Mr. Hunt, I Presume (Playful Brides, #10.5)(21)

She hurried up the stairs to the children’s nursery. Anna was there, putting away some of the toys the children had used earlier. “They’re in bed, Miss,” she said to Erienne’s questioning look.

“Thank you, Anna, for watching them while I was at dinner.” She hung her head and left the room. The children didn’t even need her. What should she do with herself? She wandered back to her own room and opened the door. The bed had been turned down and candles were lit on either side of its curtained expanse. A soft glow came from both the sitting room and the dressing room.

She made her way to the dressing room and glanced around the space. Her trunk had been unpacked earlier by a maid named Millie, who Lucy had introduced as the one Erienne should ask for anything she needed. Her serviceable gowns, far different from the one she wore at the moment, hung in the wardrobe. Her three little reticules had been lined up on a shelf beneath the gowns.

She bent and picked up the little bag she used the least, pulled the string apart to loosen it, and fished her fingers inside until she located the tiny piece of paper with the smudged ink. She pulled it out and stared at it, a humorless smile touching her lips as she rubbed her finger across the too-familiar words.

Let me go.

The words Collin had written to her fourteen years ago. She’d kept the note all this time. She only looked at it at moments like these, when memories of him overwhelmed her. She’d been able to let the man go, but she’d kept the scrap of paper. How was that for irony?

Tears sprang to Erienne’s eyes, but she quickly blinked them away. She refused to cry—hadn’t cried since that summer, fourteen years ago. She’d arranged to take the position at the Hilltops’ without her mother knowing and had left her parents a note. Her mother had written her soon after, begging her to come back and choose from her suitors. Erienne needed to marry someone wealthy, her mother claimed, because her father’s business dealings had soured of late and while their name was reputable, their fortune was quickly dwindling. But Erienne couldn’t do it. She couldn’t pledge herself to a man she didn’t love, even after the one she did love had asked her to let him go.

Years later, when her brother had returned from war grievously injured, she promised to send home as much of her wages as she could spare to help care for Peter. It was her choice to remain a spinster that had caused her family further financial hardship, and she couldn’t bear to allow her beloved sibling to suffer as a result.

Erienne pushed the small slip of paper back inside the reticule and returned it to the shelf. Then she wandered back into her bedchamber and stared blindly at the bed for a few moments. She knew sleep would be a stranger tonight, but she refused to return to the dining room. Instead, she trailed her way down the corridor to the servants’ staircase at the back of the house, descended to the main floor, and slipped outside.

Slowly making her way around the side of the building to the manicured gardens outside the library, she breathed in the jasmine that filled the late-summer night air, and paused to revel in it as she passed beneath a trellis covered in the pungent vine. Moonlight glinted off the dark green leaves.

“There’s a sycamore tree by the lake.” Collin’s deep voice sounded from behind her in the darkness. “I’d invite you there, but something tells me you’d refuse.”

Erienne closed her eyes. Pain clenched her heart. He remembered the sycamore tree. “You’d be right,” she said without turning.

Gravel crunched beneath his boots as he came closer. “I hope you didn’t leave dinner on my account.”

What could she possibly say to that? She finally faced him and found him partially lost in shadow. “I ... needed some air.”

“Do you want me to leave?” he asked even as he drew nearer.

The question took her by surprise, but she shook her head curtly. “This is your brother’s house. I’d never be so rude as to ask you to leave.”

“I’d leave if you asked me to, Air.” His voice was soft, caring. Heartbreakingly familiar.

She couldn’t take it if he called her Air. She concentrated on breathing normally, in and out. “At dinner you asked about a viscount. What did you mean?”

“It doesn’t matter now. I realized that I’d been ... misinformed about your whereabouts.”

“Misinformed? By whom?”

His gaze captured hers, his eyes glinting in the darkness. “Does it matter after all these years, Erienne?”

She glanced away and kicked at a pebble on the path with her slipper. It did something to her middle to hear her name on his lips. “I suppose it doesn’t.”

He was close enough now that she could smell his cologne beneath the jasmine, the familiar scent of him she remembered from all those years ago. It catapulted her back in time. She clenched her jaw against the memories that threatened to overwhelm her, fighting to keep from turning to flee.

“I missed you.” The warm timber of his voice sent shock waves pounding through her body.

She wrapped her arms around her middle and swallowed hard. “Why would you say that to me, after all these years?” She could hear the anguish in her own voice, but there was nothing to be done. She’d never been anything but truthful with him.

He took a final step toward her, and the heat from his body warmed her cool skin. “Because it’s true,” he said softly. “Did you miss me?”