“But you didn’t. I made the decision to run away from my own wedding. You merely helped to see me safely delivered here,” she replied.
James sat forward on the long wooden bench and held his hands tightly together. He shook his head. This was not an encouraging sight. “Your grandfather can only protect you from your father for so long. You and I being here at Mopus Manor puts Sir Geoffrey in a difficult position. He has asked that we consider all possible solutions to the problem.”
“The problem being me,” she replied.
He got to his feet and walked a little way away. Standing with his hands in his coat pockets, he looked out over the river before turning back to her. “You are not a problem for me, Leah. Far from it.”
Problem, quandary—it mattered little what he wanted to label her as being. She was stillsomethingthat needed to be solved. To her mind, they were now left facing a difficult situation. Both could see the inevitable outcome that everyone would expect of their time in Cornwall, but neither of them wanted to go through with it. At least not like this.
Leah came and stood by James’s side. She could never imagine growing tired of the view down to the Tresillian River and beyond to where it met the Truro River. The dark blue of the waters constantly created white-capped ripples at the point where the two rivers connected.
He turned to her. “You and I have to make some hard decisions. I wrote to my father and explained what happened. I told him about the journey here and a little of why you fled the church. Sir Geoffrey informed me earlier today that he too has written to my father. The mail only takes a day or so to reach London, so by now, people will know where we are.”
“What else did my grandfather say?” she said.
He reached out and took hold of her hand, and their fingers locked gently together. She was surprised by how much she had felt the loss of his touch. The simple pleasure of being seated beside one another on the carriage bench each day, the feel of his hard thigh against her leg, was something she could admit to missing. And even now, it was nice to simply hold hands.
“He sees no other option than for you to marry. The decision for you, of course, being whom you will wed.” His hold on her fingers tightened just enough to have her lifting her gaze to meet his.
James was in a difficult position; society would expect him to offer for her. But if he did and it was only out of a sense of being compelled, then he and she would simply be swapping places. It would be James who found himself bound to someone he did not love, the same as she had with Guy.
“Thank you for telling me. I am sure that was not what you wanted to hear from him,” she said.
“You might be surprised by what I want,” he replied.
The sudden gruff edge to his voice had heat pooling in her loins. Her body’s reaction to him was not surprising; it had been happening for some time now. Much as she had tried to fight it, she knew he had already stolen her heart. What she would give to be able to offer up the rest of herself to him. For him to claim her. For James to love her.
Leah tried to control the whirl of emotion which being this close to James created within her, but she was powerless against its strength. Instead she was left clutching at her sense of fair play and justice.
James was being put in a position that was grossly unjust to him, and because of that, she could not bring herself to speak to him of marriage. He should not have to suffer the punishment of being made to marry someone he did not love.
But things were as they were, and while love might have failed them, Leah was determined that she would not fail James. She had to push him away, force him to leave Mopus Manor. To give him the chance to make decisions about his future before others made those decisions for him.
“Well then, I suggest you start making plans to leave here and soon. Matters are going to get ugly very quickly once I tell my grandfather that you and I are not going to be wed.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Leah stood at the window of the breakfast room the following morning while James was seated at the breakfast table, enjoying his second cup of tea for the day.
He looked up from his cup as Leah gasped and suddenly pressed her face to the window. “A carriage is approaching the house. No prizes for guessing that it will be my father.”
James rose from his chair and came to stand alongside her. He placed a comforting hand on her shoulder, then peered out the window. “It was only a matter of time.”
Leah shrugged off his touch. “You should have left while you still had the chance, James.”
Her voice lacked emotion as she spoke, but James suspected it was part of her usual detached way of dealing with her father—a deeply ingrained pattern of behavior which was designed to protect her heart and mind from Tobias Shepherd.
A black travel coach wound its way up the long drive which climbed the hill leading to where Mopus Manor stood.
He held his hand up to shade his eyes from the morning sun, then looked again. For an instant, he thought his heart had stopped. “I’ll be damned. That is not your father. That is mine!”
He would know the Radley family travel coach anywhere, even at this distance. The Strathmore crest of the three stars and a rearing horse emblazoned in gold on the side of the coach gave it away.
“What can it mean?” she asked.
James could think of a dozen things that the impending arrival of his father could herald, but he was in too much of a hurry out the breakfast room to stop and consider them. “We shall know soon enough,” he cried.
After grabbing his coat, he raced outside, then stood waiting impatiently in the chilly morning air while the travel coach made its final turn up the hill and arrived in the manor’s forecourt. He had last seen the coach when he had sent it home from the Gloucester Coffee House on the morning, he’d followed Leah out of London. He had not expected that the next time he saw it, it would be as it rolled along a sandy road in the middle of Cornwall, bringing his father.
