Page 20 of Her Heart's Rightful Earl
The note had not specified a time to meet, but it was now the evening Alexander had stated. And she knew their old special place, of course. There was only one place he could mean.
She could go there now.
“Should I?” she asked the moon. “He doesn’t deserve my attention. Why would I meet with a fugitive? The risks are high, and his request is presumptuous. Of course I should not!” Arabella frowned at the moon as if it suggested she go.
She returned her focus to the note and smoothed over the words with her finger.
“If you had told me two years ago,” she softly mused, “that my love was alive and offering the opportunity to meet again, I would have run to him. So desperate I have been to see him, to rekindle what we had. In fact, is this notpreciselywhat I wished for?”
Arabella swallowed back a sob that threatened in her throat.
“It is. I would have given everything to be with him again. But now he has reappeared under such unwholesome circumstances, and his betrayal is a new grief for me to endure. I never believed the man I was in love with would ever have lied to me in such a way. Perhaps I never knew him at all …”
Arabella moved away from the window and decisively pulled her nightgown from where it hung in her armoire. She clutched it to her chest, knowing that once she put it on and retired to bed, that would be her conclusive decision. That would be her statement,notchoosing Alexander.
“I shall continue my life as it is and pretend he never returned,” she spoke to herself gallantly. “Besides, he will remain a secret, and so it will not be a challenge to deny him. I will go on being a solitary widow … reading with Lady Wellwood at bedtimes … sewing and crocheting during the day … taking lonely walks …”
She paused.
“Or I couldjust go and see …what he has to say for himself. In case he has some explanation? He was remorseful, at least, and it is only good and Christian of me to hear out a man’s sins and forgive him. After his justification, I will forget him and continue my life. But unless I attend, I shall never know … Yes!”
With that, Arabella threw her nightgown upon the bed and retrieved her darkest gown from the armoire, clothing herself rapidly in it and covering her head with a black shawl. Ironically, she had swathed her hair in that exact shawl at Alexander’s memorial and at Edmund’s funeral.
Now she wore it with an unfamiliar sense of hope and potential renewal. Because—despite her conscious monologue—the speed at which Arabella dressed and rushed quietly through the dark, still house told her that she was desperate to see Alexander again.
She winced at every creak of a stair and gritted her teeth as she closed the garden door behind her, hoping the sound would not wake anybody in the house.
Once she was in the gardens and rushing along the winding path, she muttered under her breath, “What am I doing? Rushing to him like a foolish girl? What if I am making a terrible mistake ...?” But her anxieties were not strong enough to overrule her feet, which carried her swiftly through the rose garden and past the orangery.
She glanced up to check nobody was inside looking out, and as she did so, caught her own reflection in the glass. Framed by moonlight, her hooded figure, cloaked in black, made her startle.
I look like a widow in mourning, Arabella thought to herself.
As she navigated the winding path past the elevated stone urn that trickled with a gentle water feature, she realized.A widow in mourning is exactly what I was until last night.
She stopped and looked across the sweeping lawn to the stone ruins of the folly, which stood on the far side of the hedgerow up ahead.
Now I don’t know what I am.
***
Reaching the stone ruins of the folly, Arabella shivered. The night was mild, but the emotions of being in this place set her nerves alight. She had avoided it since Alexander had departed from her life. Coming here would have felt too painful.
Her hand nostalgically smoothed over the stone bench where she had been sitting as he knelt to one knee and asked her to be his wife. She looked up at the colonnade where two decorative stone pillars formed a portico and remembered how they had stared together at the stars as they recited their favourite poetry together.
Arabella swallowed hard and startled as she heard a movement behind her. Turning, she saw a broad figure emerge from the bushes beside the climbing roses. He moved deftly, with caution, and his head darted both ways, checking for witnesses before his face came to settle on hers.
The moonlight silvered his dark hair, and Arabella instinctively recalled a conversation where they discussed growing old together, raising children … her heart hammered afresh at the sight of him.
As the moonlight illuminated his face, where his eyes scanned the surroundings habitually, Arabella was hit by anoverwhelming sense of longing. How she wanted to throw herself into his broad, warm embrace.
But the sensation was quickly chased by the damning experience of loss. They did not belong to one another anymore; their dynamic had evolved beyond reparation. She took a deep breath and tilted her chin up, preparing herself to listen diplomatically to what he had come here to say.
“Thank you for coming, Arabella,” Alexander croaked. She noted that he sounded nervous and concluded that guilt would do that to a man. “I did not think you would attend …”
“It was not my intention to attend—your suspicion was correct. However, you are fortunate that I consider myself a fair individual and have carved out time to satisfy your conscience. What is it you wanted to meet me for, Alexander?”
Her words sounded harsh, and she internally battled against the cruelty she inflicted. Operating under such a brash demeanour was alien to her.
