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“She said‘duly noted’.” Perth gave a snort. “‘Duly noted’. Can you believe it? She wasn’t even upset.”
“Did you…want her to be?”
“You’re damned right I did!” He took another hard puff on the cigar, then extinguished it with a sharp jab into a shallow crystal bowl. “She was meant to cry, and then I was going to comfort her, and then, out of the pure goodness of my heart, I was going to change my mind and suggest marriage. Maybe. I hadn’t really thought that far ahead.”
“But you did change your mind because youaremarried,” Ezra pointed out.
“So we are. Happily, might I add. Except for when the cock gets out of line. Sir Kensington, that is. Not my cock. My cock is in splendid working order.”
“Duly noted.”
Perth’s eyes narrowed, then his mouth stretched in a wide grin. “I like you, Whitmore. And because I like you, I’m going to offer you some advice. Whatever reason Annabel has for refusing your proposal, she’ll most likely come around. My wife and her sisters are…complicated women. They’ve had to be, given the hardships they’ve endured. But mark my words, a rose is worth the wait.”
A rose is worth the wait.
Yes, it was.
Shewas.
But then, Ezra already knew, deep down, that he was going to wait. For however long it took. Because when you had a good hand, you held onto it. And when you had a good woman…a woman that you loved and who loved you back, even though she wasn’t ready to admit it yet…you held onto her. With all that you had in you, you held on.
No matter what.
Audley Assembly Room
Two Months Later
“He’ll be here?”Annabel asked nervously. “You’re absolutely certain?”
Bridget nodded as she handed off her cloak to a footman and shook out the skirt of her gown. Graham trailed behind her, remaining respectfully out of earshot, while Lenora and Perth were further back, dragging Eloise along like a wiggling fish on a hook.
It was the first ball since Christmas Eve…when Annabel had sent Ezra away out of her own fears and insecurities, and spent the next eight weeks in miserable solitude. Around the fourth week, she’d finally worked up the courage to go see him, but when she arrived at Broadwin House, his butler informed her that he had gone to London.
“He did leave you a note, my lady,” the servant told her, and tears had flooded her eyes when she read the fourteen short words that he’d written.
A rose is worth the wait. I’ll be here when you’re ready.
Yours, Ezra
He believed in them. And she wanted to. Oh, how she wanted to. Because the amount of time they’d known each other wasn’t the problem. It was just an excuse. No, it was her own fear that kept her pacing the halls of Clarenmore Park even after Lenora tried to coax her to London. Fear of what a future might look like with a man who loved her just as wildly as she loved him. The sort of compelling, once-in-a-lifetime love that had brought her parents together…and then sent her father out onto the ice when he couldn’t stand the heartache any longer.
Annabel had no such suicidal thoughts. She would be hurt if she ever lost Ezra, but she’d never hurt herself. But as the days turned to weeks and the weeks to months, she was forced to answer a difficult question. What hurt worse? Leaving him…or loving him?
“I’m not sure if I can do this,” she said, clinging to Bridget’s elbow as they entered the ballroom.
“You can,” her sister replied kindly. “And you will, because Lord Whitmore is right over there and he’s just spotted you.”
Annabel froze. A deer caught in range of a hunter’s rifle. Bridget slipped away, and then she was alone in a grand room filled with a hundred people. But only one of them was Ezra. Only one of them held the other half of her heart.
As if her limbs were attached to strings, and the strings were being controlled by a puppeteer, she began to move jerkily towards him. He remained where he was, letting her come to him, and that was certainly fair. Then of its own accord, her gaze flitted to the left where she spied Lord Wimplebottom, and she froze all over again, her stare darting between the two men while she gnawed her bottom lip indecisively.
Neither was the knight in shining armor that she’d envisioned as a young girl. Because Prince Charming didn’t exist. Not really. There were no castles in the sky. Unicorns weren’t real. Parents died, and brothers disappeared, and life was fraught with uncertainties.
Marriage to a man like Lord Wimplebottom would be…mundane. Predictable. Like rowing a boat out into the middle of a small pond, the water would always be smooth, glassy, and calm. Each day exactly like the other.
Then there was Ezra.
Devilishly charming, completelyunpredictable Ezra. The man who had proposed to her after three meetings. The man who had put himself, quite literally, on his knees. The man who ignited a fire within her. A bright, burning, out of control fire. A fire that would burn down all of her preconceived notions about what marriage would be like.
