily don her wedding gown before marrying a stranger?
There was nothing to say to that. Absolutely nothing. But her father was going to hear about it, oh yes. Taking a deep breath, she rubbed her temples. It wasn't Sebastian's fault. Nor hers. And he had asked her a question, hadn't he? "I am one-and-twenty. I've been here at Tremayne Manor all my life, so it may seem I'm more sheltered than most. No doubt I am." In some ways. In other ways, she had Seen quite enough of the world—of disaster and blood and torn bodies, of changing weather patterns, sorcery, maliciousness... visions that woke her up at night and left her with no rest.
The worst one was the one that seemed to recur, over and over again. London's Doom, she liked to think it. An enormous hovering cloud of roiling darkness that crept over the horizon of London, with flickers of lightning dancing within it. Only, she wasn't certain it was lightning, after all. She'd seen so many horrible things, and this was but a cloud, and yet it was the most frightening thing she'd ever predicted. There was... so much emptiness to it. So much pain. It made her heart bleed, even as she wanted to run screaming.
Cleo shook the thought away. If she dwelled on such things, she'd spend most of her life crying. Bad things happened. If she let them, they would make her life nothing but a nightmare, and she refused to live like that.
"Well, that is some relief," Sebastian said, standing and delivering her basket back into her hands.
"That I'm sheltered?"
"That you're not a child."
