I nodded again and pulled my wrap tightly around my neck. The cold had finally managed to seep through me.
“Then I need to go home, tell Julia, and prepare.” He turned to leave.
I placed a hand on his arm. “Wait.”
His shoulders tightened before he turned hesitantly back toward me.
“What should I tell Mama?”
His expression relaxed. “Whatever you think is best.”
I rubbed my face. We’d had only a day of truth between us. Did I dare inform her that David, the man I’d told her I wanted to marry,was willing to marry me but not able to commit to staying married to me? “What are you going to tell Julia and your brother?”
“They will need to know the truth. I don’t want them to think I’m taking advantage of your situation. But anyone else will see nothing other than a typical marriage between us.” A soft smile formed on his lips. “That is something I never thought I would have.”
He still wouldn’t. Our marriage would be anything but typical, yet ... I could feel his longing for it. What kind of monster was Lord Murphy to have broken his son so thoroughly that he couldn’t become part of a healthy marriage? Life was terribly unfair at times, and there was little I could do about it.
Or could I? I could do for David what he’d done for me when we’d entered into our engagement. I swallowed down my worries—all my concerns about what to tell Mama and whether or not I would have the strength to leave David when the time came. If we had a finite amount of time together, I wanted to spend it in a way that would make him happy. “And whatdoesa typical marriage look like?” I asked with a raised eyebrow.
He understood my intention immediately. I could tell by the look of wonder in his eyes and his long pause before he carefully added the first item on what was to be our marriage list. “Breakfasts together.”
I nodded. That would be very simple. “What else?”
“I’d love it if my wife would spend time with my sister.”
“And I would love to do it.”
His lashes lowered, and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “And I think touching you would become ordinary. Something that is a part of my life for every day we have together.”
I stepped into him, my nightgown swishing in the small space between us. “And stolen kisses? Should we keep that on our list?” I asked.
He looked up, raising a hand to my face and putting his finger and his thumb under my chin. “No,” he said firmly. I blinked down my disappointment. That was probably for the best. He lifted my chin. “Once we are married, there will be no reason to steal them.”
The room brightened. “There will be kisses?” I pressed.
He nodded.
Smiling, I leaned into his touch. Perhaps I wasn’t to be a sister to him after all. “I think we should begin with that one.”
“I’m not your husband yet.”
“Then I think you should go fetch the vicar.”
He laughed softly and shook his head as if he weren’t certain what he was going to do with this new wife of his. “I’m going to keep you safe, Anna. I want that responsibility, and I want you to know I’ll take it very seriously. Nothing is more important to me than that.”
Then, because suddenly it was the most natural thing in the world, he leaned in and, without touching me anywhere else, pressed an achingly gentle kiss to my mouth. It was brief, but more than a light brush—he lingered just long enough for the warmth of his lips to wash away the most pressing of my fears.
And then he turned and strode away.
W
Chapter 15
“It has been one year since Anna left. I wanted to do something, so I went empty-handed to the Mortensens’. She’d always brought a basket with her, but they invited me in anyway, even though they knew who I was.”
—David Tate, 1842, Age 15
In the end, I couldn’t tell Mama our marriage was to be temporary. I wasn’t completely convinced we wouldn’t eventually find some way to thwart David’s father. The man couldn’t live forever, could he? I did tell her David was marrying me only to help us, but Mama pushed that thought aside as if it were the most ridiculous thing I’d ever said. Even when I told her we weren’t going to have the wedding in the church, all she did was shrug. The only thing that gave her pause was that the marriage was to happen without Lord Murphy being present.
