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“Ah, yes,” Jenny said. “Expectations.”
For a moment, they both stared at her ring.
“You don’t seem at all angry,” Jenny ventured. She peered up at him. “You don’t even seem mildly irritated, if I’m honest.”
His gray gaze touched hers and she didn’t know how she kept herself from flinching.
“I’m not pleased,” he said.
Jenny blew out a breath. She thought about her father and how disappointed he would be with her.
But then, that was all about his fear. And she’d let that fear and her own grief hang over her for so long now that she’d accepted that it was simply...how things were. She’d decided long ago she could never be with someone she loved. And she’d never tried, so she’d assumed she could handle a loveless life.
She knew better now.
Jenny had no idea if she could make Dylan love her, all these years later. What she did know was that she’d never forgive herself if she didn’t try.
She pulled off the ring that Conrad had given her, and she met his gaze—and held it—as she placed it back in his hand.
For a moment, he only stared back at her. As unreadable as ever.
“My sister tells me that Dylan has been your best friend as long as she has,” Conrad said then. “Though she claims she’s your real best friend, because he’s not really a friend at all, is he?”
“No,” Jenny said. At last. “I’m afraid Dylan has always been a lot more. Even if he did walk away today.”
Conrad smiled, then. And his eyes had gone back to that frigid gray. He let the ring roll forward and back in his palm before he closed it up in his fist.
He stood, tucking the ring away in his pocket. And it struck Jenny as funny, almost, that she was yet again in a supplicant position, staring up a man.
But not the right one.
“He wanted to tear me apart with his bare hands,” Conrad said, gazing down at her. “I thought he was going to try to put me through the wall. Instead, he walked away. Why would a man do that?”
Jenny only stared up at him as her heart began to pound at her like a battering ram.
“I don’t love you, Jenny,” Conrad continued. His voice was matter-of-fact. “If you married me, I never would. Love is not something I have to offer. But even a blind man could see that your friend does not suffer these same restrictions.” He inclined his head, cool and unbothered, and she couldn’t tell if that made it better or worse. “If you’re not content with our arrangement, if you feel even half the things I can see all over your face, go. Find him. I don’t think you need my blessing, but you have it.”
And Jenny stayed there, still leaning out over the small table, while the man she’d intended to marry turned and walk from the room.
She stayed where she was, there beside a lovely tea service she didn’t have the slightest urge to touch.
She thought about all these years since her first sight of Dylan at Oxford. And it was a temptation to think of them all as wasted. But when she set all those years of friendship next to the past few weeks of absolute joy, she knew, somehow, that she couldn’t have had one without the other. That it had always been leading here.
What she had to ask herself was whether or not, had Conrad not turned up the way he had today, she would have called off this wedding herself.
Jenny tried to imagine walking down an aisle in the spring, and seeing Conrad standing at the head of it.
And it was wrong. It was just...wrong.
There was only one man she’d ever wanted to see smiling at her, from the head of an aisle or anywhere else.
Her breath left her in a rush. She dug into the pocket of the coat she hadn’t managed to take off and pulled out her mobile. Then she called a number she knew by heart, though it was ten o’clock at night there and she knew her father didn’t like late night calls.
And in fact, he sounded typically put out when he picked up the phone.
“It’s me, Papa,” Jenny said. “I know you’re asleep or on your way. But I have something to tell you and I know you’re not going to like it. I need you to love me anyway.”
And when her father sputtered, Jenny told him the news.
