I swallowed hard. I could not meet her gaze. “Yes.”
“Will you return to London? Stay with us instead of renting a room?” she asked. “If I’m to wait, at least give me that.”
I looked down and rubbed the back of my neck. “I could never ask for an invitation.”
“I am inviting you.My father will not bat an eye. Indeed, I should think he would be pleased at our getting on so well.”
She smiled, but I could not return it. I did not feel it. What if I couldn’t manage things? What if recovering my annual income took a year, or more? How could I make Anna wait? How could I avoid telling Mr. Lane everything for that long? Keep another secret? I wouldn’t.
Anna grasped my arm. “I shall invite your mother too. And your sisters. I daresay Ginny will love the shops.”
I grimaced, thinking of all the things she’d want. On top of all the things she actually needed.
“Or the gardens,” Anna quickly corrected. I could not meet her eye. “Hyde Park. No one needs the shops when there is Hyde Park to explore.”
“We should return,” I said.
She stiffened beside me, only relaxing marginally when I offered her my arm.
We walked back up the shoreline, up the path, back home where everything came more clearly into view.
The chips of paint on my shutters.
The unpolished door handle and the creak as I pushed it open for Anna. Old carpets, and even older furniture because we had focused so much on having a home and less about what it looked like for company.
I hadn’t cared before. But now ...
I led Anna to the staircase, which I assumed she’d follow up to her room, then trudged toward my study.
ChapterThirty-Two
Anna
I was losing him.
It wasn’t my place to ask after the account Graham had lost, but the loss inspired enough fear for him to retreat, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was losing him in the process.
What could I do? I wanted to be his companion, the person he shared the heavy weight of trials with, not his burden. And yet, a burden was exactly how I felt.
And completely helpless. As soon as he left me at the foot of the staircase, as soon as he’d turned his back, reality had set it. The reality of a goodbye as soon as Papa arrived to claim me, paired with an uncertain future afterward.
My heart had swollen and twisted; its pain burned my throat and behind my eyes. I’d cried after hearing about what Mr. Lennox had done, but this was different. These tears seeped out straight from cracks in my heart, and I could not control them.
Graham loved me, but he would not ask for me. I wanted to believe that he’d find another account, but what did I know about accounts? I’d seen Graham worried before, heard his serious mumblings with my father in times past, but thiswas different. This loss had shattered things, and I could do nothing to fix it.
After Mr. Lennox, I’d cared so much about the opinions of others. I’d worried they might talk about how stupid I was to fall for a man already engaged. What they might think of me. What their judgments might do to my reputation.
How foolish I felt now for caring about such minuscule things. My feelings for Graham felt so big, so mountainous, everything else seemed so small.
Opinions? What were opinions and judgments against love? I’d choose love any day, with no thought to who might hate me for it or who would drag my name through mud and filth because of it. That’s how big my love for Graham felt.
I’d thought he felt the same. Perhaps, as he’d said, he still did. But what happened when love wasn’t enough? When circumstance forced two people apart no matter how enormously they loved?
I’d only just rinsed my face and dried it when Mariah peeked inside.
“Your father is arriving,” she said, closing the door behind her.
Despite all he’d kept from me and how angry I still felt at him, I felt a sudden urge for his safe embrace. I swiped fresh wetness from my eyes, trying desperately to calm my wobbling chin.
