Page 89 of Forget Me Not

“Then I don’t understand the difficulty.”

“You are intending to leave the country for weeks and have never even mentioned it,” she said.

“I would have said something before I left,” he insisted.

Allowing her more than a moment’s notice of his departure hadn’t even occurred to him. He certainly wouldn’t think to extend an invitation to join him on a journey. International trips felt beyond her purview, but she could have gone with him to Plymouth or to the other Gents’ houses.

“How often do you suspect you will be away from home?” She was proud of the hard-won steadiness of her voice.

“I am not generally at Brier Hill for more than a handful of weeks throughout the year.”

A handful of weeks.She swallowed against the sting in her chest.A handful of weeks.

“And you mean for that to continue to be the case?” she asked.

“I won’t be away as often as I have been in the past, but I couldn’t stop traveling altogether, stop having any adventures.”

She watched him, waiting for him to assure her he would not be gone too often or too long, perhaps even invite her on one of his excursions, maybe say that building a life with her meant as much to him as his grand adventures.

“I couldn’t live that way,” he said, clearly thinking she hadn’t understood. “That isn’t living, Julia. That would be a waste of the gift that life is.”

Being with her, building a life and eventually, she hoped, a family, would be “a waste.” She was, as always, the discarded bit of his life, the part to be tossed aside and forgotten. She was a weight. An inconvenience. A poor option. A waste.

“Like suffocating,” she said quietly, repeating his words to the duchess the night before.

He nodded. “Precisely. I need to breathe.”

A feeling of soul-deep exhaustion washed over her. “How soon will you be leaving for Plymouth?”

“That will depend on when everyone means to impose on Digby’s hospitality.”

The gentlemen retook their conversation once more, discussing among themselves schedules and considerations. She was not consulted nor included in the planning.

Lucas intended to leave Brier Hill within the week. He would be gone for months. She wasn’t meant to be part of any of it. He gave no indication that he was at all hesitant to leave her behind or be away for so long.

She didn’t begrudge him his love of travel; combining two lives required some sacrifice and compromise. But it felt as though, on this vital matter, she was the only one doing either. He meant to leave whenever doing so struck his fancy, staying away as long as he pleased, and didn’t intend to include her in those crucial decisions.

She could not give up without trying at least one more time. “How likely are you to postpone your Portugal trip should some reason to do so arise or occur to you?”

“The Gents aren’t ones to let bumps in the road end or even delay an adventure.” He grinned at his friends.

“And the little ‘bumps in the road’ that exist just now aren’t significant enough to change your mind?”

He shook his head. “When something is important enough, one does what must be done. One doesn’t allow anything to stand in the way.”

When something is important enough.“It is a matter of weighing one’s options, then casting aside those that are less appealing in favor of those that matter most,” she said.

He smiled at her, but the usually heart-fluttering sight simply sliced into her. “Precisely.”

When something is important enough.

She’d let herself trust him. More dangerous still, she’d let herself love him again, something she’d promised herself she wouldn’t do after nearly a decade of waiting for him to remember she existed.

She could not live her life as a bump in his road. He’d convinced her to abandon the isolation that had protected her from just this sort of heartache. He’d made her believe it was safe to do so.

He had lied.

Again.

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