“I would rather have been alone for the rest of my life than marry a man I felt nothing for. I knew that at fourteen.”
“Even knowing what alone looks like,” he pressed. “In practice. Living it?”
“Even then.” She met his eyes. “I am not afraid of being alone. I am afraid of the wrong version of not being alone.” She paused. “Does that make sense?”
“Yes, it makes considerable sense.”
The music drifted through the glass—a new set beginning, the faint brightness of it reaching them out here.
“Not all arrangements are cold,” he said, after a moment. Quietly, carefully, the way he said things he had been turning over for a while.
She looked at him. “No,” she agreed. “Not all of them.”
“Ours–” he began.
“Was meant to be,” she finished. And then, because it was true and she was tired of pretending it wasn’t complicated: “That was what we agreed on.”
“We agreed on a great many things at the beginning that have not entirely held.”
She did not respond.
He turned toward her. “I told you from the beginning that I would keep my distance. That I would treat it as a duty and nothing more.” He looked at her directly, with the full attention that undid her more than anything else. “I have not been keeping my distance.”
“No,” she said. “You haven’t.”
“And you have not been–”
“No, I haven’t either.”
The garden was very quiet. Behind them, the warm light of the house pressed against the glass, and in front of them, the dark lawn extended into nothing. And here, in the lantern light, it was simply them and the cool air and everything that had been accumulating since a shore in Brighton.
He stepped closer.
She stayed exactly where she was.
His hand found her waist, and she could feel herself moving closer to him.
“I totally do not like that you feel cornered by other men,” he rumbled.
“Oh,” she breathed.
“I mean it. Especially not by me.”
She looked up at him. “And yet.”
His mouth twitched. “And yet.”
“You corner me rather consistently for a man with good intentions,” she said.
“I do. I’ve noticed that.”
“In your study. In the library. On the riding path. In the nursery.” She tilted her head slightly, despite the hammering of her heart. “In a garden, apparently.”
“In a garden,” he confirmed.
“And you always step back.”
His hand pressed slightly against her waist. “Not always.”
