Annalise, with a pure heart and beautiful soul.
Annalise, the type of woman he didn’t deserve… but damned if he wasn’t going to try to change himself into the type of man that did.
When he felt a hard peck on the back of his leg, he turned and scowled down at Constantine who glared right back at him out of a beady black eye. “I am working up to it,” he growled at the goose. “What would you have me do, just knock on the door and admit that I was wrong? Tell her that I was a bloody idiot for walking away, because when you’re fortunate enough to find love at first sight, you don’t leave it behind. You hold onto it with everything that you have.”
“Yes,” a soft, musical voice said from behind him. “Yes, that’s exactly what you should do.”
Derrick’s swallowed with difficulty as he slowly turned back around to discover Annalise silhouetted in the doorway, her blue eyes luminous through what he prayed were a sheen of joyful tears.
“You…” When his tongue stuck the roof of his mouth, he swallowed again and cleared his throat. “You weren’t meant to hear that. Not yet. I’m still working on it.”
“Some of the best poetry is composed without planned forethought.”
“Poetry?” he said, aghast. “I wasn’t… That isn’t…no.”
Bollocks.
This wasn’t off to a great start.
“How did you find where I live?” she asked, canting her head to the side.
She’d changed, he noted belatedly. From the violet dress she’d worn in the park to a pale green gown with capped sleeves and a heart-shaped bodice that threatened to draw his eye to a place where he wouldn’t want to be caught staring. Not now, at any rate. Not when he was already bungling the matter top to bottom.
“The geese brought me. You must have a hole in your pocket, because there was a trail of corn all the way here.” His brow furrowed. “Howdoyou hold such an immense amount of corn, anyway? It defies the laws of matter.”
“I had my pockets specially made. They’re far deeper than they appear. That way I never run out if I ever meet other geese along the way.” Annalise frowned. “I’d never want them to go hungry.”
“Of course you wouldn’t,” Derrick murmured as a smile, his first true, genuine smile since he was a boy, spread all the way across his countenance from the edges of his mouth to the corners of his eyes. “Wild geese fending for themselves? We couldn’t have that.”
Annalise bit her lip. “Can you say it again? What you said when you thought I wasn’t listening.”
“Must I?” he asked with a pained grimace.
“I think it would be best.”
“May I come in, at least?”
Her gaze went past him. “Well, I don’t want the geese to feel left out.”
Constantine honked in agreement while Marcus preened his feathers and Augustus studied his reflection in a puddle.
Derrick sighed. “All right. A public declaration it is, then. How did I start?”
“You were going to tell me that you were an idiot-”
“A bloody idiot. Yes, I remember now.” He took a deep breath. Perhaps the deepest of his life. And then he laid his heart bare. “I was a bloody idiot, Annalise, for walking away from you this morning. I said it was because I wasn’t good enough for you. The devil knows that much is true. You should be with a man better than me. You should be withanyman other than me.”
She raised a brow. “Because they all have gout and smallpox?”
“Yes. Precisely. And because I am not a pillar of virtuous behavior. But I want to be, when I am in your company. When I am with you, the sun is brighter. The sky is bluer. The grass is softer under my feet.”
“You’re wearing boots.”
He gave her an irritated look. “I amtryingto create poetry, if you don’t mind.”
Her eyes sparkling, she pressed her lips together and nodded for him to continue.
“What I am trying to say, in the most eloquent way possible, is that I love you, Annalise. At first sight. At last sight. At every sight. As incredible as it seems, given our short acquaintance, I love you.”
