But knowing what it is not to belong, I decided to look elsewhere for funding, and I met with success. I have obtained investors. Women who are referred to as commoners but are anything except common because they’re taking actions to better their lives and they know what it is to believe in dreams.
I didn’t come to England to find a husband. That was all my mother’s doing. I had never considered that marriage was for me. The circumstances under which we would wed seemed... wrong. I think eventually the reasons behind our marriage would have poisoned whatever affection we might have held for each other. I couldn’t tolerate the possibility. I didn’t want to risk destroying the wonderful memories I have of our time together.
You made me feel cherished and that reminiscence will sustain me through the years.
I wish you love and hope your wife will appreciate all your wonderful attributes. Please know this: you are nothing at all like your wretched father. You are kind and generous, with a moral compass that, unlike his, has not broken. No amount of scandal will change that.
Affectionately yours,
Nora
Rook walked to the window and gazed out. The realization hit him that he’d been so worried about being likened to his father that in the end, he’d let his father win.
He’d lived a life that had not truly been his own: until Nora. He’d built crenellated walls around himself—not to keep others out, but to keep himself in. For far too long, he’d lived in a dungeon, pretending contentment, until Nora had brought him into the sunlight.
She’d done it by taking him apart until she reached his heart. It was now and would always remain hers.
Three days. Three days before she left England’s shores. It was only a few hours by railway to Liverpool.
He had time, time to assemble a plan that with determination would work with a precision that she couldn’t help but admire.
Chapter 25
Standing at the railing of the mighty steamship, Leonora watched as the ribbon of water separating her from land widened. Most of the passengers had been on the deck, waving and cheering, until the ship pulled out of the harbor. Then they’d slowly drifted away, returning to their cabins or to chairs lined up on the deck or to the tearoom. Like her, a few stragglers remained.
She couldn’t bring herself to leave. Not as long as England was visible. Because in an odd way she felt as though she was leaving home. Which made no sense whatsoever when she’d been visiting for only a few weeks.
America was her home. It should be calling to her. Yet she wondered if she’d ever be as happy there. She would devote herself to managing the factory and producing so many writing machines that she could export them around the world. They would all bear her father’s name: the Walt Garrison writing machine. His name would become synonymous with it until people would just ask, “Have you a Walt Garrison?” or “a WG?”
With each key punched, with each page filled with perfect, legible letters, he would live on. And in thatway, she could defeat the cruel condition that had slowly stolen him from her.
Eventually perhaps she would take on a lover because she had learned she had needs. And there was beauty in the coming together of two bodies. She didn’t know if it would be as glorious if her heart wasn’t involved, but she recognized that it was not on the ship with her. She’d left it behind. It would always be with Johnny. For that was where it belonged.
Light footsteps sounded, and she became aware of someone standing beside her. She wanted to ask the person to leave. She wanted to be completely and absolutely alone as England began fading away, and her chest started to ache, and the salt from the sea caused her eyes to tear up.
She couldn’t marry a man who didn’t love her. In a relationship, one person’s love, no matter how great, was never enough to sustain it. Her father had given her mother everything, and yet she’d never been content. Leonora wanted the joy of being loved.
A lemony-orange fragrance teased her nostrils. Even here, far out to sea, she smelled him. He would always haunt her, no matter the distance—
Only the scent was strong, not a memory.
Slowly, very slowly, she turned her head toward the stranger, who was no stranger at all. Who was watching her and not the land that was barely visible now. Her heart pounded so fiercely against her ribs that she was surprised it didn’t knock her over the railing and into the water. “What are you doing here?”
One corner of Rook’s mouth curled up ruefully. “Going to America... according to the passage I purchased.”
“Why?”
“I have some investments to check up on.”
“Where?” She seemed incapable all of a sudden to utter more than a single word at a time. He was so beautiful standing there, with the wind tousling his hair and the sun shining around him. America was a large country, and she was certain he had an assortment of investments spread from one end of it to the other.
“New York for the most part, I think. I came into possession of a machine factory.”
Her eyes widened. “Not my machine factory.”
Damn, Sam. Had he broken his promise to her, had he sold it?
Rook’s expression changed to one of deep sadness. “It never wasyourfactory. Your father left it in its entirety to your brother.”
