Love wasn’t grand. It was stupid. And it made a person say things a person should not say. Climb this mountain for me. Slay this dragon if you love me.
Maybe she didn’t really know what love was. Maybe she didn’t deserve someone as wonderful as Bailey.
Oh, but when he looked at her… When he touched her hand and something warm and almost hungry came to life deep inside of her… When he smiled and she could only watch his mouth, and her toes curled in her shoes as she thought about that glorious mouth closing over hers…
But there had only been that one kiss. Just that one. Sometimes she had longed to grab him by the lapels of his coat and pull him against her so that he’d stop treating her as if she might break if he did more than compliment her eyes, her gown.
He said he loved her. He said it often, and that was very nice. But if he truly, truly loved her, shouldn’t he have done more than say the words? Shouldn’t he, couldn’t he, have ever shown her?
And if he had, would she have even thought to ask him that stupid, stupid question?
“Alana?”
She turned quickly at the sound of Bailey’s voice, nearly toppling as her skirts seemed to tangle about her feet. Or so she’d let him think.
He caught her to him, rather as he’d done that first day at the book repository. It felt so good. So right.
So…frustrating.
“You nearly fell,” he said, his hands on her upper arms as he steadied her.
She looked up into his concerned eyes. Moistened her lips. Dared to say, “But you wouldn’t let me fall.”
“Alana, I—”
“Bailey, I—”
“No, you first,” he said, gently putting her away from him.
He’d let her go. He’d had the perfect opportunity to kiss her, and he’d let her go. She’d thought she’d been rather daring, even blatant. Maybe she hadn’t done it right?
“I…I just wanted to tell you that it was horribly unfair of me to ask you what I asked you. And I apologize.”
“No, it was a valid question. I should have answered you.”
“But I don’t want you to.”
“I should.”
Honestly, how could she save him from himself, if he didn’t let himself be saved? “I know you love me, and that’s enough. Please, Bailey. Miss Wise is gone—”
“And good riddance,” he interrupted with a smile. “We think she and her mother only stayed so long so that Sylvia could take a dead set at Gideon during the ride to London.”
That information served to divert Alana. “Gideon? I would imagine he dashed those expectations soon enough.”
“Yes, it’s a true measure of my love for you that I didn’t escape to the wilds of America halfway through his questions regarding my intentions toward you. He’s not an easy man. Shall we walk?”
Now it was she who had a perfect opportunity—in her case, to tell him what she’d done, how she’d all but cornered Sylvia Wise in the music room, and what the woman had said to her. But was that really necessary? It was much too pleasant a day to speak of the woman. In fact, it could be sleeting and freezingly cold, and it still would be too pleasant a day to speak of the woman. No, not everything had to be said, shared. And the past was the past—it was the future she was interested in now. The very near future.
So she only nodded, and he held out his arm so that she could take it, and they turned down the path Alana had been haunting this past quarter hour…the one leading to that lovely, vine-covered gazebo and the comfortable, softly cushioned chaise tucked inside it.
The path looked different now. The flowers had more color, the neatly trimmed greenery seemed more whimsical.
She curled her arm about his more securely, allowed her body to brush up against his as they navigated the uneven stone path. She lifted her other hand and placed it on his forearm as well, and smiled up into his face as he told her that his mother and sisters would be arriving the morning of the wedding, having made arrangements to stay with one of his mother’s friends at an estate not five miles from Redgrave Manor.
“Will they like me?” Alana asked, as she’d yet to meet any of the Armstrong family other than Bailey.
“How could they not?” he said at once, and then rather winced at his own words. “That was too glib, wasn’t it?”