Lord Wetherby found himself looking down at the crown and brim of her bonnet and being forced forward at a faster pace.
“Oh, look, we are at the lake,” she said. “I am glad we are not to go boating today. It is too cold.”
“Yes,” he said, “it would be chilly on the water.”
“Why do you ask?” she said, stopping on the bank a short distance from where he had sat with Rosamund the day before. “Am I too young for you? Were you forced into making Papa an offer for me? Is there another lady you would prefer to marry?”
“No.” He set his hands on her shoulders and looked down into her eager, upturned face. “I offered freely because it is time I took a wife, Annabelle, and because when I met you last spring I found that I was content to make my mother’s choice my own. But I am nine-and-twenty, you see. I have had time to know something of life and to know what I want. I would not like to think that you are being rushed into something before you have had a similar chance.”
“I’m not being rushed,” she said, leaning a little toward him. “I want to marry you, Justin. I like you and admire you and I think I may even love you. I’m not being forced.” The stone wall was no longer behind her eyes. There was a fever there instead, a hot urgency.
“Well, then,” he said, lifting one hand in order to cup her cheek with it. He wanted to sit down and draw her onto his lap and cradle her head on his shoulder. He wanted to comfort her and coax her to confide in him, just like a child in trouble. But she was not a child. She was the woman he was to marry.
She raised her own hand and covered his, holding it against her cheek. She looked at him with bright, expectant eyes.
“I believe I am supposed to wait another three days until your grandfather’s birthday,” he said, smiling at her.
“I don’t want to wait,” she said.
“Don’t you?” He ran his thumb lightly over her lips. “Will you marry me, Annabelle?”
“Yes,” she said, and she smiled radiantly at him, transforming herself into a remarkably pretty young girl. “Yes, I will, Justin.”
He kissed her lightly on the lips and she threw her arms about his neck, as she had done two days before, and kissed him back with hot ardor.
“Now we have a definite problem,” he said, holding her firmly by the waist a little way away from him and grinning at her. “How are we to keep secret for three days the fact that we have broken the rules?”
“I don’t want to keep it a secret,” she said, her eyes shining up into his, the fever raging behind them. “I want to go back and tell Mama and Papa and Grandmama. I want to have it announced today. Can we, Justin?”
“If it is what you wish,” he said gently. “I don’t think they will be unduly angry with us. But are you sure, Annabelle? Would you like to have those three days in which to discover if you are comfortable with your decision?”
“I will never regret it,” she said. “And I will make sure that you never regret it, either, Justin. I will spend my life making you happy. It will be the sole purpose of my life to see to your contentment.”
“Well,” he said, “what more could I ask of life?”
“When will we marry?” she asked.
He laughed. “I think we had better consult both our families on that,” he said. “Weddings have very little to do with the bride and groom, I have heard, and everything to do with their families.”
“But it will be soon?” she asked, her hands smoothing the lapels of his coat. “This spring or this summer?”
“I don’t think either side of our family will object to that,” he said.
“And we will live in the country?” she said. “On your estate? I don’t mind living in London if that is what you wish. Tell me about your homes.”
He drew her arm through his and began the return walk to the house. And he talked almost the whole distance, answering her eager questions about the life that was to be hers.
It was done, then, he was thinking. There were not after all to be three more days of certainty with that one tantalizing grain of uncertainty. It was done.
And he was glad. They would make their announcement as soon as the travelers returned from Winwood Abbey, and either Gilmore or March would doubtless make their betrothal known to the whole family. It would be irrevocable then. Even more irrevocable than it had been when his carriage had turned through the gates of Brookfield four days before.
It would be a relief.
It had been a trying afternoon. Rosamund would not have minded spending it with a pair of silly, giggly girls, whose heads seemed to be filled with nothing but bonnets and beaux. They made her feel positively aged, but they made her also more than ever thankful that she had been mad enough to marry at the age of seventeen a man who was almost old enough to be her grandfather. She was glad that she had learned the value of quietness and solitude and good sense.
She had been a foolish young girl, though never quite in Christobel’s and Eva’s way. And she still could be remarkably foolish—getting out of Dennis’ carriage in a temper with a snowstorm approaching, giggling over a snowball fight with Justin, balancing on an abbey wall with Josh. But she was glad there had been Leonard and the knowledge that life could be calm and contented and rich with meaning that came from books and music and conversation.
She was fortified, she felt, against the intense pain that the next few days would bring. She had lain awake through much of the night and had forced herself to relinquish that faint glimmering of hope that Annabelle’s words had brought her. And she was glad when at the luncheon table she heard the earl and her niece plan to walk to the lake together and saw Annabelle look so determinedly happy. She was glad that she had given up hope and prepared herself to face her future.
