Page 53 of Deceiving an Earl
“That’s what I want in a wife.” The words were out before he could stop them. Talking to her made him forget that he probably shouldn’t say everything that came to his mind.
“You will be hard-pressed to find one with an original thought.”
He grimaced. “The whole ordeal is equivalent to purchasing cattle. Should I ask them to open their mouths so I can inspect their teeth?”
Her amused chuckle floated through the night air. “It is rather unromantic.”
If they had married when he’d wanted, if things had worked out the way they had planned, they would have been married for seventeen years now. They would have attended these balls and looked across the room and just known what the other was thinking. They would have shared jokes without a word spoken.
“Do you ever wonder what it would have been like—?”
“Don’t, Oliver.”
“I used to wonder all the time.”
“Why are you doing this?” She was whispering now, her voice pained. He still couldn’t see her but that made it only easier to reveal confidences.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Seeing you and Philip, it brought back feelings that I thought I had buried. The memories…they’re haunting me now. More so than ever before.”
“Oliver.” She took a step away from him.
“Don’t go,” he said. “Don’t leave me to the wolves.”
“I can hardly save you from them.”
“They’re not like you, the young ladies.”
“Of course not. I’m twice their age.”
And that’s exactly what he didn’t want. He thought of Josie’s idea of him courting Ellen, and suddenly the thought wasn’t as preposterous as his mother had said.
“There is something to be said for maturity,” he said.
“And that is exactly why we would have never made it back then. We were too young. Too…reckless.”
He remembered the gazebo. The frantic lovemaking. They’d been each other’s firsts.
“Do you regret it?” he asked softly, staring at the outline of her shadow. She was completely still. He couldn’t even hear her breathe. “What we did that night? Is that why you never met me under the tree?”
There was a long pause, enough to make him dizzy from holding his breath. “No.”
“I don’t, either. Never would I.”
“But we were too young.”
“I don’t believe that for a moment.”
Her shadow shifted. “It doesn’t matter now. It’s in the past.”
But was it possible to resurrect the past?
What if they could?
What if they did?
Chapter Fourteen
“Tell me about Needham,” Oliver said, looking in the direction of her shadow. In a way he liked not being able to see her face; it made the exchange more intimate.
