The Wedding Game(55)

He wished it could never end.

Her head rested in the hollow of his arm. He could see her eyes were open now. There was a glitter of wetness on the lashes, as the first hint of daylight touched them. She reached up to stroke his cheek. ‘You love me, do you not?’

He could see the lines of her face now, so classically pure in form that he could barely stand to look at them. She was beautiful. Not the equal of Belle, but her superior. Why had he not noticed before, when there had been more time?

It was the eyes, he suspected. He’d been so caught up in their appearance that he’d never looked past them to the woman within. While Belle might have a sweet soul, it was childlike and untouched. But Amy had seen things and known them and been marked by them. She was ageing, like wine, and he longed to drown himself in her.

‘If you do not love me,’ she whispered, ‘then lie to save my feelings. I will not feel so foolish, then. I will tell myself it could not be helped because we were in love.’

Light or dark, perfect or ugly, she had not changed from the first day he met her. He laughed. ‘You are not supposed to suggest such things. It is unfeminine.’

‘To request that you lie, or to pretend to believe you when you do?’ she asked.

‘Either, I think,’ he said. ‘And I am finished with lying, for all the good the truth is likely to do me. I love you, Amelia Summoner.’

‘Says a man who has no heart.’ She sighed.

‘It must have grown back, but it is beating as if it might break.’ He covered her hand with his and moved it so she could feel the thumping in his chest. ‘I love you,’ he said again, enjoying the sound of the words.

‘And I love you,’ she said, nestling closer to him. ‘Why does this not make everything easy?’

‘If we were the last people on Earth, it would.’ He laid a hand on her bare hip, wishing that there were more time so that he might love her again before they had to part.

‘Go to my father and tell him you cannot marry Belle. You must—’ She stopped suddenly, as if realising that she could not be the one to demand a proposal, she could only agree to it.

He thought of the destruction it would bring to his reputation and to Belle’s should he cry off. The idea fascinated him. To be able to stand in the ruins of his old life and start again. ‘If I left her, would you be there, waiting for me?’

‘I could not love a man who hurt her,’ she said without hesitation.

‘So, your answer is no.’ He felt another part of him break. ‘You do not have to worry. There will be nothing left of me to marry. If I break the engagement, your father swears he’ll ruin me.’

The sweet woman in his arms let loose with a most unladylike curse.

He laughed, in spite of himself. ‘He wanted to protect your sister. He was afraid, once I knew about her, I would abandon her.’ The oath to Summoner was a growing weight in his gut, crushing the air from his body and ruining the moment. But, at least, now he understood the need for it.

Swear that you will never hurt my daughter.

Amy could fend for herself, but Belle needed protection.

‘If either of you had listened to me in the first place...’

‘You were right, all along,’ he agreed.

‘It would be better to be happy than right,’ she said.

It was true, but it did no good to think about it. ‘I swore,’ he repeated. ‘And it would be better if my word had any value. But it does not. No matter what I swore, I cannot follow through on it.’

‘If you jilt her, she will be ruined as well.’ Amy’s voice was bleak as she realised the truth.

‘It would be even worse should I cast her off to marry you,’ he agreed. ‘But there is a way out.’

For some of us, at least.

‘Let us take it, whatever it is,’ she said hurriedly.

‘First, I must tell you a story.’ And he had best do it quickly. The room was getting lighter by the minute. ‘Once upon a time, there was a foolish young man...’

‘Do I know him?’ she asked playfully.

She still had hope that the ending was a happy one. He swallowed the shame that welled in his throat and went on. ‘He was the son of a cabinet maker. His father died leaving him without money or prospects and a widowed mother to care for.’

She made no answer in response. It made him wonder if a horror of such an ordinary birth had stunned her to silence.

‘Then, one day, a beautiful and powerful woman caught sight of this young man...who was little more than a boy, really...’ Seventeen had been old enough for some things. Wisdom was not one of them. ‘And they entered into an arrangement.’

‘Who was the lady?’ It was barely a whisper.

‘You will know the truth soon enough.’ He tightened his hold on her hip, waiting to see if she shrank from his touch.

She did not pull away.

‘And you and she...’

‘I came to help with the apple harvest,’ he said, ‘hoping to be paid in windfalls.’ His mind wandered back to the distant autumn day he’d first seen Cassandra. ‘She was taking an afternoon ride, when she saw me.’ And he had seen her, golden in the slanting sunlight. The memory of it still made his body quicken after fifteen years.

‘You must have been very handsome,’ Amy murmured, as if she could picture the scene herself.