“Yes.”
He gave me a terse nod in return. “That door is going to open, and I’m going to start on your list of what an engagement should look like. Trust me, it is going to be very easy to make our friends and family believe I want to marry you.”
The sound of the library door opening caught my ears, and before I could change my mind or step away, he cupped my cheek in his hand and slid his fingertips into my hair. With his free hand, he caught me at my waist and pulled me into him.
And then David Tate, with eyes burning like a man very much in love with the woman in front of him, angled his head to claim me with a kiss.
W
Chapter 5
“I proposed to Anna today. She said no, just as I knew she would. But I wanted to propose to someone once, and I wanted it to be her.”
—David Tate, 1841, Age 14
His lips stopped a breath away from mine, drifting just above the corner of my mouth. It wasn’t a kiss, but it might as well have been for how my heart reacted to his hands in my hair and the way he’d pulled me into a position where everyone from the door would see the two of us exactly as he wanted.
As a newly engaged couple, and a happy one at that.
I lifted my eyes from his mouth to find him searching my face, very much in control of every movement. He knew exactly how close he could hold me without our lips meeting, and he held us at that point without flinching. My lips parted, though I don’t know why. It wasn’t as though I could speak to him when we were supposed to be kissing.
I pressed my lips closed again, and the way David’s eyes followed my movements sent a wave of heat up my neck. How had the boy I’d kicked rocks with and worried about where he would get his next meal turn into a man whose strong fingers cradled my head so protectively?
A throat cleared, and David stiffened and pulled away, feigning surprise. Somehow, in the years we’d been apart, he’d become a master of pretense.
He slid one hand casually down my arm, interlaced his fingers with mine. “She said yes.” He grinned like he’d just won a title from the Queen.
Mama clapped and smiled larger than I’d seen her smile in years.
Mr. Preston put his hands on his hips and raised his eyebrows. “I should hope so,” he said with a chuckle.
Only David’s sister seemed the slightest bit uncertain how to react. Her eyes sought her brother’s, but David looked everywhere other than in her direction.
This idea of helping his sister might have worked better had he simply befriended me. If this day could have been relived with some warning on both our parts, we would have come up with a much better plan than this one.
Engaged.
Even if it was temporary, how had I let this happen?
“And now, if you will excuse me, Anna”—David gave my elbow a squeeze, as if it were the most natural thing in the world—“I’d better speak to your mother.” He gave Mama the kind of open and trustworthy smile that would have any matchmaking mother pushing her daughters in his direction.
Mama was not unaffected. “Yes, indeed. I can’t believe Anna has kept you all to herself.” She gave me a scathing look, but there was no fire behind it. This was a side of Mama I’d almost forgotten had existed. A playful side. “I don’t even know anything about your family or background.”
“His background?” Mrs. Preston’s words burst out of her, and she grabbed Mama’s hand.
David’s fingers tightened on my elbow. I turned to look at him, but he wouldn’t meet my eye. The false happiness he’d exuded onlya moment ago had melted away as quickly as fistfuls of snow thrown into a fireplace. His gaze was fixed on a point somewhere beyond the doorway.
“You don’t know who Mr. Tate is?” Mrs. Preston laughed. “Your daughter just landed herself the second son of a viscount. He’s Lord Murphy’s youngest child. He may not have the title, but he is the more dependable of the two brothers.”
There must have been something wrong with Mr. Preston’s library, for the moonlight had confused me the moment I’d stepped into it, and now the room seemed to be spinning. How could David have kept that from me, especially when I’d asked him? A broken engagement with an arbitrary man from Breckenridge was one thing, but having a father who was nobility was quite another. We wouldn’t simply be able to break off the engagement. Not without all of the county and most of London finding out about it.
Miss Tate watched the two of us carefully, and then her eyes widened and flickered with understanding. She knew. She knew not only that our engagement wasn’t real but also that I hadn’t even known to whom I had become engaged.
Mama’s eyes filled with tears, and she rushed over to me, pulling me away from David. His hand flopped down to his side. “Anna, how could you have kept this from me? I never would have written to Mr. Green, and I wouldn’t have worried about, well, anything.”
Mama clearly didn’t remember the stories of Lord Murphy like I did, or she wouldn’t be this excited. What could I say to her? I couldn’t say I hadn’t known who he was either.
David looked as though he wished he’d never come this evening. I couldn’t blame him. It wasn’t every day a man showed up to dinner a bachelor and left engaged to a woman he’d only seen once in the past eight years.
