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“Is there something I can do to help? You need only to ask,” he said, for, though she wasn’t the woman at the center of his world any longer, she was still his brother’s widow. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to lose a spouse in such an unexpected way. A trick of fate, and Grace’s entire future had shifted. He remembered she’d always been a proud woman and knew she wouldn’t appreciate his pity, but he could give her his kindness.

She gestured to the chair across from him. “Might I sit for a moment?”

“Please do.”

The pause gave Grace enough time to compose her thoughts, purse her lips, and nod. “I realize that it must be odd to be living here in the same house as me.”

He shook his head. “Not at all. All I ever wanted for you was happiness, and I’m glad you found a life with my brother.”

A sad smile played over Grace’s lips. “Years ago I couldn’t imagine you saying something so gracious.”

“We all change,” he said.

No one more than me.

Right after Gavin’s mother had coldly informed him that Grace would marry Richard and Grace herself had confirmed it, he hadn’t been able to stand the idea of being in the same room as her. She was the reason he’d left Oak Park that night—not his father, his brother, or his mother. It had been all Grace.

It was strange to think that she’d had such a hold on him, when now he could look upon her as nothing more than his sister-in-law. Time had helped, but mostly it was Ina. He’d thought he loved Grace back then, but he now knew he’d loved the idea of her more than the reality.

Ina was an entirely different matter. He’d known her as a friend and understood her flaws almost from that first day. That first day when she’d leveled her impertinent gaze at him and declared he was interrupting her serious work as a sculptor, he’d begun to leave Ashington, his family, and Grace far behind.

When he’d finally realized he was in love with Ina, he’d lived for her. He still did, despite his best efforts to put her behind him.

“I fear that some of us change less than others,” said Grace with a little smile. “Sometimes I think I’m still that seventeen-year-old girl you used to write letters to.”

He hardly knew what to say to that, so he just sat and let a grieving woman speak.

“I know it must be hard to believe, but rejecting you was the most difficult decision I’ve ever made.” Her eyes fell to her lap while her fingers played with the edges of her cuticles. She stopped and spread her hands out on her skirts as though trying to calm herself. “You must believe that the decision wasn’t entirely mine.”

He huffed out a laugh. “Of that I’ll never be sure.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, a touch defensively.

“We always have a choice, Grace. We could’ve married. I would’ve become a teacher or lecturer at a university and written when I could. We could’ve lived on my salary. It wouldn’t have been the luxury either of us had known growing up, but I was willing to make that sacrifice to be with you.”

The expression on Grace’s face became pained. “It sounds so easy when you say it like that.”

He shook his head. “It would’ve been hard on both of us, but I would’ve gone to the ends of the earth for you. I believe that’s what I told you when I proposed.”

“I—I know.”

“Do you remember what you said to me when you rejected me?” he asked.

“Gavin, please don’t think that I meant any of those things,” she said.

“But you did,” he said. “You told me that I was the second son. You told me that I’d never live up to be the man my brother would be. That I’d never own an estate like Oak Park. That I could never give you the life that you wanted. And at the time everything you said was true.”

“There was no love between Richard and me.”

That surprised him. “How could there not be? You’re beautiful, Grace. Surely he saw that.”

She scoffed. “There’s more than beauty in this world, Gavin. You should know. You wrote about it.”

“You’ve read my book?” he asked.

“I ordered it from London. I wanted to see what the man I rejected had made of himself. And then you became a baronet.” Grace paused. “One who is in need of a hostess.”

All his senses went on alert. “I have a wife.”