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He began to explain, speaking faster than usual, as if he wanted this over with as quickly as possible. “In the breach of promise suit you brought against me, your solicitor argued—”
“I ended the engagement,” she interrupted, baffled. “I never brought a suit against you.”
“And highly annoying that was too. I had to do it on your behalf.”
Confused, Arabella unfolded the letter and stared at the neat, indecipherable writing. The first words were in legal language. She was good at legal language. She read case law for fun. It was incomprehensible nonetheless.
“You sued yourself on my behalf,” she repeated.
“Yes. Do keep up. Your solicitor’s petition notes that—”
“I have a solicitor?”
“I had to hire one for you. He’s good but expensive. I’ll send you the bill.”
“Guy, you are making no sense. I released you. You could have brought a breach of promise suit against me.”
“In his will,” he continued testily, “my father named three properties that would come to me if I married you, and to Sir Walter Treadgold if I did not. Your solicitor’s petition successfully argued that, given our broken engagement, those properties should go to you.”
“You gave me houses.”
“Yes. It’s all there in the letter.”
She still couldn’t make out a word of it. “Three houses.”
“They have some land attached. Cows and crops and so forth.”
In an effort to clear her head, Arabella looked past him, to where glossy ivy wound around the iron fence. She watched its leaves tremble in the breeze and still did not understand. Apparently, in breaking her own heart, she had also broken her brain.
“Why would you do this?” she asked. “I stated very clearly that you owe me nothing.”
“Indeed, your note was exceedingly clear.” His dry tone forced her eyes back onto him, but still his expression gave nothing away. “This settles it definitively. We are completely free. No debt, no duty, no honor, no obligation. I can’t do much to salvage your reputation, but that’s mostly your fault, so I refuse to feel responsible for that.”
“Completely free,” she repeated.
“Completely free,” he agreed. A thread of tension hummed under his light tone. “I owe you nothing, you owe me nothing. I am now free to choose my own bride. Someone I love, someone who knows me, someone who makes me happy. I can choose whomever I wish. And you can too.”
Arabella didn’t feel free. She felt the tightness of her corset, and the breeze in her hair, and her silly, sorry heart breaking all over again. How eager he was to sever all ties! Yet he could have severed those ties without granting her financial independence. Why did he have to be so wretchedlydecent?
“I entangled you in my problems, and nearly ruined your life, and you do this.” Her fingers tightened on the page, tempted to tear it to shreds. “I gave you no end of trouble and you gave me three houses. Do you want nothing from me?”
“You have nothing,” he said sharply. “You gave it all up.”
“True, but—”
“But there is one thing you can give me.”
Anything, she wanted to say. She waited.
“An explanation,” he said. “Tell me why you ran away. Why you preferred to lose everything rather than marry me.”
“I didn’t run—”
“Tell me.”
His features were implacable, his stance as welcoming as that of an enemy soldier at the gates. Nothing about him invited her to lower her guard and surrender her frightened heart.
“You want this finished with,” she said.
