David stood, took my hand, and lifted it. I gave a parting smile to both Julia and Garrett as I stood from the table. “I will see you at dinner.”
Once again, David put a hand on the small of my back as he led me away from the table. “Do you have time to stop in my study? Something came for you while you were sick, and Garrett’s arrival made it slip my mind.”
“Something came for me?” Almost no one knew I was here.
David nodded.
“A good something?”
“A very good something.”
W
Chapter 23
“Anna asked me to marry her. I told her no. I told her no. I’m sick, and I need to sleep, but I can’t, and I don’t know what she is going to do, and I don’t know what I’m going to do, and I don’t feel like I can live knowing I could help her, but I won’t. Because how could I? It isn’t as though I could marry her and protect her fr ...”
—David Tate, 1850, Age 23
We left the drawing room and crossed the foyer to David’s study. He pulled the door open and ushered me in with his hand on my back once again. It was such a small motion, such a light touch. It shouldn’t have made me want to lean into him or feel as though I belonged to him when I knew I didn’t. Not permanently, at any rate. But it did.
When his hand left me so he could step over to his desk, I immediately missed the warmth and weight of him.
He pulled a thick envelope from his desk. “Your solicitor brought this to me.”
“My solicitor?” I raised my eyebrows and dashed to the desk, pulling the envelope from his hands. There was only one thing my solicitor would have brought. “My inheritance?”
He nodded. “Yes. As your husband, I signed for it.”
I pulled out the paper; it was a note from the National Provincial Bank with an amount of available funds listed under my name. Igasped when I saw the number. I’d known, of course, how much was coming, but it felt different now that I had it. With this, Mama and I would be able to pay Mr. Green and be done with him.
To my abject horror, my eyes were suddenly moist.
David did not seem bothered by my emotion. Instead, he folded his arms over his chest and grinned. “I should write a book on how to make one’s wife happy. It is so very simple.”
“It is?” I asked, trying but failing to keep my voice from wavering from the relief this money brought.
“Definitely. You need only one thing.”
“What is that?”
He motioned to the paper in my hands with his chin. “Ill-gotten gains.”
I burst into a grin and jaunted over to his side of the desk. “You should surely write that book.” I put a hand on his elbow and placed a brief but very firm kiss on his mouth. I didn’t know what had come over me, but I was so grateful for this man. My whole life had improved the moment he’d stepped back into it, and I couldn’t help myself. “Thank you, David, for everything.”
His eyes flared, and he took a step backward. He unfolded his arms and folded them again. “Please don’t thank me. You know I’m happy to help.”
“I do know that about you. I don’t think I’ve met anyone more helpful.”
“Mostly toward you.”
“And Julia and your father’s tenants. I’m very fortunate I was the first woman in your vicinity to need a husband, or I would have been too late.”
“Are you so certain you were? Perhaps I make a habit of marrying women only to have the marriage annulled. After all, I started asking women to marry me at age fourteen.”
I snorted. “I don’t think so. I don’t think Garrett would have been quite so pleased to torture you about me if it were so.”
“What did you think of my brother?”
