“You don’t seem surprised.”
“I was when I first heard.”
I sigh. “You spoke to Lady St. Laurent.”
“At length. Shall I reenact my surprise for your benefit?”
“Faith, AJ! I’m trying to tell you why I cannot marry you.”
He tips his head, studying me with intensity welling in those gold-green eyes. “Very well, then. What is the reason, Merryn Forsythe? In your estimation. Why can’t you marry me?”
Desire eclipses reason and I cannot speak for a moment. I look away. “I should think it obvious. You don’t know who I am.Idon’t even know.”
“My background wouldn’t impress anyone.”
He may come from plain stock, may have danced around the country from this position to that, but at least he knows every unfashionable detail of his life. Knows for certain who and what he is. “AJ, I’m afraid I’ve…that is, what if I’ve already promised myself to someone?”
There.It pulses out in the open, a thudding silence after my simple words.
He runs his fingers along his jaw, considering this. “No wedding ring?”
I shake my head. There was no ring or even the mark of one after the accident.
“And you’ve run an advert?”
I didn’t want anyone to come looking for me when we placed that advert…until they didn’t. We were certain someone would appear—maybe several people, for the advert was prominent—but the silence that followed hollowed out my heart and left it quietly hungering to be filled.
Which AJ filled in an instant. He continues to, even now, with a flood of warmth. “Then it would seem you’re free to do as you wish. And with the blessing of Lady St. Laurent, who granted you the funds for this wedding so you might continue on with your life.”
A sob rises in me, a fresh wave of missing her. “Lady St. Laurent felt indebted to me.”
“Because you were in her employ?”
I shake my head. “The position came later. We met when she struck me with her automobile.”
A frown. “For which she wasgrateful?”
Apparently she didn’t tell him these details. “I saved her grandson, Cecil, when she nearly struck him with her automobile.” She’d announced she was capable of driving the new luxury vehicle, I was told, and her pronouncement was often sufficient to make something true. Yet not that time. The only things I recall about that day is the sight of a tiny boy, with his elfin ears protruding from beneath his cap, the roaring green automobile careening his way, and that forceful, nearly visceral urge to spring in front of him and roll the boy to safety. “It’s how I lost my memory. She hit me instead of him.”
His eyebrows rise. “You’re doing a miserable job of dissuading my interest.”
“Really, Ansel. Be sensible. There might be anything behind that closed door—and one day it will open and spring upon us.”
He leans close in the cool breeze, wrapping both my hands in his. “Do you wish to have done with me, Merryn Forsythe? Have your wishes changed? If so, I’ll escort you home.”
I flinch at the wordhome.My charming room adjoining Lady St. Laurent’s has been a refuge since that accident—its narrow brass bed, flower-embroidered coverlet, and the faint scent of roses that always lingered in the air. In the days when life felt impossible, a giant game to which I’d lost the rule book, that small room had anchored me.
I never imagined leaving…until the will was read. It granted me a small fortune, made me guardian of Cecil and trustee of his inheritance, but her daughter Sabine inherited the house.
Yet the will had been read. It granted me a respectable stipend and guardianship of Cecil, but deeded the house—my dearly loved sanctuary—to Sabine. After the wedding breakfast there, a condition upon which Lady St. Laurent insisted, I would not belong there anymore.
AJ was to have been my sanctuary, my own corner of the world. Glancing at him, I ache for it to be real.
“Merryn?”
Tears warm my eyes, blurring the sight of his dear face. His dear, kind face that always appears when the day is at its worst.
He smiles, tipping his head and lifting my hands to kiss them. “You’re so pretty.”
