Unrequited Love

“You know, you really must stop thinking about him.”

Sian sat upright in bed. She glared across the room and saw Martha hovering in the doorway.

“I should have remembered you don’t like thunderstorms,” she muttered.

Martha remained where she was, until a flas

h of lightning tore through the night. As quick as a blink, Martha positively flew across the room and launched herself into bed.

“Where do you think he is now?” Martha asked whimsically when she was settled beneath the covers.

“Probably sound asleep like we should be.” Sian made no apology for the crispness in her voice.

“He is handsome, though.”

Sian didn’t answer.

“He is kind as well.”

“To you, maybe.”

“He hasn’t ever been rude to you,” Martha chided.

Sian had to concede that Martha had a point. “He is a cold fish.”

“What makes you think that?”

Sian contemplated the night sky. “Well, take this afternoon, for instance. Did you see that muscle ticking in his jaw?”

“Of course,” Martha replied with a sniff. “He was probably cross that you insulted him.”

“I didn’t insult him. I just said that he hates me, which he does. To you, he talks and often makes you giggle. To me, he is barely civil. He clearly dislikes me.” Sian had to stop talking because her voice had thickened the more that she had spoken to the point that it didn’t even sound like her anymore.

“I think he likes you really.”

Sian’s heart flipped at that. She felt a yearning start to bloom out of nowhere but it suffused her with an icy grief the likes of which truly did make her want to cry. She felt as if she had lost something, but then knew that it was impossible to lose something you never had in the first place. Ryan Terrell could never be hers.

“He belongs in a different world, Martha, and I should thank you not to go about suggesting to people that there ever could be an association between us. It makes me look as if I have ideas above my station. Lord Carson comes around here to do business with father. He has never had nor ever will have any romantic inclination toward me.”

“I am sorry, Sian. I didn’t mean to upset you.” Martha placed a hand on Sian’s arm, but the last thing Sian needed right now was sympathy. She was struggling to keep a tight hold on her emotions as it was.

“Do you know what business father might have with him this time?”

Sian knew that her father had inherited a fortune in his early forties and had promptly retired to the countryside to live off it. Consequently, he had no real business to conduct, yet he supposedly had some business with Ryan and his father hence they kept coming around and locking themselves in the study with him. Of late, though, those meetings had taken far longer and been far more intense than they had ever been. Further, Ryan’s father had stopped coming around, leaving Ryan to act as go-between.

“They were discussing something about some financial problems father has,” Martha explained.

Sian looked sharply at her. “How many times have you been told not to listen at keyholes? You are getting as bad as mother.”

“Well, don’t pretend you aren’t curious,” Martha replied with an unapologetic shrug. “You just asked, didn’t you? If I hadn’t listened at the keyhole, we wouldn’t know that father is helping them with money, or vice versa. I also heard him mention something about marriage.”

Sian’s panicked gaze flew to her sister. “Ryan is getting married?”

A wave of pain slammed into the centre of Sian’s chest the kind of which she had never felt before in her life. It hurt so much that she struggled to breathe. Her world ceased to exist, but when it did start to move again it shifted on its axis and turned into an alien world of loss and suffering the likes of which she wasn’t at all sure she wanted to survive.

“No. He – father – said something about needing to marry us off.”

“God, I hope father hasn’t suggested that Ryan offers for one of us,” Sian muttered with a disgusted huff.