Until now.
She couldn’t tear her eyes from his face, even as he turned away, leaving her only his profile. He was staring at some distant spot on the horizon, some tree or some bush that he probably couldn’t even identify.
“Do you know what it means to be alone?” he asked softly, still not looking at her. “Not for an hour, not for an evening, but just to know, to absolutely know that in a few years, you will have no one.”
She opened her mouth to say no, of course not, but then she realized that there had been no question mark at the end of his statement.
She waited, because she did not know what to say. And then because she recognized that if she said something, if she tried to imply that she did understand, the moment would be lost, and she would never know what he’d been thinking.
And as she stood there, staring at his face as he lost himself in his thoughts, she realized that she desperately wanted to know what he was thinking.
“Mr. St. Clair?” she finally whispered, after a full minute had ticked away. “Gareth?”
She saw his lips move before she heard his voice. One corner tilted up in a mocking smile, and she had the strangest sense that he’d accepted his own bad luck, that he was ready to embrace it and revel in it, because if he tried to smash it, he was simply going to have his heart broken.
“I would give the world to have one more person for whom I would lay down my life,” he said.
And then Hyacinth realized that some things did come in a flash. And there were some things one simply knew without possessing the ability to explain them.
Because in that moment she knew that she was going to marry this man.
No one else would do.
Gareth St. Clair knew what was important. He was funny, he was dry, he could be arrogantly mocking, but he knew what was important.
And Hyacinth had never realized before just how important that was to her.
Her lips parted as she watched him. She wanted to say something, to do something. She’d finally realized just what it was she wanted in life, and it felt like she ought to leap in with both feet, work toward her goal and make sure she got it.
But she was frozen, speechless as she gazed at his profile. There was something in the way he was holding his jaw. He looked bleak, haunted. And Hyacinth had the most overpowering impulse to reach out and touch him, to let her fingers brush against his cheek, to smooth his hair where the dark blond strands of his queue rested against the collar of his coat.
But she didn’t. She wasn’t that courageous.
He turned suddenly, his eyes meeting hers with enough force and clarity to take her breath away. And she had the oddest sense that she was only just now seeing the man beneath the surface.
“Shall we return?” he asked, and his voice was light and disappointingly back to normal.
Whatever had happened between them, it had passed.
“Of course,” Hyacinth said. Now wasn’t the time to press him. “When do you wish to return to Clair…” Her words trailed off. Gareth had stiffened, and his eyes were focused sharply over her shoulder.
Hyacinth turned around to see what had grabbed his attention.
Her br
eath caught. His father was walking down the path, coming straight toward them.
She looked quickly around. They were on the less fashionable side of the park, and as such, it wasn’t terribly crowded. She could see a few members of the ton across the clearing, but none was close enough to overhear a conversation, provided that Gareth and his father were able to remain civil.
Hyacinth looked again from one St. Clair gentleman to the other, and she realized that she had never seen them together before.
Half of her wanted to pull Gareth to the side and avoid a scene, and half was dying of curiosity. If they stayed put, and she was finally able to witness their interaction, she might finally learn the cause of their estrangement.
But it wasn’t up to her. It had to be Gareth’s decision. “Do you want to go?” she asked him, keeping her voice low.
His lips parted slowly as his chin rose a fraction of an inch. “No,” he said, his voice strangely contemplative. “It’s a public park.”
Hyacinth looked from Gareth to his father and back, her head bobbing, she was sure, like a badly wielded tennis ball. “Are you certain?” she asked, but he didn’t hear her. She didn’t think he would have heard a cannon going off right by his ear, so focused was he on the man ambling too casually toward them.