The Convenient Felstone Marriage (Whitby Weddings 1)

Edge? She looked down, surprised to find her toes pressed up against the very brink of the precipice. In her haste she hadn’t noticed how very close she’d come to the edge, but now she was alarmed to find that he was right. The rim of the cliff looked as if it were sagging, in imminent danger of collapse, with small fragments of rock and soil already starting to crumble into the waves below.

She shifted her weight backwards, turning around to find Robert standing only a few feet away. He was watching her intently through the drizzle, his whole body poised as if making ready to spring forward and catch her.

‘Take my hand.’ He advanced another step closer, moving slowly as if he were afraid of startling her.

‘No.’ She ignored his outstretched hand. ‘I’ll come back from the edge, but you need to go first.’

‘Just take my hand, Ianthe.’

‘You don’t understand!’ she wailed at him. ‘I’ve ruined everything. I didn’t mean to, but I have. It’s over, Robert! Just leave me alone, please.’

‘No.’ He shook his head stubbornly. ‘Percy told me everything and it’s all right, I don’t care.’

‘What?’ She felt her heart leap into her throat.

‘He told me what happened in Bournemouth and I don’t care.’

‘How can you not care?’

‘Because I don’t. Not as much as the thought of losing you anyway.’

‘But I behaved so shamefully.’

‘You made a mistake.’

‘I’m not respectable!’

‘Neither am I!’ He gave a strained smile. ‘I never was, not really, but I don’t care any more.’

‘Aren’t you angry?’

‘Furious, but that doesn’t matter.’

She shook her head, resisting the temptation to believe him. ‘I should have told you. I knew I should have, but I couldn’t bear to talk about it. I didn’t realise how important respectability was to you at first and then...then I thought that if I could be the woman you wanted, it wouldn’t matter.’

‘You are the woman I want, Ianthe. I love you.’

‘But Sir Charles knows, too, and he says he’ll tell everyone. There’ll be gossip!’

‘Let them gossip.’

‘Harper won’t sell you his yard!’

‘If he thinks we’re not good enough for him, then he can keep his damn yard. We can’t help our pasts, I know that now, but we can bloody well decide our own futures. I won’t let the likes of Harper and Lester ruin it.’

‘So...you still want me?’ She could hardly believe it...

‘Yes! With all my heart, Ianthe. Just take my hand.’

She let out a sob of relief, stretching her fingers out towards him just as the ground beneath her feet started to quake and disintegrate. Startled, she tried to fling herself forward, but she was already falling, sliding into thin air as the edge of the cliff gave way.

‘No!’ Robert’s hand clamped around hers in mid-air. ‘Hold on!’

‘Ah!’ She cried out in pain as she swung against the side of the rock face, her fingers already slipping through his.

‘Reach up to me!’ He lay face down on the ground, straining to hold her.

‘You’re too far!’ She swung her empty hand up and missed. ‘Robert, you need to let go. I don’t want to drag you down!’