“Come, come, Lady Ryan...”
“Bartholomew has begun the music...”
“No, Agnes, she wants her hair loose...”
Gabriel turned to the sound of the voices. Coming around the corner of the house, each hand pulled by one of his nieces, Ryan Daventry floated toward him. She wore a dress of deep magenta, the color of a stalk of foxglove. Her hair was long and flowing, with a crown of ivy and wildflowers ringing her head and streaming down her back. She looked to the girls, smiling and laughing, and Gabriel thought he’d neverseen anything so beautiful in all his life. The pinch in his gut dug deeper.
She looked up and around, raising her eyebrows at Bartholomew and his instrument; she nodded to the grooms who’d staggered to stand, staring at her wide-eyed, clutching their hats to their chests. She smiled to Killian and Elise.
When, finally, she looked to him, she stumbled a little, pulled off balance by the girls—but locked onto him with a gaze so intense. It was her first time to look at him, to really look at him, since he’d held her beneath the wagon.
I’m sorry, he wanted to say.
I want you.
I did this for you.
I want you.
Stay.
These were the vows he wanted to make. This was what he wanted to tell her. When she reached his side and the little girls fluttered and spun to their parents, the priest began. Gabriel repeated the words after the priest, only changing one thing. His name.
“I, Gabriel Phillipe d’Orleans...” he said.NotGabriel Rein.
It seemed less like a lie that way, and he did not want it to be a lie. He wanted it to be a wish. How long, he wondered, listening to her repeat her vows to him, had it been since he’d made some sort of wish? He’d stopped being afraid when he moved to the forest; started living on his own terms. But he’d also stopped hoping and dreaming and wishing. Heexisted.
Was this a foolish, unnecessary notion, he wondered. To wish?
Chapter Twenty-Three
“But you cannot leave so soon, Lady Ryan,” said little Marie Crewes. “You’ve married Uncle Gabriel and he must stay with the horses. Oyster will have her baby soon.”
Ryan stood over her open trunk, packing with Agnes. Although the wedding had been this morning and the Crewes’s dinner party was tonight, Mr. Soames could come at any time. He could come tomorrow. She would depart as soon as she’d met with him, no stalling to pack. Marie and Sofie Crewes sat on the foot of her bed, fingering the lace and crystals on the three dresses splayed out for her perusal. After she packed, Ryan would choose a dress to wear to dinner.
“I am loathe to leave you all,” Ryan said, smiling sadly at the little girl, “but I’ve sisters and a very sick father back at my home in Guernsey, and they need me. If your sisters and father needed you, you would go to them, wouldn’t you?”
“Well, my mother and Nanny look after my sisters and our father,” reported Marie thoughtfully.
Ryan smiled at this. She’d had a mother who looked after things once upon a time, too. In hindsight, it was reckless to put all the caregiving into the lap of oneperson; not only did it restrict that person, but what if she died? What then?
“What’s happened to Nanny?” Ryan asked, trying to change the subject.
“She has leaned too close to the fire and singed her eyebrows,” reported Marie.
“Ah yes. Well, there is no Nanny and no mother at Winscombe, so I must go, I’m afraid.”
“But when will you come back?” Marie asked.
“I’m not leaving tonight, so never you fear,” Ryan told the girls. “You’re selecting my dress, remember? When I do go, I’ve suggested to your parents that you might visit me. I live on an island, as I’ve said. How would you like to travel across the English Channel to a little island, to swim in the sea or stand on a cliff and watch ships come and go? We can awaken while it’s still dark and see the sun rise from the water like a creature emerging from the depths. What do you say to that?”
Ryan tried to make it sound as magical as possible, hoping to compel the Creweses to visit. She’d grown so very fond of this family; and now that the wedding had come and gone, she couldn’t envision herself returning to Mayapple. Gabriel had broken her heart with the beauty of the ceremony, with vows and the heartfelt look on his face. Wiltshire was simply too close to him. Ryan wasn’t certain she could survive her current broken heart; certainly she’d not survive having it broken again and again.
Her sole consolation was this: life as she knew it—her home, the independence, the lives of her sisters—was being restored. She’d achieved her goal in coming to mainland England. The only new piece would be hernewly broken heart. It was better, she supposed, thannotachieving her goal andalsohaving a broken heart.
“But have your parents said you may meet Bartholomew’s classmate?” Ryan asked. “This dinner for him and his family is meant to be quite the affair, I believe.”
“We may not meet him,” Marie recited. “We must remain with Nanny from supper until bedtime and there are no exceptions to this rule. Even if Nannydies.”
