Forever My Love (Berkeley-Faulkner #2)(97)

“Whatever else he is, he is not heartless.” Mira rubbed her forehead absently. “I am beginning to think that he is often misunderstood.” “Misunderstood! Mireille, listen to yourself!” “You think I have no rational perspective on the situation. But I do.”

“If all that I have heard about him has been wrong, if all of London and I have misunderstood him, and you really think that he could be a good husband, then why did you refuse him?”

“I told you before. He… he does not want to love someone who is not perfect… and I am certainly far from perfect. And furthermore, I don’t want to be the wife of a man in his position. It’s not something that I am suited for.”

“Mireille, it wasn’t easy for me,” Rosalie said rapidly, in a different voice than before. “I was not prepared in any way to be the wife of an earl, much less the wife of a Berkeley! It is wonderful in some ways,and dreadful in others, but I would endure twice as much in order to be married to Rand.”

“Sang de Dieu, I shouldn’t have refused Lord Falkner.” Mira drew her knees up on the chair and buried her head in her arms, unmindful of the position’s lack of dignity. “I should have said yes, but all I could think of were all the reasons why I shouldn’t. Maybe I should have accepted him. Maybe I should have said yes and ignored everything else. I wish someone else could make the decision for me.”

“You’ll forget about him soon enough. There are so many other men who will want you—”

“No, no other men. I couldn’t. Another man even touching me… I won’t even think about it.” Mira looked up with eyes as dark as a midnight sky, the pupils dilated. She was beyond tears. “Without him, I will be alone,” she whispered. “Even if I became another man’s wife, even if I had children and a family… I would still be alone. He is the only escape from it.”

Startled, Rosalie stared at her and shook her head, her mouth falling open. “How on earth can you feel this way about him? You hardly know him!”

“I do know him. He is the one who…”

Even though Mira did not finish the sentence, Rosalie understood what she had started to say, and she was stunned. “Mireille… what an idiot I’ve been. I didn’t understand how this could have happened so quickly. As far as I knew, the only time you had seen Lord Falkner was at Sackville’s hunt and the night we met with Brummell… but that’s wrong, isn’t it? You’ve seen him many more times than that… you must have… oh, how mutton-headed I’ve been! It was never Sackville. Lord Falkner was the one you loved in Hampshire, wasn’t he?”

“Yes,” Mira hid her face again, drawing herself into a tight ball.”Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You were so much against him… and besides, I wanted to forget about him. I tried to, with all my strength.”

“I’m not against him if he’s the only one who’ll make you happy,” Rosalie said hesitantly. “I know you’re not a bad judge of character… you wouldn’t love someone who didn’t have some redeeming qualities. It’s not too late for you to change things. We’re leaving Brighton in a few hours. Perhaps you should go to him now… tell him you’ve thought about what he said and—”

“I can’t. I’ve got to leave things as they are. He was right: we both need time to think. And if he still wants me, he will know where I am.”

“You should have heard her bid me farewell,” Carr said, filled with the boisterous spirits of a young and infatuated man. “Desolate. Those big dark eyes looking up at me, and that little.bit of an accent in her voice as she told me that she hoped that she would see me again—”

“Are you certain that you’re not mistaking common politeness for a declaration of affection?” Alec crossed his long legs, one over the other, and rested them on the carriage seat opposite his. Carr regarded the muddied buckskins with disdain and edged a few inches away from them in order to preserve the immaculate condition of his coat.

“Very certain. Her heart was in her face.”

“How convenient for you.”

Ignoring Alec’s chilling responses to his rapture-tinged descriptions of Mireille Germain, Carr sighed happily and rested his dark head against the blue upholstery of the carriage. “You don’t understand how I feel about her… you don’t understand how different she is from any other woman I’ve ever met. Shy and flirtatious, and witty—without being cattish like all the others—and she’s the sweetest, dearest—”

“How far did it go between you two?” Alec asked, suddenly tense.

“I’m serious about her, Alec! With any other woman I might have tried something, but I plan to take time with this one. I want her to know that I respect her.”

Alec leaned back in his seat. “I hope that it will not be too much of a strain on your amorous sensibilities to engage with that maid at the Rummer this afternoon.”

“No,” Carr replied with the air of a man resigned to his duty. “I’m going to flirt and grapple with Jane in order to find out more about Holt… because I must, not because I want to.” Slowly Carr smiled. “Her big pitchers don’t mean a thing to me.”

“The effort will not have been in vain if she’ll make you into less of a greenhead,” Alec said, grinning suddenly. Holt had also entertained a great fascination with big pitchers, an interest which had provided the material for many jokes and quips among their circle of friends.