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“He does not like to speak of it. He sold out shortly after bringing my father home from Waterloo so we could bury him here in the family cemetery. I do not know if Henry never intended to be a career soldier, if losing my father changed his mind, or if he’d always meant to sell out when the trouble on the Continent was resolved. We do not discuss it.”
“He was there,” I said reverently, the facts clicking into place. Henry was present at the battle that killed his father.
James nodded, his mouth pressed in a firm line.
“I cannot believe I did not know.” Though so many things made sense to me now. Henry had not been familiar with Miss Northcott—a development in the Bradwell household which must have occurred while he was away. He was reserved by nature, yes, but the sorrow in his being was undoubtedly a result of the things he’d experienced.
“I have spent a long time feeling as though I owe something to Henry,” James said, his hands behind his back and his gaze on the portrait of his third-times great-grandfather. “I wanted to purchase a set of colors, but my father would not allow it. He’d trained me my entire life to take over as heir of Chelton, and he could not go away to war without the assurance that I would remain to care for my mother. It was a blow to my young pride, but I accepted the responsibility and watched Henry take on the role I desired.”
“He did not relish it, I suppose?”
“No. He wanted to study at University but put it off when soldiers were needed in order to do what he believed was his duty as the second son. Ben wanted to join him, but Father asked him to complete his studies first.”
“Henry never went to university then?”
“Never. Ironic, is it not? He is the only one of us who cared to.” James ran a hand over his jaw. “After we married and came to Chelton, when I struggled to find an accord with you, it was a direct blow to watch how easily you and Henry found companionship. I am ashamed to say how deeply it offended my pride, how jealous I grew.”
“I do not love him,” I said quietly.
James looked to me, his visible eye gleaming in the candlelight. “It is painful to watch your easy camaraderie with him. An inordinate beast of jealousy has grown within me ever since we came to Chelton. I want to be the man you desire, the one who can sit beside you in the quiet or hide away with you at a ball. I want to be the man you choose.”
The man you choose. My heart stuttered at the words. I wanted the same thing, to be the woman James chose every day, forever.
“Henry is such a private man,” James continued, unaware of how deeply his words had pierced me. “He had the first claim on your acquaintance. I fear I have stolen you from a better life with him, that if it had been him in that ballroom, you would have been happier situated with a man who understood you fully.”
The man you choose. It repeated in my mind over and over, heavy and jarring like a battering ram.
I stepped back, needing to clear my head, and James took the distance for something else, hurt splashing over his face. “Liss—”
“No, listen.” I shook my head and raised a gloved hand. “I have spent the last two months fearing the same thing, fearing that I took the role of mistress of Chelton from a far more deserving woman, that there was a lady out there who would relish these responsibilities and duties and not shy away in the face of social niceties. I have ridden horses and played ridiculous games and attended social functions all in an effort to be a wife you would not be ashamed of. But more than that, I wanted to be a wife you would want.”
“Want?” He ran a hand through his hair, messing its perfect order. “Can you not see how deeply I have wanted you from the very beginning? I could have stepped back and allowed you to leave that library easily at the Huttons’ ball, but you’d wholly captured my interest, and I did not wish for our time together to end. I cajoled you into that wretched dance, for heaven’s sake.”
His vehemence startled me, and I could not reconcile the truth in his words. “You cannot expect me to believe that my quiet, bookish—”
“Believe it.” James took my hand and turned it over, running his finger over the place on my glove I’d burned that night so long ago, the mark long since healed. “My belief that you meant to entrap me that night died swiftly upon the realization that you were sincere in your efforts to escape the crowded ballroom for your own reasons. I was in London to find a wife, and every young chit who threw herself in my path was nothing but artifice and deceit or a blasted fortune hunter. Yours was the first conversation I’d held all Season that lacked deception. You were genuinely yourself, darling, and you stole my heart that very night.”
“But we’ve nothing in common.”
“We do share one thing. Or, I hope we do at least. We cannot fall asleep without the other there, and that has daily given me hope.”
The man you choose.
My heart surged with affection, and I stepped forward, sliding my hands around his waist and pressing my nose into the hollow between his shoulder and his neck, inhaling the muted spicy scent embedded in his lapel. James’s arms came around me, holding me tightly to him, and all the anxious flutterings dissipated slowly until calmness seeped into my limbs and infiltrated my entire being.
I turned my head to speak but remained tightly in his arms. “I’ve loved you since the moment you carried me from the Pickerings’ ballroom, James. You are the first person to accept my nervous fits for what they are and to never try to change that about me.”
“You are not upset that I forced you into a life that is outside the bounds of your comfort?”
“I was, initially. I could not understand why you would marry me and bring me to this monstrous house when you knew how I struggled.” I leaned back to look into his face, hoping he would understand the sincerity in my heart. “Perhaps Henry and I, had we pursued any sort of acquaintance, would have one day found an accord with one another, but that possibility is deep in the past, and I have left it there. What matters now is that I love you, James. I choose you, and I will continue to do so for the rest of my life. We do not need to share the same opinions or the same interests to love one another, and I believe it is through the sacrifices we make that we share an even greater regard.”
“Sacrifices?” His hands rubbed my back, making it hard for me to focus.
“Yes. I sacrifice comfort to join you in your outdoor pursuits or at balls or dinners, and you sacrificed as well. You do not press me to dance or attend at-homes when I do not wish to, you made an effort to find a pastime that would suit both of us. And, best of all, you tried to read a book that did not interest you in the slightest. Or, at least I believe you did.”
The tips of his ears went red, and he looked away. “You found that, then? I wondered if you’d seen Udolpho after you mentioned discovering the maid rummaging through drawers in the study. I only wanted to know what it was you found so interesting in it.”
“Did you?”
