“Because you’re a man,” she answered simply. “You’ve always done something wrong. And if you haven’t done it yet, you’re about to. Have you tried the stone garden? I showed it to Miss Thorncroft earlier, and she seemed taken with it.”
The stone garden.
Without bothering to bid his sister farewell, Weston stormed out of the dining room with its eggplant chairs–the most hideously ugly color he’d ever seen–and veered left, using a delivery entrance to access a narrow, rarely used path that wound around the edge of the glass solarium and through a grove of silver birch before leading to a green labyrinth comprised of round boxwoods and tall hedges. Thin cut slices of granite rock, set directly into the ground, made a trail of stepping stones that eventually led to the middle of the maze where a statue in the likeness of the late Marchioness of Dorchester had been erected after her death, thus giving the garden its name.
When Weston and Brynne were children, they’d made a game of losing themselves in the labyrinth. With its many twists and turns, it wasn’t difficult to do. But Weston was in no mood for frivolity, and he cut through the hedges with the ruthlessness of a scythe slicing through wheat.
He found Evie at the center, sitting on a bench beside the statue of his mother.
To see them together, one in stone and the other in flesh and blood, halted him in his tracks. He’d known these two women for such brief periods of time. His mother, less than an hour. Evie, less than a week. And yet they’d both had such a strong impact on him.
The Marchioness of Dorchester had given him life.
And Evelyn Thorncroft…Evelyn Thorncroft had made himfeelit.
The anger. The passion. The frustration. The pleasure.
For so long, all of those emotions, all of thosefeelings, had been lying dormant inside of him. Shielded behind an impenetrable wall of ice. Until Evie strolled in with her chisel in hand and went to work.
The wall remained standing, but she’d managed to chip off enough pieces to create a deep crack that ran the length of his heart. And through the crack had slipped the tiniest amount of warmth…just enough to begin thawing the edges of all that cold.
“Miss Thorncroft.”
She lifted her head at the sound her name, and he was relieved to see that her eyes were dry. But for the hint of red underneath, and the linen handkerchief crumpled in her right hand, she might have never been crying at all.
“Go away,” she said frostily. “In case it was not clear, when someone retreats to the middle of a hidden garden, they wish to be left alone.”
“It’s called the stone garden, actually. That is my mother, there.” He nodded at the statue. Set on a marble pedestal, it depicted Lady Dorchester in a standing position with her hands linked behind her back and her head raised to the sky. The folds of her gown were simple, as were the lines of her countenance. But the sculptor had skillfully captured her gentle grace and that, more than her face or dress, had been her defining characteristic.
Occasionally, Weston was given to wonder how his upbringing might have been different if his mother had lived. Would it have meant a childhood spent at dinner tables and family gatherings instead of his room, a place made even more isolating by the knowledge that no parent waited for him downstairs? Would it have meant praise for a job well done, and kind encouragement for when he could do better? Would it have meant an eagerness to return to Hawkridge Manor after being away at school, instead of the quiet dread that had grown louder and louder with every turn of the carriage wheel?
“Your sister told me who the statute was when we came here earlier.” As Evie rose from the bench, the stern brackets around her mouth softened. “She was beautiful. Your mother. It must have been very hard to have never known her.”
As his gaze shifted from the statue to Evie, it occurred to him, somewhat belatedly, that they hadbothlost a parent at a very young age. And it was because of that communal loss that they were standing here, together.
If Weston’s mother had not died in childbirth, his father would have never fallen in love with an American debutante. For despite all of his flaws (which were numerous), the Marquess of Dorchester was a loyal man who would not have stepped out on his wife. And if he never had an affair with Anne Thorncroft, they never would have conceived a child, thus unraveling the thread that bound Weston and Evie together.
The marquess never would have given his wife’s ring away.
Weston never would have had reason to go searching for it.
And Evie never would have come to London to get it back.
With all the people in the world, and an ocean between them, the odds of their paths ever crossing was so miniscule it was all but incalculable.
To have never known Evie…the shape of her smile, the light in her eyes, the smell of her perfume, the taste of her lips…it would be like looking to the heavens every night and never seeing a shooting star.
When his stomach twisted unpleasantly, as it sometimes did when he ate or drank to excess, Weston swiped a hand across his face. He needed to get ahold of himself. Any more melancholic thoughts like those and he’d begin spouting poetry or some other such nonsense.
Not meeting Evie would have been a bloodyblessing, not a tragedy.
Any ideas to the contrary were just further proof that he was losing his mind.
Or maybe he’d already lost it.
Either way,shewas to blame.
This tempting minx who’d set his world on fire…and they were both burning with it.
