Miles’ kisses had always begun like spring sunshine: warm and gentle.
Before youthful passion had seized them and they would hurtle to summer: scorched and wild and…
But he would always draw away, eyes glazed, and it had felt like autumn arriving too soon before leaving her in the throes of winter.
“It was…nice.”
Sephi hoisted her brow. “If that man merely kissesnice, I’ll eat my latest hat.”
“Oh, it’s all useless anyhow,” groused Verity, reaching for the hairbrush once more. “It is past and we have to cease such contemplation. According to Mrs Tait, he is hunting a wife and she clearly believes her daughter is perfect. And she is right. Juliet is kind, pretty, has a large dowry and nothing…nothing disreputable in her past.”
“Hmm. Maybe you should tell him.”
“That Juliet is perfect for him?”
“Goosecap.” Sephi shook her head. “Why you…ahem…jilted him.”
Verity briefly closed her eyes. “For what reason, Sephi? To rekindle his affections? Which I doubt would be possible as I hurt him so.” She pulled at the bristles on the brush. “He’s an earl now and has a duty to seek a debutante with grace, innocence and pots of money, not a spinster artist whose bloom of youth wilted long ago. One who is so…so troubled. And he still wishes to travel, to hunt exotic new plants in first Portugal and then the Americas or Brazil. I overheard him tell Juliet that he’s to the wilds of Wales in the New Year for a month, staying at motley inns and even sleeping in his carriage, if he has to.” A bristle tore loose from the brush, her throat catching. “Nothing has changed, Sephi. I am no longer the girl he knew.”
“I’m sorry.” A pad of feet before gentle arms enveloped her. “It was thoughtless of me.”
“He told me…” She stared up into Sephi’s kind eyes. “That night, after I said I was to marry another, he told me I had snapped his heart in two. That he could not stand to look at me. And his expression… Oh, you should have seen it, Sephi, all of my own making. The sudden distaste and hatred he had for a girl swayed by a large botanical garden; it pierced me like a bayonet. And then what does he go and do? Buy a commission in the deuced army. You heard him at dinner. It can only have been my fault that he left. That he gave up his dream of botany.” She allowed her lids to fall closed. “The least I can do is to leave him alone and let him marry his perfect bride. Juliet said she’d be thrilled to visit Portugal and sip their famed port on the slopes of the River Douro.”
“Love is the very devil.” Sephi hugged her hard. “We are better off without it. Better off without the heartache.”
Verity drew slightly back. “Cousin, you must not allow that libertine to corrupt your own heart, or let cynicism rule.”
“How can I not?” Lids closed over glittering blue eyes. “All those words of love he spoke. All those lingering touches and…”She swallowed hard. “I was distraught when he declared he’d not marry me, in front of everyone, but it wasn’t just that… He…he laughed at me, Verity. When I told him I loved him so, he laughed. And it was that laughter which hurt so deep and broke my heart. I fear, irredeemably so.”
“Oh, Sephi… But I believe time can heal, if we can let it.” Yet her own lips trembled.
“A fine muddle of emotions we are. And now we have this dratted fair to attend.”
Verity bit her lip. “We could tender our excuses?”
Yet Sephi shook her head. “I think not. Because tonight, for all its prior apprehension, was a success. You were not troubled in the conservatory, and I was not laughed at. In fact it wasmewho laughed and conversed and we both survived. And besides, this fair could’ve been worse.”
“How?”
“It could’ve been Astley’s Amphitheatre.”
Mirth and hugs diluted the melancholy and softened the past, like a perpetual river wearing down the sharp stones. Both of them held hurt within but they had also learned to laugh again.
And this Michaelmas Fair would be no different.
“Well, that was…unexpected?”
Sat within his study chair, Miles issued a vague grunt whilst cradling his glass, the evening’s events playing like a revolving set of vignettes within his mind.
“I mean,” continued Alasdair, “not as unexpected as the second act of Mrs Harlow’sNymphs of Delighttheatre show on Princess Street but…we survived.”
Miles kept silent.
Dair did not. “Miss Juliet Tait seemed quite taken by you. As did her mother.”
Sipped his liquor.
“And I finally met Miss Seymour.”
