Bradford shook his head and laughed ruefully, tipping his head back so that the sun shone on his face. “When you arrived in my home, I thought your very presence was a punishment of sorts. Why on earth would the only qualified governess who’d responded to my advertisement look as you did, when decorum and honor dictate that I keep my distance? Of course, I quickly convinced myself that your beauty must have come at a cost to your other qualities, for there was no possibility that one who looked like you could be everything I wanted my daughter to be near.”
Lily’s nose scrunched; she opened her mouth to protest or question, but he held up a hand.
“I was determined to find out your faults,” he said, “so that I might send you away before Rebecca grew too attached. I had Mrs. Clark instruct you to join me for dinner every evening, pretending that it wasn’t a special, last-minute measure I put in place after I met you.”
“You were trying to…find out where I was lacking? As a governess?” Lily rationally knew that she shouldn’t be offended—after all, she’d had no experience as a governess at all.
“I thought you far too pretty to be anything but daft or vain, and I’m determined that my daughter grow up neither,” he said in a self-deprecating tone.
Lily thought back to those early days, where every dinner had felt as if it were some sort of caustic interview she had to survive. “You…you…”
She didn’t know what to say, she was so… She didn’t even knowwhatshe felt. Offended, definitely, but there was also a small thread of hurt worming through her midsection.
Those dinners had come to mean something to her. Theirs had been a relationship very nearly as strong as hers and Rebecca’s, and to find out that those dinners had started as some sort of investigation against her… She shook her head, tears gathering in her eyes.
Bradford continued, “I’m sorry I thought the worst of you. It says far more about me than it does about you, of course.”
“But you were proven right in the end, weren’t you?” Lily’s words sounded bleak, even to her.
“No.” He gently cupped her elbow. “Just the opposite. I found you to be as kind and patient as you are beautiful. I watched you raise Rebecca with all the tender love a mother would offer her—more than her own ever gave. And you dealt with my relentless questioning with admiral forbearance. No one else would have borne with me as you did.”
“But I lied.” She turned from him and pulled her arm from his gentle grasp. “Isn’t that why you’re here?”
“Yes, and no.” His words were gentle and measured as always, and in a rare moment of irritation, she wanted to kick him in the knee to hurry things along. He must have seen the flash of temper in her eyes, for he chuckled and said, “Please. I’ll explain everything. You certainly deserve as much. It’s difficult for me to put it into words when I’ve only just started being honest with myself on this topic.”
Lily took a deep breath and waited.
“I thought it was enough,” he said after a moment. “I told myself it was enough. To have you at my dinner table, to have theconversations we shared about everything. To have you as good as raising Rebecca. I convinced myself that’s all I wanted from you. But it was a lie—the worst kind, for it was one that I told myself and believed.”
His eyes moved over the far landscape. Lily shot a glance over her shoulder, grateful for Mabel’s loyalty and discretion. Her maid stood at a distance where she couldn’t hear them, but close enough to avoid any accusation of impropriety.
Bradford turned to Lily, capturing her attention fully once more. “It wasn’t until you left that I started to learn the truth of my own heart.”
Lily blinked. Hisheart? Her own leapt and thundered at the mention of his.
“I suspected it even when I was riding along behind Mr. Belfour’s hounds, but I wouldn’t admit it. Not when at the time, I thought you might be a charlatan. Or married.”
“It was natural that you’d think the worst of me. I lied to you.” Lily clamped her lips together.
She didn’t know why she’d felt honor-bound to point that out to him again—not when it seemed as if he was finally going to tell her…something. Not that Lily understood precisely what he was telling her. Though maybe she would learn if she stopped interrupting him.
Bradford smiled at her widely like he’d heard all her thoughts. “I’m endeavoring to explain that I didn’t even know my true motivations when I first came to London. All I knew was that I was driven to find you. I couldn’t let you go. When you told me you were going to leave, I was so angry, but I didn’t understand why. Now I know that it hurt me to think of you leaving.”
“Because…because of Rebecca?” Lily’s forehead wrinkled.
“That was part of it. But mostly it was because I’ve come to care for you deeply, Lily.”
Lily was struck dumb by his words. All she could manage was a slight widening of her eyes. Her heart pounded as if she were sprinting through the back field away from Ballam Hall all over again.
“And the truth is—though I didn’t realize it myself at the time—I came to London to find out whether we could have something deeper than friendship.” Bradford nodded solemnly, watching her closely. “But I promise you, Lily, if you don’t feel the same, I’ll never speak of it again. I am happy that we’re friends. And if you’d like me to go, if me being here is distracting or distressing to you, I’ll leave.”
Lily blinked up at him with wide eyes and told him the truth. “I hardly know what I feel at the moment.”
The possibilities were too wondrous to truly consider. The moment rang through her with a deafening clarity that made her fingertips shake, her toes curl inside her boots. It was as if she were a tuning fork that had just been struck.
Bradford nodded, his expression grave. “Will you please think about it and let me know? If…if my presence here serves no purpose, then I should get home to Rebecca.”
Lily found she hated the dejection in his voice, detested that she’d been the one to put it there. Yet she’d told him the truth—she didn’t know precisely what she felt, as her thoughts were as scattered and changing as the billowing clouds in a Northumberland storm. She’d gone from the darkest of ill humors to the heights of hope in a moment.
