Page 70 of Stealing the Rake's Heart
He flushed. “I… I wanted to talk to her.”
“Are you going to tell her how you feel?”
There was a brief silence.
“What?” Alexander managed at last, his voice a little scratchy. “What did you say, Mama?”
Mary gave a tinkling laugh. “Oh, bless you, Alexander. I may not be the finest mother in the world, but I know my children alittle, at least. It’s clear as day that you’re in love with Abigail Atwater.”
Alexander felt as though the breath was knocked out of his body. He sank down onto a sofa, and Mary sat down beside him.
“I… I don’t know how I feel about her,” he admitted. “I never expected to feel… that is, with Diana, everything was different. It was fast and intense, and I thought that all love must be like that.”
“Some forms of love are,” his mother agreed. “But what you felt for Lady Lockwell wore off quickly, did it not? A slower-growing, more natural kind of love can be more enduring, I think. Like a plant that grows under any circumstances, which isn’t put off by any hardships. Even a loss of reciprocal love.”
There was a sort of wistfulness in that last sentence, and Alexander glanced sharply at his mother. She didn’t meet his eye.
They knew, of course, that the late Duke hadn’t loved his wife. Although perhaps he did love her, in a way, but not in the way a man should love his wife and the mother of his children.
The old Duke hadn’t loved anyone in the right way, it seemed. Perhaps Mary was more aware of it than they had realised.
There was a silence after that.
“If you want to find Miss Atwater,” his mother said, after a pause, “I believe she went out in the garden.”
“In therain?”
Mary gave a small smile. “In the rain, yes.”
Unless the woman was standing on the lawn in the pouring rain, Alexander guessed that she was in the shrubbery.
The thick trees overhead would block out the worst of the rain, and one could walk there quite comfortably, if one didn’t object to the soggy pathways. He chose the nearest path through the shrubbery, mostly because it ended in a small stone folly at the end, which would provide proper shelter from the rain.
He walked quickly, head down, and concentrated on thinking of what he would say to Abigail when he found her.
Abigail, I love you. Will you marry me? Just so you know, I’m technically penniless now, but once I get married, I’ll be very wealthy. It’s all to do with my father’s will. Long story.
Perhaps that was a little too blunt.
He reached the end of the shrubbery. The path carried on, winding across a small field to the folly, which was designed to look like a rustic cottage, with stone benches and such inside to allow for a comfortable reading location. He couldn’t glimpse any movement inside, but that didn’t mean that Abigail wasn’t there. He took a moment, steeling himself for the long, wet dash across the field.
“Alexander?”
For one mad moment, he imagined that it was Abigail’s voice he heard, muffled by the rush of rain and the non-stop patter of water on leaves. Then he swung around and it wasn’t Abigail at all, but Diana, dressed in a long, glittering black cloak and boots entirely unsuited to the wet weather.
She smiled coyly. “I followed you, I’m afraid. What are you doing out in this weather?”
“I… Diana, what are you doing here?”
“I believe I just asked that question.”
Eyes fixed on his face, she slid a little closer. Alexander moved to back away but found himself with a thick old oak at his back.
“Diana… I mean, Lady Lockwell, I don’t believe we should be out here together. Don’t you have a maid?”
“I am entirely alone, but I know that I am safe withyou, Alexander. I have always known that. It’s one of the things I loved most about you.”
In a flash, she was standing close to him, far too close, hand fluttering out to rest on his chest.
