The Lady Always Wins(4)

He pulled away from her, his movements stiff. “Damn it.”

“Your language hasn’t improved any, I see.”

He looked relieved at the change of topic. Anything to spare themselves from revisiting that old argument.

“If anything, it’s grown worse. I spend all my time around men, more than half of them laborers.” His hand drifted to the top button of his jacket, and he undid it. “When there are no women about for miles, they say the most amazing things. You would bloody love it.”

She couldn’t pull her eyes from his fingers. It wasn’t as if he were actually disrobing—he had a shirt and a waistcoat on underneath. Still, he was slowly and methodically unbuttoning his coat. Unsettled as she was, she still found herself watching those buttons with far too avid an interest.

He undid another button and tilted his head down the path. “You see that bench there?”

“Yes?”

He popped the next button, and glanced over at her. She colored and looked away. A loss; he had always tried to get a response out of her. But then, it would have been an equal loss if he’d noticed how she’d been staring.

And perhaps he had noticed anyway, because he smiled faintly—a real smile, this time.

“I’m going to race you there.” He continued undoing his coat. “And I’m going to win.”

He probably would. She had, in a fit of vanity, donned half boots that had a hint of heel before they had left. But that arrogant assertion put her back up.

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” she said. “The lady always wins.”

“Ha.” He undid the last button on his coat and rolled his shoulders, finding his range of motion after confinement. “If memory serves, the lady always blusters.”

“By all accounts,” Ginny continued, ignoring him, “you’ve been slaving away, burning the midnight oil and all that. How fast can a man run, when he spends his days trapped behind a desk? It’s a wonder you haven’t gone to fat.”

“I’ll have you know, I spend long days in the field—” He stopped before he could truly start his tirade, and shook his head ruefully. “Ah. You almost had me there.”

“I’m going to have you again,” Ginny said, and took off running.

She could scarcely breathe with the boning of her corset bound tightly around her. Her shoes kept sinking into the new spring ground. He passed her easily. By the time she came to the bench, he had positioned himself behind it, one hand leaning on it casually. He did a creditable job of disguising the fact that he was gasping for breath.

“It’s not really fair,” she pointed out. “I’m wearing stays. And heels.”

“I’m not playing fair, Ginny,” he responded. “Most especially not about you. When you jilted me—”

“I never jilted you! How could I have? I never agreed to marry you in the first place.”

“What has that got to do with anything?” he shouted back. “Who else were you going to marry?”

“I think that is rather obvious. I was going to marry Mr. Lionel Croswell.”

He growled at that—actually growled, like a dog. But he didn’t reach for her. Instead, he ran his hands through his hair and spoke in a lower voice. “Maybe what I meant was—who else was I going to marry?”

It was, perhaps, the first honest thing they’d said to each other since his arrival. He said it with such bitterness in his tone that he almost broke her heart. She could feel his pain like a sharp knife, could feel her own remorse at a decision made long ago. The years of their separation had cut them both equally.

He folded his arms and frowned into the distance.

“I didn’t care,” he said eventually. “I didn’t care if my parents disowned me. I didn’t care if I had nothing. I only ever cared about you.”

“That was always the problem.” Ginny shook her head slowly. “I did care. I wasn’t going to marry a poor man. Especially not one who had no trade.” The weight of that worry had nearly suffocated her back then. “Only the wealthy have the luxury to claim they care nothing for money. You’ve never been poor. You don’t know what poverty would mean.”

He straightened and jerked away from her. He didn’t meet her eyes; he just started to button up his jacket once more. Maybe it was her imagination that his cuff links—were those really gold?—glinted at her.

“Well,” he finally said, when he had restored himself to proper order. “I’m not poor any longer.” And with a final challenging look, he held out his arm to her.

Ginny hesitated. So many years. So much pain they’d caused each other. A fortune or two couldn’t paper over all of that. But when he gestured, she went to him and took his arm.

Chapter Two

SIMON’S MAN WAS WAITING in the inn’s common room. Andrew Fortas had not ordered so much as a glass of beer; he looked uncomfortably out of place, sitting ramrod-straight in the rustic wooden chairs and gawking about, as if he’d never been anywhere so backward as Chester-on-Woolsey. He had a stack of papers with him, tied up in blue cotton tape. They were turned facedown on the counter. His fingers played a silent rhythm on the arm of his chair.

Simon came and sat in the wooden stool next to him. “I came here regularly as a child, you know, and nobody ever tried to kill me.”