“Don’t have it in me to join the firm,” he sighed.
“What does your family do?”
“Oh, them? They keep sheep,” he smiled.
“I see. And you are not the herding type.”
“Not the least bit. I’m not one to follow the herd, if that’s what you mean.”
She laughed prettily, her long blond hair falling over her shoulder like a silk curtain. “Yes, somehow I can’t picture it.”
“So what about you? You never told me why you were traveling to the capital,” he said. He ran a finger along the edge of the strap of her slip, playing with it. She held her breath, wondering if he would tug it away, but he seemed content to just caress her skin softly with his finger.
Ronan squared her shoulders. “I am going to London to sell myself,” she said, her tone hard and brittle. Earlier she had told him about her disastrous family finances, and had finally confessed that she had lucked into the first-class stateroom by accident.
“Such dark words for such a bright girl. I was not aware you were for purchase.…” he said, his tone light. “If I had known this earlier, perhaps I would have placed a bid. May I?”
“Oh please, you can’t afford me. But it’s the same thing, is it not? Because of my circumstances I must marry for money, and not for love. I might as well be one of those painted ladies in Amsterdam, with a red light over my head.”
“Then don’t do it,” he said softly. “You’re better than that.”
“If only that were true,” she said with a bitter laugh, sitting up to wrap a shawl tightly around her shoulders. “No, you will find I will be quite good at it. I will pretend to fall in love with one of these titled dopes, and that will be the end of me. But perhaps all is not lost, after all; there will be all that lovely money, and all the magic it can buy.”
He shrugged. “Magic is overrated. I didn’t take you for a cynic.”
“Just a realist.”
“So that is the plan, then? To enter into a fraudulent, loveless union in order to save face and status, and earn a token from the Merlin?” His tone was sharp and disappointed. He sat up as well and put his shirt back on.
“Don’t judge me. Without our name, without our home…” She shook her head. “I told you that you wouldn’t understand. Your family…”
“Herds sheep. Yes. But you are wrong there—I understand perfectly,” he said, fastening his cuff links.
Ronan, watching him dress, noticed that his cuff links were gold—although gold-plated, most likely.
“My mother had to do the same thing. She had to marry my father. She had no choice in the matter,” he said.
“You’re so lucky. You can do whatever you want. You can keep fighting…your future is your own. Mine is behind a golden cage.”
“Then break the chains,” he said, daring her. “Why not do something wild—and consider a different outcome.…” He put a hand on top of hers. “Perhaps one that you did not expect.”
She looked at his hand. There were faint lines on his knuckles. More scars from his fights, she thought. He was offering her something—she was certain of that—but what could he offer her? He was no one, from nowhere—a nobody. Her mother hadn’t pulled herself out of the frontier so her daughter could sink back into obscurity. If she set her lot with his, she would lose the game before the season had even started, by giving her heart to this nameless boy. Ronan knew she should take her hand away from his, but she did not. She clung to him, as if he were a life raft. He was offering something—something—what was he offering her? They stood there for a long moment, holding hands on the billiard table. The question he posed hovered in the air between them. She was filled with doubt: what was he talking about, really? Was he even serious?
The books she had read as a child were filled with stories of heroes and heroines who risked everything for love and adventure. They left their families and their ordinary lives behind for travails on the road, the oceans, the unknown. She had loved those stories when she was younger. She’d thought of herself as an explorer, an adventurer—a girl with a free and wild heart—which was why she had played the game with him, why she met him every afternoon. To see how far she would dare. How far she would let it go.
But if he was asking what she thought he was asking, she knew she had taken this illicit affair too far. “So, what do you say? Come with me when we get into port. I know a judge in London, a friend of a friend who can see to everything. Or we can pop down to the General Register Office. Whichever you’d like—it’s all the same to me,” he said.
A judge? A quick trip to the Register Office? Was he mad? Out of his mind? Did he truly think she would consider getting married without the blessing of the sisterhood? Without a sign from the Merlin? She was Ronan Astor. Her wedding would be the talk of New York! The queen would be invited (she probably would not attend, but she would be invited nonetheless!), and her bridesmaids would number the wealthy, the beautiful and the titled! She could not see herself plighting her troth in her traveling clothes, taking a fighter for a husband, standing in front of some sleepy-eyed judge whom they had roused in the middle of the night.
Oh, but he was so handsome and kind. He smiled at her, and she felt as if she would give him anything he wanted. Was it so wrong, what he was offering? They were in love, were they not? She had disrobed in front of him—he knew almost every part of her by now, from all these secret afternoons filled with laughter, champagne and intimate conversations, not to mention the passionate kisses they’d shared. She had been more honest with him than she had been with anyone in her life. He knew her and he liked her. She had lost her heart to him from the beginning, when he had spoken to her at the port in New York.
Perhaps she would regret it for the rest of
her life—in fact, she had a feeling she would certainly regret it for the rest of her life. As a fat matron with a rich husband, she would look back on this proposal from this strange and wonderful boy, and wish with all of her might that she had answered differently—that she had said yes to him. But as it was, she was too much her mother’s daughter to throw away her future so recklessly. She couldn’t do it. In any event, he could not truly be asking what he was asking, surely? He was just teasing her, trying to make her feel better. For that matter, she didn’t even know his real name…nor did he know hers.…
“So, what do you say?” he asked again, and his grin was wide and confident. It was too bad she didn’t know he had a ring in his pocket, and that if she’d said yes, she would have been wearing the famous blue diamond of Brandenburg on her finger when they arrived in London.
“You’re such a sweet boy. I’m sorry, but the answer is no,” she said, and quickly changed the subject. “My father says our civilization has become stilted, that magic has corrupted reason, logic and freedom…if magic did not exist, we would be living in a different world,” she said as she pulled away from him.