A Lady Under Siege(90)
“And what about this woman, this Meghan that you say dwells within me? Do you love her too?”
“I can’t say for certain.”
“Last night you told me you’d never yet lied to me,” she said. “Does that still hold true?”
“Yes. I can’t say that I truly love her, because that’s something else. A dream.”
“I will marry you, on two conditions,” Sylvanne told him.
“I haven’t even formally asked yet,” he smiled.
“Wait until you hear the conditions, then you’ll know to ask, or not.”
“Continue then. You amaze me.”
“First, you must promise truly that you will never speak the name Meghan to me, or speak to her through me, again.”
He nodded.
“Second, you must do your utmost to find a method to drive her from my mind. I want my mind to myself, and I want you to myself.”
She had delivered these conditions with a brave, stern countenance, but now her face softened into girlish vulnerability. “Is that too much to ask?” she said quietly.
He shook his head. “I will marry you,” he answered, and knew for certain that he truly did want to.
“You haven’t asked me,” she smiled.
“Will you marry me?”
She went to him, cautiously. His arms encircled her trembling body and held her tightly to him a long time, until her ragged breathing calmed. “I had to make promises to win you,” he said. “What will you promise me in return?”
She pulled back to look up into his broad, unguarded face, and said solemnly, “I promise to be a good and faithful wife, and to give you children and love them with you, as you love Daphne. And I promise to love Daphne as my own, as the eldest, as my mother loved me.”
46
“Ever read First Love, by Turgenev?” Derek asked.
“No, but if you have, I’m impressed.”
“Oh I’m well-read, if nothing else. It’s about a teenage boy who falls for a beautiful, sophisticated girl next door, and they’re always talking over the wall between their houses. Kind of like us.”
Derek stood in his back yard, resting a hand on top of the fence, looking up at Meghan, who sat on the rail of her deck, close enough to him that she could easily reach out and touch his hand. “Betsy’s home, so it’s best we keep the fence between us,” she said. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d admit to reading romances.”
“It’s not that kind of romance. It’s realistic—it ends tragically.”
“Then it’s not a romance romance.”
“Oh really? So Romeo and Juliet doesn’t count either?”
“I’m thinking of modern romances, the formulaic ones, where the gruff, manly dude meets his match with the plucky gal, and they live happily ever after,” she said.
“It happens, I suppose,” he said. “But it’s getting rarer. There’s no shortage of plucky gals, but the gruff, manly dude is an endangered species.”
“Thomas and Sylvanne are getting married,” she said abruptly.
“Really? Wow. I thought you’d sound more excited. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me right off the bat.”
“I know. I should be excited. She’s a tough cookie, I must say. She extracted conditions.”
“Which are?”
“Well, officially, he’s never to talk to me, or even speak my name, ever again.”
“That’s not new.”
“And secondly, she wants him to find a way for this to end—she wants me out of her head.”
“Can you blame her?”
“No. I know I’m being ridiculous, but it hurts. The way he agreed to it so easily, I feel like I’ve been dumped.”
“He didn’t dump you, he just went with the flow—men agree to stuff all the time without having any intention of carrying through on it. Especially with women. Especially when it comes to romance.”
“You’ve had experience with that?”
“Less than most, I’d say. I prefer to let the chips fall.”
“So basically you’re saying he lied to her.”
“It’s not lying, exactly, it’s avoiding an argument. He agreed he should do something about it, but did he specify what?”