He inclined his head, accepting the rebuff with graceful good humour.
“Then I shall simply endeavour to provide agreeable distraction. Might I have the pleasure of driving with you in the park tomorrow afternoon?”
She should refuse.
She knew she should refuse.
Every moment spent in Lord Weston’s company was a small deception, a performance of possibility she did not truly feel.
But Lady Ashworth’s words echoed faintly in her thoughts.
Protect yourself. Leave the door open to happiness.
“I should be delighted,” she heard herself say.
Lord Weston smiled, and Fiona returned the smile, though neither of them spoke of the shadow that lingered between them—the ghost of a man who was not there, who might never be there, yet whose presence Fiona felt in every hour of every day.
That night, unable to sleep, Fiona sat at the small writing desk in her chamber and did what had become her habit on restless evenings since arriving in London.
She drew.
The sketchbook had been a gift from Lady Ashworth, presented with a knowing look and no explanation. Fiona had accepted it without comment and had since filled its pages with images she seemed unable to stop producing.
Thornwick Castle rising from the cliffs like something half-remembered from a dream.
The yellow parlour, rendered in careful detail from memory.
The library, with its towering shelves and deep leather chairs.
The ruined chapel in the mist, wildflowers threading through the ancient stones.
And Christian.
Always, eventually, Christian.
She drew him as she had first seen him—a towering silhouette in the storm, hair whipped by the wind, his coat streaming behind him. She drew him in the training hall, shirt open, the birthmark visible across his chest, fierce and magnificent and utterly unaware of it. She drew him sleeping, his face softened in rest, one arm reaching instinctively toward the empty space beside him.
Sometimes she drew only the birthmark itself, again and again, filling page after page with that wine-dark shape. She knew its contours as intimately as she knew her own hands—had traced it with her fingers, her lips, her tongue. It was a map of him, she thought. The geography of the man she loved.
She was adding shading to a sketch of his profile when she realised she was crying.
The tears fell silently, dripping onto the paper and blurring the careful lines she had drawn. She watched them fall without attempting to stop them. What did it matter? There was no one to see. No one to comfort her. No one to hold her in the quiet darkness and promise that everything would somehow be well.
I shall love you for the remainder of my days.
His words, written on a single sheet of paper now tucked carefully into her reticule beside the handkerchief that still faintly carried his scent. She had read the letter so often she could recite it from memory, could hear his voice shaping the words as clearly as if he stood beside her.
But he was not beside her.
He was hundreds of miles away in his crumbling castle, perhaps persuading himself even now that he had done the right thing. Perhaps drinking too much and sleeping too little, allowing the old loneliness to reclaim him—just as it had before she came.
She wanted to save him. Wanted to return to Thornwick and throw open every door he had closed, to drag him into the light whether he wished it or not.
But courage could not be forced upon another person.
She could not make him choose love over fear.
She could only wait—and hope—and trust that somewhere within him the man she loved was fighting his way free.
