Words caught in my throat. I’d cried more than I cared to admit while falling asleep, and now he was here telling me he’d changed his mind? He’d been so cruelly certain. What could have possibly happened to change his mind in such a short amount of time?
Mama didn’t have the same problem talking that I did. “You told her yesterday you didn’t want to marry her.”
“That isnotwhat I said.”
“You definitely didn’t agree to marry her.”
David nodded. “And as I said when you first opened the door, I’ve changed my mind.”
Mama put a hand on her forehead and ran it down her face. Then she backed away from the door, leaving it open, which David took as an invitation to come in. He handed Mama a sheet of paper. She took it absentmindedly, glanced at it, then froze, and glanced at it again. She looked up at David. “This is signed by the archbishop.”
David nodded. “He was a friend of my grandfather’s.”
Mama blinked. “The archbishop of Canterbury?”
David nodded again, his disheveled appearance becoming clear. If he was here, and this wasn’t a strange, vivid dream my poor addled brain had concocted, David would have been on trains and horses for most of the night to get that signature.
Mama blinked. “But why a special license?”
“I don’t want the banns read, nor do I want to make a spectacle of the event. I’d like us to marry quietly. Today, if possible.”
Today?
He’d left me to cry myself to sleep, made me doubt my worth in some of the most excruciating ways possible, and now was here, with a special marriage license, telling me he’d simplychanged his mind?
Was he mad?
“David, you can’t be serious,” I said.
“I’m deadly serious.”
Mama stumbled toward the drawing room and opened the door. I followed, my own feet unsteady and unbelieving. Mama took a seat near the window, catching the earliest morning rays to read the writing on the special license over again.
A soft touch on my elbow made me turn to face David. He held my arm carefully, as if he were afraid I would run away. Or perhaps to keep himself from running—I wasn’t certain. It wasn’t long ago when he’d refused me quite decisively. He lowered his head. “May I speak to you alone about this? Please?”
“I ...” I was going to let him speak to me. I couldn’t spend an evening crying over his loss without trying to understand what had changed over the course of one night. But my mind was struggling to come to grips with what was happening. I rubbed my eyes again, not entirely certain my brain wasn’t addled. “Of course ... It is just ...” The cottage had the drawing room and the kitchen on the ground floor, and it was much too cold to follow him outside with only my wrap. “Mama?” Her head jerked up. “Could David and I speak privately?”
Mama jumped up from the chair and nodded. “Of course, of course. I’ll return to my room. But please”—her eyes caught mine— “come and explain everything to me as soon as you’re finished.”
Mama climbed the stairs with the special license held so tightly in her grip a hurricane wouldn’t have been able to loosen it. That paper held the solution to all our problems. Mr. Green, where to live,our finances ... everything. Perhaps even the broken heart I’d nursed all night.
But I didn’t know what had changed his mind.
The moment we heard Mama’s bedroom door shut, David started pacing.
I motioned to our all-purpose table. “Would you like to sit?”
He shook his head and ran a hand through his already mussed hair. “No. I don’t think I could.”
I eyed his attire and his general state of nervous energy. He’d seemed more of a sound mind the night before when he’d rejected me than he did now.
“Have you slept?” I asked.
He shook his head again. “No, I couldn’t.” He finally stopped his maddening pacing and took a step toward me. “You asked for a favor yesterday, and I refused you.”
That was what this was about? His unfounded gratitude toward me? “You had every right to refuse me. It wasn’t as though I’d asked to borrow a spare chicken.”
His expressive eyebrows furrowed much like the night before, and for the first time since he’d walked in the door, the near crazed look in his eyes dissipated, instead replaced by mild confusion. “No. It wasn’t like that at all.”
