“Was there leftover coin?” I ask, sucking in a breath to cool my inadvisedly large and volcanically hot bite.
“Nope.” He pops a cherry into his mouth. “Nicked it from the till after I carried you upstairs.”
“Criminal,” I tease, stroking my tongue over the burned roof of my mouth. “Did you ev?—”
“Charlotte?!”
I lift my head to see my cousin Lizzie hurtling a pram over the packed dirt. She skids to a halt, pram abandoned, and throws herself upon me in a crushing hug.
When she pulls back, her eyes are shining. “My god, Charlotte. They thought you were dead.” I’m baffled she would have been so upset by my absence. Also a little touched. “I visited Granny’s cottage, but there was no sign of you. I’ve been going back every few months to see if … Where have you been?”
I unravel the tale I’ve spent the morning inventing. That I couldn’t stomach another Season. That I used my inheritance to fund that continental trip Granny Maggie and I had been dreaming of but had never taken. I introduce her to my “husband”—Lachlan was both delighted to contribute to the ruse and annoyed that I thought I had to ask permission—and she’s just as enamored by him as the other women in town.
“And who is this little angel?” I ask, peeking into the pram upon the most adorable, chubby-cheeked baby girl, soundly asleep despite her mother’s careless driving.
“I married adukeat the end of that Season,” Lizzie says, immediately turning the conversation back onto herself. I suppose she wouldn’t be Lizzie if she didn’t. It doesn’t bother me as much as it used to. “Charles Cranford, son of the Duke of Mewsbury. Temperance Houghton was livid. She still hasn’t made a match.”
Lizzie cackles, victorious and cruel. Well on her way to the life of a vulture in Seasons to come. I stroke a fingertip across the baby’s tiny palm, say a prayer that she’ll find happiness regardless of her mother’s schemes.
“The title of Favourite paid off,” Lizzie finishes.
Lachlan’s hand at my lower back tenses. We cannot form thediamrhánin the human realm, but I am dying to know where his thoughts have strayed. He knew I wasn’t the Favourite, but I hope he’s not thinking things could have been easier for him if Lizzie had been the one he found that night.
“What are your plans for the evening?” she asks. “Mother’s hosting a dinner party. Oh, youmustcome. Everyone will want to meet your dashing new husband, and?—”
“We’ve been married for two years, actually.” Lachlan grabs my hand and runs his thumb over the silver ring. “The minute I spoke to her, I said to myself,here is a woman I want in my life always. So, not precisely anewhusband.”
I stare at him, this human ghost in the shape of my faerie knight, and am hit with such an overwhelming wave of gratitude and longing that I hardly know what to do with it.
“New husband, old husband, no matter.” Lizzie waves her hand, and a coo rises from the pram. “You’ll come then? Both of you?”
Once my brain catches up with reality—rather than whirring around the possibility of a truth buried in Lachlan’s role-playing—I respond with, “Of course. Actually, do you think Aunt Teddy would mind if we popped over now? I want to show Lachlan the art collection. And there are a few things I’d like to retrieve before we return to the continent.”
Lizzie hefts her baby into her arms—heavens, I must be just as self-centered as she is; I didn’t even ask the child’s name—and she blinks rapidly. “Oh, your sketchbook, do you mean? I’ve kept it for you. I’ve been certain someday you’d return. You’re, um, very talented, Charlotte. I’m sorry if I never told you. Let me get Mary settled again, then I need to finish my shopping and we can walk to Stillwater together, yes?”
“That sounds lovely,” I say, though Lizzie has already turned her attention to baby Mary, bobbing her gently as she pushes the pram away.
“What was in that sketchbook, I wonder?” Lachlan’s whisper at my ear sends shivers down my spine.
“Nothing you haven’t done to me at least twice,” I murmur.
“Hmm.” He slides a hand around my waist to pull me closer. “Why don’t you show me, and we’ll replicate a few before we‘return to the continent’,wife?” He bites my neck and I giggle.
“Oh, Charlotte!” Lizzie shouts from halfway down the market lane. “I forgot to mention. You’ll never guess who’s coming to dinner tonight.
“George and Jane Somersby.”
Chapter
Forty-Seven
Stillwater Hall is as sprawling and stately as ever, her red-brick chimneys cresting the alders as Lizzie guides us up the path. If the Fitzroys do not notice I remained unchanged after two years away, perhaps it is because their ancestral home is similarly ageless.
And though I may look the same on the outside, inside I feel eons away from the woman I was when I last walked the manor’s hallowed halls. Then, I was heartbroken, mourning the death of a relationship that had never even existed.
Now, the heartbreak is still there, but it’s reformed around different primary materials. A grief I haven’t even experienced yet.
I slide my gaze toward Lachlan, who’s assessing the doors, the windows, the roofline with the eye of a knight who’s always thinking three steps ahead. He’s holding my hand, idly stroking his thumb along my palm.
