She laughed, giddy, her head spinning with bluebells and memories of Cass as he’d been then, a sweet, lost boy who was searching for a place to belong. “Well, to be fair, theyareweeds.”
“So, they are.” He reached up to pluck one of the tiny blooms. It was more of a tunnel than a walk, with walls of lilacs on either side of them and hanging in dainty clusters above them. It was cool and quiet inside, as if they’d stumbled into their own private world.
“I shouldn’t have…” He paused and blew out a breath. “I shouldn’t have scolded you as I did in Lady Fosberry’s garden yesterday. I was shocked to see you in Berkeley Square, and I didn’t acquit myself as a gentleman ought to do. I beg your pardon.”
His words were a balm to her bruised heart, and she let her eyes drop closed for an instant as they weaved a spell around her. But there were so many unanswered questions between them still, and nothing would ever be right again until she asked the one that made it feel as if the weight of the world had settled on her chest.
The one that had broken her heart.
“Why did you stop writing to me, Cass?”
He didn’t answer her, not at once, but brought the blooms to his nose and inhaled, drinking them in as the silence lingered between them, as heavy as the sweet scent of lilacs.
Finally, he tossed the bloom aside and turned to face her, and his eyes…dear God, but there was a world of pain in those dark depths that astonished her.
“I’m the Earl of Windham, Hattie, and the Windham earls are not good men. A friendship with me would only end up hurting you. You deserve better than that.”
There it was, the answer to the question she’d asked herself a thousand times, the question she’d shed a thousand bitter tears over. Perhaps it should have comforted her to have the answer at last, but it didn’t.
It broke her heart all over again.
“You don’t get to decide that for me, Cass.” She grabbed his arm, her fingers tightening until somehow the fine material of his coat was twisted in her clenched fist. “You don’t get to throw away twelve years of friendship as if it meant nothing to you.”
“Is that what you think, Hattie? You think it meant nothing to me? It meanteverything, but it’s better this way, better if we don’t?—”
“No, it isn’t! How can it be better for us to no longer be friends?”
“It’s not as simple as?—”
“You’re not like your father, Cass! You may be the Earl of Windham now, but youarea good man.” She clutched his coat, her eyes holding his, because maybe if she could make him look at her, he’d see the truth in her face.
“You don’t understand, Hattie?—”
“I do! I understand everything. Iknowyou, Cass. I know you better than anyone else ever has or ever will.” She slid her hand to the center of his chest and rested it there, over his heart. “I know youhere, inside your heart.”
She hadthe bluest eyes he’d ever seen. Years ago, he’d looked into her eyes, and something had clicked into place inside him. He’d been hardly more than a child then, but even so, he’d known he’d never again find eyes as blue as Hattie Parrish’s.
Not cornflower, or bellflower, or even bluebell-blue, but a blue all her own, such a deep blue looking into them was like hurling himself into the ocean.
Her eyes had ruined him for every other pair of blue eyes in England.
He shouldn’t touch her. Touching her would only confuse things, and it was already so complicated between them, but he was reaching for her, and then he was touching her, her smooth cheek warm against the palm of his hand.
He gazed down into the endless blue of her eyes. “Tell me what you’re really doing in London, Hattie. I know you too well to believe you came for the season.”
“W-why…” She cleared her throat, the slender line of her neck moving in a rough swallow. “Why else would I have come?”
“You tell me.” He caught a lock of her hair between his fingers, unable to resist caressing the silky strands. “The truth this time, Hattie.”
“I—I already told you the truth.”
She hadn’t. He knew her words for a lie before they were even out of her mouth. She’d never been able to lie to him. “Tell me again.”
She closed her eyes, her eyelashes brushing her flushed cheeks, but when she opened them again she met his gaze, and for an instant he was in Kent again with the thick branches of her brother’s beech tree swaying between them.
“I-I came for the season, and…and to hear Sir Joseph Banks.”
If he hadn’t known her as well as he did he might have believed her, but even after a decade apart, he knew her as well as if he’d spent his entire lifetime with her.
