Page 47 of Felicity Cabot Sells Her Soul
And still she could expect that single letter to arrive eventually, even after years of her stalwart silence. Just to test her resolve, she thought.
“I just knew,” she said, in such a small, pitiful voice. But it wasn’t the truth. The truth was something so much worse, so much more complex than she could ever put to words. She had known because he had never given up hope. Even if it had reduced itself down to the contents of a single letter, still he had clung to that small bit of it, all this time.
Chapter Eighteen
Iwould like to speak with the gardener.”
Ian jerked his head up, wincing at the pull of tight muscles in his neck. There was the threat of a headache behind his eyes, and he blinked through the dim light toward the door of his office, where Felicity had somehow slipped in unnoticed. How late had it gotten? She ought to have been abed already. She was dressed for it, at least, in a red silk wrapper she’d likely borrowed from one of her sisters. The duchess, he thought.
“It’s late,” he said, rubbing at the back of his neck as he set his pen down upon his desk. “You should be abed.”
Contrarily, she sidled in further, pressing the door closed behind her and folding her arms over her chest. “We had an agreement,” she said, and he could not tell by the carefully-neutral tone of her voice which way her emotions skewed this evening. “I still owe you an hour.”
“I’ll forgive it.” It had come out a bit more gruffly than he had wished, but he’d been working for hours already, and enduring rather unsubtle jabs from the men—thepeers—she called brothers-in-law whilst endeavoring to be pleasant and civil in return, and the whole damned evening had been fucking exhausting.
Probably he would forgive every hour she owed him while her sisters were in residence, though. If only because it was one more hour she could spend with them, and he thought—he thought she must need that. He’d seen that expression she had worn when she had arrived, heard that tiny little sound she’d made. Disbelief; delight. Gratitude.Love.
That last one had been particularly painful to witness. She’d once given it to him.
Another few steps toward the desk, her feet soundless on the floor. An awkward little roll of her shoulders. “You do that rather a lot,” she said.
“Do what?”
“Make allowances. Fail to hold me accountable to the terms of ourbargain.”
“Would you prefer I did not make such allowances?”
“I would prefer to know why,” she said. “I would prefer to know—” She stopped herself, her lips pinching shut tightly. Her arms unfolded, and she stretched out one hand to touch the back of the chair set before his desk, as if she needed the stability of something solid beneath her fingers. “Why didn’t you leave?”
“I did leave,” he said, his brows drawing. “But your damned brothers-in-law followed me. They took their leave perhaps an hour or so ago—”
“No, not today.” She gave a little shake of her head, and a curl slipped free from behind her ear, bobbing over her shoulder, rolling across the scarlet silk that clung there. “Years ago. Why didn’t you leave Brighton?”
“There was nothing I wanted in London.”
“There was a position,” she said, with a sharp jab of her chin in his direction, resentment scrawled upon the taunt line of her jaw. “The potential of bigger and better things for you.”
“I’ll rephrase. There was nothing thatmatteredin London.”
“Don’t say that.” Her chin notched up, her green eyes narrowing. “Don’t you daresay that now!”
“What else would you have me say?” God, his head ached. Ian pressed his fingertips to his temples and rubbed. He’d told her she could leave. That he would forgive the hour she owed. Still she had stayed, taunted him with her scorn—and it had just been such a long damned day. “What else would you have me say?” he repeated. “Do you know how long it took me to realize what a terrible mistake I had made after you left that last evening? Seven minutes.” Seven minutes in which he had been first stunned by her defection, then mortified by his actions, and then at last terrified that he’d ruined the most important thing in his life. “Seven minutes, and I’ve relived them every day since.”
“It wasn’t just onemistake.”
“No, it wasn’t. It was a succession of them, one after another, and foolishly, I could only see them in retrospect. I wanted so badly to give you everything I thought you deserved that I let myself forget about what youwanted. So, no, I didn’t go to London. I realized it wasn’t important. That my place was here.” It had set him back a bit. London had offered more opportunities. But Felicity hadn’t been willing to see him, to speak with him, and he’d had nothing but time to work, first in banking, and then in investments. He’d amassed a fortune anyway, and he’d never neededLondon to do it. A pyrrhicvictory at best.
“Rather bold of you to say this now.”
“It has to be now. You asked,” he reminded her. “You asked, and you never did before. You never cared before.” He didn’t know why she cared now. But it needed to be said. And she needed to hear it. “The very next day, I bought a ring. Very small, very plain. Only a few stones, and not of any particular quality or value. It was all I could afford at the time. I believe it sits now upon the nightstand.”
He saw the moment the implication struck, heard the little breath she drew in. “You can’t be serious,” she said.
“I can afford better now,” he said. “But that ring—it means something to me.” It meant faith held when she’d long since dropped it. It meant years of anguish endured because he’d never been able to imagine a life without her. It meant he’d committed himself to loving her better, in the way that she’d needed him to.
Except he hadn’t expected it to take ten years to reach this point. And he was still making mistakes. Better wasn’t good enough; he needed to learn how to love herbest. “The garden,” he said. “It wasn’t meant to hurt you. I knew what you wanted. You’d told me, after all, and I had the sketch to show for it. I only wanted you to have it.” When he’d defaulted upon so many other promises. When she no longer trusted him to keep them. It had been one thing, one small thing, intended to show her he’d learned to listen at last.
Her fingers had curved over the back of the chair, nails pressing into the varnished wood. “Still, I would like to speak to the gardener,” she reiterated.
