Three weeks to make his own wife fall in love with him.
A fool’s errand, most likely, but what other choice did he have? His anger toward Abigail had abandoned him the instant he kissed her in the coach. Like sand through his fingers, the harder he’d tried to hold onto it the faster it had escaped. And he’d known then, even though he hadn’t admitted it to himself until the next morning, that he couldn’t force her to be his wife any more than he could force the wind to change direction.
Abigail was even more beautiful and brilliant now than she had been when he’d met her, and it would be nothing short of a sin to do anything that would stifle that beautiful brilliance.
Did her inability to see things his way drive him mad?
Absolutely.
Was he tempted to lock her away at Summerwind House and keep her there forever?
Yes.
Would he do it?
No.
No, damn it all, as many times as he’d fantasized about doing precisely that over the past twelve months, he wouldn’t. Hecouldn’t. Because some things... some people... were meant to be more than the lives they’d been born into. And Abigail was one of them. The daughter of a duke with her entire world mapped out for her before the duchess snatched her away in the dead of the night and changed not just her daughter’s path, but his as well.
There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that had Abigail been raised in England, they’d be married. Maybe they’d even have some semblance of happiness. But Abigail was never meant to be the Countess of Lancaster. To live a life that most women dreamed of would mean settling for a life far below the expectations of what she could achieve on her own. And to be married to a woman whose mind and heart were always outside the household would be a slow spiral into the exact kind of cold, isolated marriage he’d grown up loathing.
He understood that.
Heknewthat.
In his bones, he knew.
But a knife thrust into his belly would have been less painful than accepting that Abigail was better off without him. And even though he understood it was likely a fruitless endeavor to convince her to stay beyond the next twenty days, he had to try.
What other choice did he have?
To simply give up after a year of searching, hating, hoping?
It wasn’t in his nature.
A cold, icy wind slapped his face when he departed his coach, adding insult to injury as he walked up to Dr. Chadwick’s front door and stuck the key she’d given him into the rim lock. She had wanted to come with him, had all but insisted, but he’d stayed firm that she remain at Summerwind House. How hard could it be to retrieve three cats? She’d told him where her special carriers were. Coax a feline into each one, close the doors, and be on his merry way. Easy enough. If it all went plan, he’d be back before dinner. Except he couldn’t seem to unlock thefrontdoor.
“What the devil,” he cursed, rattling the key.
“Ye aren’t going to get in that way,” a young, feminine voice called out from behind him.
Turning, Stephen found that he had been snuck up on by a tall, thin girl dressed in boy’s clothing with reddish brown curls sticking out from under the floppy brim of an oversized hat and green eyes that were glaring up at him in suspicion.
“Good morning. Who are you?” he inquired politely.
“Who the ’ell areye?” she demanded with a great deal less cordiality, and Stephen blinked when she pointed a small, but nevertheless quite sharp, blade in his direction. “Dr. Chadwick isn’t in today, but ye don’t look like a patient.”
“What does a patient ordinarily look like?”
“Coughin’ or bleedin’.” Waving the blade in the air, she advanced a step. “Keep trying to pick that lock, and I can make it so you’re bleedin’ if ye want, but there won’t be a doctor in to stitch ye up.”
“I’m not picking anything. I have a key. See?” He held up the useless brass instrument for his would-be assailant’s visual inspection. “Given to me by Dr. Chadwick, except it doesn’t appear to be working.”
“Give me that.” Snatching the key from his hand, the girl clamped her teeth around the roughly hewn wooden hilt of her weapon in order to reach into the pocket of her coat and pull outa key that, at least to Stephen’s eye, appeared identical to the one she’d just taken from him. “Hrrmpph ye giffff thisss?”
“Would you like me to hold your knife?” he asked, extending his hand. “I can’t hear you clearly.”
Her glare intensifying, she threw his key at him and spat the knife back into her palm. “I said, where did ye get that?”
