“I have the gift of distance from all this,” she said. “It’s easy to seem wise when the pain isn’t your own.”
The back of his hand grazed hers, sending a tendril of longing throughout his body, begging him to reach out and take her hand. But she had already turned away.
They continued on toward the house. “What will you do, when this is over?”
If she had asked him this question two days ago—heck, maybe even this morning—he would have known the answer. But basking in an afterglow of lovemaking had left him paradoxically satisfied and greedy for more. He was surrounded by the equally tempting threads of possibility in this tangled garden, with its riot of colour, scent, and untapped potential. Everything he thought he wanted had tilted.
“I have to run that company,” he said, as if to reinforce to himself what was expected of him, even if the thought of the day-to-day running of a lumber empire made Beau want to crawl out of his skin “People depend on Silver Lumber for their livelihoods. Frank worked too hard for it.”
“What will you do with this land, then?”
She might as well asked him how he would walk to China.
“I don’t know,” he said, and smiled to himself at the pleasure he took in being able to be honest with her. He had no idea. But he’d seen the way she’d looked at it—with such longing. “What do you think I should do with it?”
“Gift it to someone who will love it,” she said, her expression bright with enthusiasm. It was so contagious, it seemed to swell in Beau’s chest. “Someone who will tend its gardens. I could see it being a lovely haven for people who need nature’s embrace.”
“Gift it?” Beau said, and in that moment, he realized that perhaps he was Frank’s son after all. “The proceeds from this would make a tidy legal fund.”
“I am sure the contents of your closet could be sold to make a tidy legal fund,” she said, a darkness edging her tone.
“Do you want it?” he asked.
If he had offered her the moon, she would not have looked more surprised than she did at this moment.
“I have Everwell,” she said, as if that was the answer to everything.
“Do you?” he asked. “Do you plan to stay there forever?”
She nodded with what he might assume to be complete confidence, save for the hint of doubt in her eyes.
“What happens to the place when Miss Everwell dies?”
“Tilda will run it,” she answered.
“Mrs. Gilman is of an age,” he said. “I assume—and certainly hope—that you will outlive her. She is at least twenty years your senior.”
“Thirty, actually,” Maddy said.
“More to the point,” he said. “Does it go in trust?”
“Technically, Rimple Jones is their heir,” Maddy offered. “She has been Lady Em’s ward since she was a child. The property will be hers when the time comes. But Rimple would never throw us out. Everwell will endure.”
“But do you want to stay there forever?”
Why was he pursuing this? He’d bedded Miss Murray. More to the point, he’d deflowered her. Still, he’d expected that the encounter would satisfy whatever hold she had on his senses. Instead, it magnified them.
“I suppose I do,” she said. “After all, it has all my books and my gardens. And I have work there. My life is there. Everyone I care about is there. And everyone who cares about me.”
Not everyone, Beau wanted to shout.
“Nothing about this appeals to you?” he asked.
“But you are not really offering it to me,” she said. “And beautiful as it is, I couldn’t do this on my own. I wouldn’t want to.”
* * *
Maddy and Beau returned to the house in companionable silence, each lost in their own thoughts. Beau had promised to worship her, and he’d made good on that promise. And if it was only once, to sate his own curiosity, Maddy had selfishly taken the experience and pleasure for herself. She would not let Malcolm Ferguson be the last man to have touched her; a touch that had begun in deceit and ended in anger. If there was nothing else between her and Beau, he had given her something more. Beau had given her pleasure, and more importantly, the sense that she was, in that moment, the one thing he desired.
