She chuckled and reached up. Gently, she flattened her palm on his chest above his heartbeat. She spread her fingers. A star-shaped imprint radiated from her handprint, burning away the chill. “My responsibilities have been abandoned for far too long. Diana and Charlotte cannot manage everything alone. And I miss them. I can’t stay here forever. Neither can you. I know you miss your camp and your animals. You have commitments to clients.
“I do not mean to manipulate you with this news, Gabriel,” she continued. “Truly. I’ve no misguided notions that you’ll volunteer suddenly to commit to anything more than we’ve already— Well, to anything more. I know I’ll never see you, ever again.”
“I believe it’s too early to say Mr. Soames won’t interview you for days—for a week or more. If we knew what the solicitor required, we would not need to hire the man.”
She shrugged and teased a hand through his hair. “I disagree, but we’ll find out when he comes, won’t we?”
Gabriel dropped his face to her shoulder, pressing his lips to the bare skin beside her sleeve. “When were you going to tell me?”
“When I saw you? After I played hide-and-seek with the girls? How can I tell you if I cannot find you? You can be difficult to locate, Gabriel.”
“I’m sorry,” he said—and it was true. He felt sorrow so very deep, all the way to his bones, to the soft center of his heart. She couldn’t leave him yet. How could he let her go?
“I found you once, but I grow weary of seeking you out. Really I do. With the solicitor in place, I’ll have what I came for. If, also, I found what I didnotcome for, I will leave that behind. That has been our arrangement from the start, hasn’t it?”
He slid his arms beneath her and bundled her against him. He buried his head in her hair and squeezed with all of his might.
I’ve fallen in love with you, he thought, tears stinging his eyes.
“We have no arrangement,” is what he whispered into her ear.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Gabriel surprised them all by asking to hold the wedding at his camp in Savernake Forest. Sister Marie located a priest who was willing to marry them, but the man was disinclined to preside over the already unorthodox wedding in an Anglican chapel. If they must have the wedding outside, Gabriel said they might as well enjoy something different than their everyday experience in the well-trod garden of Mayapple. And if they convened in his camp, his grooms might stand witness.
With Mr. Soames expected at the beginning of the week and the priest only available for a day, their timing was limited. The chosen day happened to fall on the very same as the dinner party Elise planned for Bartholomew’s school friend and his family. Elise offered to cancel the party but Ryan begged her to carry on. There was time enough for a morning ceremony in the forest and the evening dinner. The family would be away for the wedding and Mayapple staff could prepare for the party. The forest venue allowed for two events to occupy the same day.
It also allowed Gabriel to reveal his camp to Elise and her husband without an official unveiling. If thewedding took center stage, Gabriel could share Savernake Forest without having to explain his life there in quite so many words.
Ryan would not make more assumptions about the logistics of the wedding than that. It was a gesture meant to heal a family, not a sign that their marriage was anything more than—
Well, anything more than what it was. Which was a means to an end that protected her. She could also acknowledge that his camp was comfortable and familiar to him. He was being forced to marry her after all; why not do this unwanted thing in the place he wanted most of all?
If Ryan also found favor with the forest... if she looked forward to returning to his cave-cottage, well... they’d both gotten what they wanted. Or, half of what they wanted. Ryan wanted the wedding—though it was “in name only.” She didn’t want a marriage of convenience, but that was her destiny. At least she would do the thing in a beautiful ancient wood, in the cool September air, with the leaves just beginning to turn, and Gabriel’s cabin as a backdrop.
“But were you really blindfolded the first time my brother brought you to his camp, Ryan?” asked Elise, nudging her horse closer. They rode through Savernake Forest in a long, winding procession. Gabriel led the way with little Marie in his lap. Killian Crewes rode with Sofie next. After that, Sister Marie and the priest. Bartholomew, God love him, drove a small wagon containing the maid Agnes, wide-eyed and clutching the sides, and a trunk with Ryan’s wedding dress. Elise and Ryan were last in line. Only Baby Noelle had been left behind with Nanny. Thewoman had suffered a severely burned tongue from hot chocolate but was convinced to mind the baby for the morning.
“No, not blindfolded,” Ryan told her, “but he did ask me to close my eyes. It’s a very great honor, I assure you, being invited to this camp. You should count yourself lucky.”
“Well, the journey from not knowing him at all, to his sporadic letters, to being a wedding guest has been a long one, indeed. But the real champion today is you, Lady Ryan. It’s no small thing to forsake all others and marry my brother, especially because he promises you so very little.”
Ryan chuckled sadly. “I’ve had my own journey with him, haven’t I? When I first met him, he told me Prince Gabriel d’Orleans was dead. He wouldn’t even tell me his name. And now he’s marrying me. So. He does things in his own time.”
“That is a very gracious view for someone who is—I hope you don’t mind me saying—obviously very fond of him. It has been clear to all of us that you share some affection.”
Ryan smiled. “It’s an open secret that we are not enemies, I suppose. Matters were not helped by these last weeks together at Mayapple. You are terrible chaperones, which I suspect was by design. It was sweet, your subtle encouragement.”
“Not enemies, indeed,” said Elise. “But he refuses to claim you as his actual wife in every way. This could be seen as short-sighted at best. At worst? Selfish. If I’m being honest.”
“Our faux union is not a rejection of me, it is a safeguard of his own freedom.”
“Yes but will that freedom keep him warm at night?” asked Elise.
Ryan cleared her throat but made no reply. The caravan of horses had turned eastward, bearing into the steadily rising sun. Dappled sunbeams illuminated the canopy overhead. All around them, autumn leaves twirled from the treetops. They dropped to the forest floor and created a patchwork of orange, and yellow, and brown. It was so beautiful, it made Ryan’s heart ache. Or perhaps Ryan’s heart ached because Elise was right. Gabriel had chosen his freedom over her. She did not begrudge him this, but there was sadness to sacrifice.
“Lady Ryan?” Elise asked, “if my brother asked you, would you leave your family and live in the forest with him and raise a family?”
Ryan closed her eyes, shutting out the beauty of the forest. This was a painful question. The answer—yes—floated into her mind like a falling leaf. But living in Savernake with Gabriel—which, it should be remembered, he’d not asked her to do—would steal her purpose as caregiver and steward to her own family. The real answer was more like,maybe. Someday. After her father’s health improved or he passed on. After Diana and Charlotte were married and the estate was self-sufficient. When everyone could get on without her. If, after the great many years it might take to achieve these, he still wanted her—of course she would come. If he hadn’t met someone more convenient or beautiful or bold. She hadn’t lied when she’d said he was starved for a woman’s touch. Another truth: Any woman would want him. He was beautiful, and passionate, and capable, and—even if he fought it—regal in his own, rustic way. Reuniting with his sister was only one of many returns to civilization that he would make. Next, Pewsey. After that, Marlborough. The women would come.
