Please,she thought, closing the sketchbook and pressing it against her chest.Please, Christian. Find your courage. Come back to me.
The night gave no answer.
At last, exhausted, Fiona slipped into bed and surrendered to sleep.
She dreamt of Thornwick. Of Christian. Of a future that might never come to pass.
And when she woke the next morning, her pillow was damp with tears she did not remember shedding.
***
The days continued to pass.
Fiona attended balls and soirées. She danced with Lord Weston and half a dozen other eligible gentlemen. She smiled,curtsied, and exchanged the required pleasantries, and no one seemed to notice that her heart was absent from all of it.
Lady Ashworth noticed, of course. But she possessed the tact not to comment, merely observing Fiona with those keen, knowing eyes and occasionally sighing when she believed herself unobserved.
Her mother noticed as well—and was considerably less discreet.
“You must make more of an effort,” Helena Hart declared during one of her increasingly frequent visits. “Lord Weston is clearly interested, and his family appears willing to overlook your… indiscretion… in light of your other advantages. You cannot afford to squander such an opportunity.”
“I am not squandering anything, Mother.”
“You are,” her mother insisted. “You drift through these events like a ghost, Fiona. No spirit, no animation, no enthusiasm. How do you expect to secure a proposal when you appear as though you would rather be anywhere else?”
Because I would,Fiona thought.Because there is only one place I wish to be, and one man I wish to be with—and neither of them are here.
But she did not say it.
In these weeks of exile, she had learned to keep her true feelings carefully concealed—to present the world with apleasant, empty composure while her heart quietly fractured beneath it.
“I will try harder,” she said instead. “I promise.”
Her mother appeared unconvinced but allowed the matter to drop.
That night, Fiona took out the handkerchief again.
She pressed it to her face, breathing deeply, searching for the scent that had once clung so strongly to the linen.
It was almost gone now.
The sandalwood. The soap. The indefinable trace that was simply Christian.
In another few weeks, it would be nothing more than cloth—a square of linen embroidered with a birthmark that meant nothing to anyone but her.
And then what would remain?
Memories. Sketches. A letter whose folds had begun to wear thin from constant reading.
It was not enough.
It would never be enough.
But it was all she had.
***
One month after her departure from Thornwick, a letter arrived.
