Page 101 of Forget Me Not

“I have something for you.”

That brought her gaze to him once more. Tears still hung in her eyes. Her heart would ache for some time for the little boy in the castle. “You do?”

“It isn’t a bribe, simply something I ought to have given you weeks and weeks ago, regardless of how our wager ended.”

Realization pulled her eyes wide and brought a little brightness to them again. “My gift from your Grand Tour.”

He reached into his pocket. “I obtained it in Paris. I knew as soon as I saw it that it was meant for you.” He set the little bundle, brown paper held together with ribbon, in her hand.

She didn’t open it immediately but looked at it with brow drawn, remaining in his arms. “I am still amazed that you thought of me while you were in Europe.”

“I have thought of you every day of your life, Julia.”

Her lips pressed together but still trembled. When she spoke, her voice emerged heartbreakingly quiet once more. “Then why did you never write to me or visit me or miss me enough to want to see me again?”

Lucas leaned back a bit and gently cupped her face. “Because I’m a fool.”

Sadness touched her eyes once more, and his heart broke at the sight. “All I wanted was to matter to you.”

“My Julia.” He pulled her closer once more. “You are the world to me.” He brushed one of her tears away with the pad of his thumb. “I mean to make certain you never have reason again to doubt that.”

“And I don’t want you tonotgo to Portugal or tonotcontinue traveling with the Gents. Truly, I don’t. I know that is important to you.”

“Youare important to me.”

“Do you remember how I learned that you were moving to Brier Hill eight years ago?” she pressed.

She’d told him recently, but she needed to tell him once again, so he let her.

“Robert Finley told me. He taunted me with it. Over the years that followed, he made a point of telling me when you had returned for a visit while I was away, that you obviously had not bothered to tell me of your impending return so that I could be here or you had made certain I would not be before deciding to visit.”

Robert Finley was, indeed, the worst sort of person. One Lucas had unknowingly armed.

“You said you would write to me,” she said. “But you didn’t. You knew I was in Berkshire the few times you came here, but never made the relatively short trip to visit me. You never invited me to visit you.” Another tear fell. “If I were important, your plans would include me, not overlook me. But I sometimes wonder if they ever did or ever will.”

He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “You tell me how you want to spend this first year of our life together, and I will make sure it happens.” He set his arms around her. She didn’t pull away. “Tell me where you’d like to go, what you’d like to do, and we will do all of it. And if at the end of that year you are still unsure where my priorities lie, we will spend the next year doing the same, for however many years you need.”

From within his embrace, she asked a question he could not possibly have predicted. “Could we go to Portugal?”

“You’d like to travel?”

“I do still have a preference for home,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean I am adamantly opposed to literally everything else.”

Hope and excitement filled his heart.

“I will certainly not travel as often as you do, but I would like to be included sometimes.”

“Whenever you’d like,” he said.

“I think I would enjoy traveling with you.” She sounded entirely sincere. “I did, after all, spend an entire night on this bridge with you, and you didn’t let me fall in the river or anything.”

His heart had seldom come so close to jumping right out of his chest. She didn’t mean to insist he abandon his love of travel. Better still, she wanted to undertake it with him.

“Though I’ll need some tutoring in Society’s expectations,” she said, “I think we should go to London for the Season. I know you enjoy being there.”

It was quite possibly the most concise lesson he’d ever learned in trust and forging connections. She was willing to embrace his preferred pastimes, but he’d not shown her the same willingness. He’d made her feel unwanted and unwelcome. He’d made her cry.

He vowed there and then on that magical stone bridge that he would change. He would dry tears instead of cause them. He would be a welcoming and protective presence in the lives of the lonely and vulnerable. He would be better. He would do better.

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