“Your dream, Meredith? Remember your dream? A handsome young man falling to one knee at the Midsummer Night’s Ball?”
Tears shone in her eyes. “You remember that?”
“Of course I remember it. You deserve that, Meredith. You deserve all of your dreams to come true.”
She shook her head sadly. “That was just the silly ramblings of a girl, Griffin. You know how these things go. Marriages are often like business arrangements. Besides, Maxwell is aduke.”
“You keep saying that, pointing out that he’s a duke as if it means something.” Disgust sounded in his voice. He could hear it. He couldn’t help it.
“It does mean something,” she shot back.
“I never thought it did…to you.” His voice was angry, accusatory. This couldn’t be happening. He was in a bad dream, and he would wake up at any moment. “What about Ash? What does he say?” Griffin knew he was grasping at nothing. What could Ash do to stop his father? Nothing. But Griffin couldn’t just stand here and allow this to happen.
“Ash says it’s up to me. He said he’d help me run away if I choose to.”
“Then run! Run, Meredith!” Griffin scrubbed a hand through his hair and paced away from her.
Her angry, panicked voice sounded behind him. “Are you mad? Ash was only jesting. I can’t leave. Where would I go? I’d be ruined.”
“But you don’t love him.” Griffin’s voice was more severe than he’d meant it to be.
Meredith’s humorless laughter cracked off the stone balustrade. “Love? What if there’s no such thing as love, Griffin?”
“Marry me then.” The words flew from his mouth. He turned back to face her, fell to one knee, and grabbed her hand. “Please, Meredith, marry me. We’ll go to Gretna Green. Tonight. Please, I?—”
She’d wrenched her hand from his and took a step back. “Now who is being flippant?” Her face had turned to a mask of stone. “Marry you out of pity? Never.”
“It’s not pity, Meredith, I?—”
“Stand up!” she yelled, tears falling from her eyes. She was sobbing and Griffin’s heart was breaking.
Her tears brought him to his feet.
“I never thought you of all people would do this to me,” she cried.
“Do what? Offer you something better than marriage to an old man?”
“I didn’t tell you about this to ask your permission, Griffin. Nor did I expect you to understand. But I never thought you would fail to support me when I needed it. I never thought you, of all people,would make me doubt myself. Didn’t you hear me, Griffin?The contract has already been signed. I have no choice.”
Griffin clenched his jaw. But his fear and anger and hopelessness spurred him on. “Is that what you want? A loveless marriage to an old man you barely know?”
Meredith’s jaw was clenched too, and the tears had stopped. Now, anger blazed in her storm-colored eyes. “I. Have. No. Choice. And if you cannot be happy for me, or at least pretend to be, then go.” Her arm shot out, and she pointed directly toward the French doors at the far side of the verandah.
Griffin nearly crumpled to his knees then. He could think of a thousand other things he needed to say, and they all began with “don’t do it because I love you madly,” but he couldn’t push the words past his lips because somehow, somehow he knew. Meredith would marry Maxwell no matter what Griffin said. She had already made up her mind. She would never go against her father’s wishes. Even though that awful man had never deserved her loyalty, Meredith loved her father. Lord Trentham had chosen a duke for her, and she would marry him, old man or no. He’d further ensured her compliance by telling her it was what her deceased mother wanted. Lord Trentham knew precisely what he was doing.
And in that moment, Griffin realized—knew in his soul—that Meredith was lost to him. Telling her his feelings now would only make things worse for her. But he’d be damned before he would pretend to be happy for her.
“Then I’ll go,” he said quietly, holding his breath, filled with all the pain and longing in his heart as he turned and made his way unerringly toward the doors.
Griffinhadgoneto the Continent. But not to travel. Instead, he went to war. For one simple reason. Because hewas clearly lacking in courage. He hadn’t even been able to bring himself to tell the woman he loved how he felt. He’d been about to say those words that night. He’d been about to blurt out how much he loved her just before she’d ordered him to stand. What in the hell had kept him from it if not fear? A coward didn’t deserve Meredith’s love.
Besides, would it even matter? Griffin was no duke. He was only the spare. Hadn’t that been pointed out to him time and again by his father and brother throughout his entire childhood?
The sick irony was, Griffin had won many medals for courage in battle. Fought through rain, and sleet, and snow. He’d done things on the Continent he’d never dreamed of and seen things that still haunted his sleep. And there had been more than a small part of him that hoped he’d never come back. He couldn’t bear the thought of seeing Meredith with Maxwell. It made his stomach churn.
Oh, he’d written her. He’d written her, and she’d written back, and they’d both pretended as if that night on the verandah had never even happened. It was their one unspoken rule. In their letters, he never mentioned the war, and she never mentioned her marriage. All nice and tidy and bloody wellfake.
But a fake relationship with Meredith was better than no relationship at all. So they’d written about the weather, and his rations, and the lateston ditswithin theton,and how theflowers were faring at Maxwell’s country estate. And one day, in a letter from his mother, Griffin received the news that Maxwell was dead. Not long after, the war was over, and Griffin made his plans to return to England.
