“I’d heard Mr. and Mrs. Preston had planned to let their home as well as the cottage.” David took a deep breath. “Perhaps it wasn’t the wisest course of action, but surely not a mistake. You have friends here, and the Prestons are good people. They will be advocates for you, as will I. But why a year and a half? Do you have other plans after that?”
“That is when I turn twenty-seven,” I answered, ignoring the heat on my face at the mention of my age. “Atwood Manor went to my uncle, of course, but Papa left me an inheritance large enough for us to live on. I can access it when I turn twenty-seven. Then we won’t need to depend on anyone’s generosity.”
David’s steps slowed, though he took several before he spoke next. “Is there no other way to access your inheritance? Have you spoken with a solicitor?”
I shook my head. “The only other way to receive it is if I marry.”
He pursed his lips together. “And yet you have continually rejected marriage proposals.”
“It isn’t as though anyone remotely suitable has asked me,” I said with a huff. I’d been offered marriage by a boy and a man twice my age. Never by someone appropriate.
“I see,” he said with a slight edge to his voice. “Well, at least you are among friends here. I’m certain the Prestons will be able to sort something out for you. I would be happy to help you as well. I cannot count coming here as a mistake, so unless you have any others to confess to me, I will have to assume you do not make them.”
The way he casually spoke of the Prestons and himself helping us gave me the first spark of hope I’d had in days. In Silverfork, no one had ever offered to help us, except Mr. Green, and Mr. Green’s help always came at a price.
I glanced up at my old friend and raised my eyebrows. “You will make me report them all to you? How much time do you have?”
That disarming smile of his returned along with the deep lines between his mouth and his cheeks. “I will take any moment you will spare me. Especially if you are here for only a few weeks.”
I could feel a flush on my cheeks, and I was grateful David took that moment to look down at the path. It had been years since a healthy young man had paid me a compliment. I straightened my back and raised my chin. Perhaps there was something of that vibrant young lady left deep inside me. “All right, we will start with the most obvious. I shouldn’t have climbed that tree. That was a mistake. And as long as I was climbing, I shouldn’t have thought the best way to dismount was to drop from such a high branch.”
I could practically see his mind spinning, trying to come up with some reason that my folly could be seen as anything but a blunder.
He finally turned to me, eyes sparkling with amusement. “Thatmayhave been a mistake.” A small chuckle escaped his lips. “But I was able to fulfill some very potent youthful dreams by holding you in my arms at last.” His smile was so all-encompassing it made his eyes crinkle half closed. “Eight years was a terribly long time to wait.”
I shook my head slightly to clear it. He was being improper, surely. Even if we had been childhood friends, a gentleman wouldn’t mention the indelicate position we had just been in.
I ignored the draw of his smile and forced myself to feel affronted instead of anything else at his impertinence. I scoffed. “I wouldn’t say I was in your arms.”
David’s hands unclasped from behind his back and dropped to his sides. “You wouldn’t? Are you still trying to prove you make mistakes? Because that is certainly one.”
My spine stiffened. “I wasn’t in your arms.”
“Where were you, then?”
“On top of—” I stopped. Perhaps in his armswasthe better description. I coughed lightly and searched my mind for any better explanation of what had happened. There simply wasn’t a delicate way to put it. “I suppose I might have been mistaken after all.”
Those lines on each side of his smile deepened.
The frost-covered window panes of the cottage came into view through the trees in front of us. The lightness of my encounter with David seemed to melt away into hopelessness. Mama must be well out of bed by now, and it would be time to discuss our future again. But no matter how much we spoke of plans, we had nowhere to go. The cottage had been our last hope. What in heaven’s name would we do now?
My feet grew heavy, and I fell behind David. He glanced at me before turning and catching sight of the cottage. In unison, our steps slowed to a crawl.
“Why didn’t you keep in contact?” The question was soft and low, and his expressive face seemed to turn into unresponsive granite.
I sighed. How did one explain years of desperation? “After Papa died, I suppose Mama didn’t feel as comfortable asking for help from his friends as she did her own family. Perhaps if she would have, things could have been different.”
“Perhaps they would have,” he agreed. We reached the small garden that ran alongside the cottage. “If you had even informed Mr. Preston of your new location ...”
I waited for him to continue his train of thought, but he didn’t. “How do you know we didn’t inform him?”
One of his feet scuffed the ground, and he rubbed the back of his neck. Once again, I caught a snippet of the quiet young boy instead of the dashing man before me.
“Did you ask after us?”
After a pause, he nodded. “I did, just after a visit to London.”
“When? I thought you said you couldn’t go to London.”
