“Where are your belongings?”
“My belongings?” she asked, caught off guard.
“Yes, your trunks. I’ll have them delivered to my home.”
She tried to say no, but he was already going to find someone to do it. She followed him. “I told you I don’t want to go with you.”
“I’m not giving you a choice. You’re Diana’s sister and I mean to look after you.”
“I don’t need looking after!”
He stopped at that and turned to glare at her. She saw an unyielding conviction in his eyes and noted the lines around his mouth. The lines gave him the appearance of a man stuck in a permanent frown.
Those lines had not existed fifteen years ago—at least she didn’t remember them—nor had they existed in her dreams of him. She did her best to appear unperturbed by all that had happened, and began to think that maybe she should count herself lucky to be spared having to marry him today.
“I see you’re still as headstrong as ever,” he said sharply.
His comment struck her hard. She hadn’t thought Adam had remembered anything about her, or known that she was headstrong in the first place.
Then she recalled all the times Diana and Adam had gone for walks across the moors, wanting to be alone. Diana would beg Madeline to go home, but she was too young to understand why, so she’d argued with Diana and followed them anyway.
So that’s what Adam remembered—the troublesome little sister.
Madeline stood there, saying nothing, waiting for him to give in.
He didn’t. He simply rephrased his intentions. “I genuinely wish for you to come and be my guest. As I said, my daughter-in-law is confined to her room and she’ll be disappointed if you do not come. In addition, both my daughter and my youngest son could use some instruction in reading and arithmetic. You have experience, you say?”
“Yes,” she replied, before she had a chance to think about it.
“It will work out well, then.” He started off again to fetch a driver to deliver the trunks, and Madeline stood there in the middle of the courtyard, feeling depleted and exhausted, and as if she’d just been manipulated all over again.
Sitting in the buggy beside Madeline, Adam flicked the lines and began the trip home along Cumberland Ridge, laboring to block out everything he had expected and hoped for today.
Of course, he couldn’t. Inside he was reeling with a mixture of disappointment and rage. Over the past few weeks, since the letter had arrived saying his “bride” was on her way, crossing an ocean to be with him, Adam had somehow managed to fall in love with Diana all over again. He’d spent too many hours remembering how she’d made him feel years ago, how the sight of her lovely face had brought him to his knees. She was the first woman he had ever loved; they had been young and desperate for each other and had wanted to be together every minute of every day for the rest of their lives.
God, how he’d loved her—with all the fiery, intense passion of his youth. No one had known him like she had, and he’d thought he’d known her deeply, too. Hehad.All these years later, he still believed it. They had once told each other everything, expressed every feeling and desire. He’d held her in his arms and wanted to be with her forever.
Unfortunately, forever hadn’t lasted very long. There had been no warning that the end was coming. No disagreements or falling out of love. No natural conclusion. She’d told him she was leaving him—crying her heart out on his shoulder—making him love her more than ever.
Of course, through the years, he’d come to understand why she’d made that choice. How could she not? Adam was the third son of a tenant farmer—a prosperous one, yes, but by no means anything close to gentry, and with no hope of ever becoming a landowner. Diana had married a baronet. She’d chosen wisely, as any prudent young woman would have.
The memories these past few weeks, thinking she wanted him back, had stirred his blood and made him feel young again, as if their lifetime apart were a mere heartbeat. Ever since he’d learned of her husband’s death and known she was free, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking of her, and when he let his mind return to those intimate, glorious moments they’d shared in their youth, it seemed like yesterday.
Now, sitting next to Diana’s younger sister, who had been a child the last time he’d seen her, he felt more ancient than ever, and more pathetic to have been foolishly dreaming about Diana, the one who always seemed to slip through his fingers.
Strange, how Adam had thought after all these years, their coming together again was some kind of romantic destiny.
A ridiculous fantasy, indeed.
“Where is your home?” Madeline asked, jolting him out of his thoughts. “Is it far?”
He pointed straight ahead. “Farther along this ridge, hidden in the trees.”
She sat up straighter to see as far as she could, and he sensed she was fighting the urge to stand up in the moving buggy.
He tried not to think of Diana, when there was no point torturing himself. Instead, he gazed at the landscape in all directions. “Quite a view from here, don’t you think?”
Madeline gave him a cool, brief glance that told him she was going to reply only because it was the polite thing to do. Obviously, she was still upset over what had happened, and rightly so, he supposed. It had been an awkward scene in front of her traveling companions. Awkward for both of them, for if he was honest about it, he had been an ogre.
