It was most gratifying to hear. After all the time and effort she’d expended to take them from friends to lovers, now ironically she sometimes worried that their lovemaking—delicious as it was—had taken over everything. Silly of her—of course they were still best friends.
She smiled at him. “I’d have returned sooner if I’d known.”
He didn’t quite return her smile, but reached for the teapot instead.
“There’s no more tea in there,” she reminded him.
He reddened slightly. “Well, of course not. You rang for a new pot just now, didn’t you?”
Fresh tea arrived. She poured for both of them. He raised his teacup.
“Don’t you want some milk and sugar?” He never drank his tea black.
He reddened further, set down his teacup, and rubbed his fingers across his forehead. “I still haven’t answered your question, have I?”
She’d already forgotten what question she’d asked. Somehow his sudden nerves made her tense too.
But he seemed to have made up his mind, whatever it was. He gazed directly at her, his voice firm. “I’ve struggled for a while now to characterize what it is I feel for you, which is so much more potent than friendship, yet nothing like what I have experienced of love.”
She had been reaching for a biscuit. Her hand stopped in the air. She had to force her fingers to close around the biscuit. They’d yet to bring up the word love in conversation—at least not with regard to the two of them.
“With Lady Tremaine, I was always the humble worshiper. Every time I walked into her drawing room, I felt as if I were an acolyte approaching the altar of a goddess. It was electrifying and unnerving at the same time. But your drawing room has been more like an extension of my own home. And I didn’t know how to interpret that.”
Their eyes met. She had no idea, she realized, not a single one, what he would say next. Her heart struggled to contain her dread—and a rising anticipation.
“And then this wait for you to come back. As I walked up and down the street outside, I realized at some point that I never went to Lady Tremaine unless I felt I had something to offer. When I called on her just because I wanted to see her, I always feared that I’d wasted her time.
“But you I want to see in all my moods. When I’m particularly pleased, when I’m simply going about my day, when I’m utterly overwhelmed, as I was yesterday and today. And it honors me that when I bring myself, I seem to have brought enough for you.”
Her hand unclenched from the biscuit, which she’d crushed into several pieces in her palm. She let the pieces drop onto the tablecloth and breathed again.
“In doing what he did, Penny took me for granted. But he wasn’t alone in it: I took him for granted also, before his ‘accident.’” He smiled slightly, his eyes deep and warm. “Like Penny, you too have been a pillar of my life, which would have been far less meaningful without you. And yet I’ve taken you for granted too.”
He came out of his seat. It seemed only natural that she should rise also—clasp his hands in hers.
“I don’t want to take you for granted ever again, Angelica. Will you marry me?”
She drew back one hand and covered her mouth. “You have become full of surprises, Freddie!”
“Whereas you have been the best surprise of my life.”
A surge of pure happiness nearly knocked her over. And of course he meant every word—he never said anything he didn’t wholeheartedly mean.
“I can’t imagine a better way to go through life than with you beside me,” he continued.
“Constantly reminding you not to take me for granted?” she jested. She might start blubbering otherwise.
He chuckled. “Well, maybe not constantly. Quarter days should be fine.” Placing his hands on her arms, he gazed into her eyes. “Does this mean you have said yes?”
“Yes,” she said simply.
He kissed her, and then held her tight a long time. “I love you.”
The words were sweeter than she’d thought possible—and she had exorbitant expectations, having wanted to hear them for so many years.
“I love you, too,” she said. She pulled back a few inches and winked at him. “A second nude portrait to commemorate our engagement?”
He laughed and crushed her to him for another kiss.
Ilfracombe was a severe disappointment. A fog as thick as old porridge had come to make chill, damp love to the coast. Visibility was so reduced street lamps had to remain lit during the day, faint rings of mustard-colored light amidst gray vapors that hid everything farther than five feet from Elissande’s person.
She did derive some pleasure from being on the coast: the smell of the sea, bracing and salty; the surf crashing wild and harsh upon unseen cliffs, nothing like the gentle tides of Torbay; the deep tenor of foghorns from passing ships in the Bristol Channel, forlornly romantic.
She decided to stay the night. Should the fog clear, there would be enough time in the morning to see the cliffs and return to Pierce House—she was schooling herself to stop thinking of it as home—ahead of her mother and her husband.
And then she must break the news to her mother and bid adieu to her marriage.
At the sight of the suitcases in his wife’s room, a fist closed around Vere’s heart.
He and Mrs. Douglas had arrived in London in mid-afternoon. There was no question of further travel the rest of the day for the exhausted older woman. Vere put her and Mrs. Green up at the Savoy Hotel, then rushed home by himself. Now that he’d spoken to Freddie, there was so much he needed to tell his wife: how stupid he’d been, how badly he missed her, and how eager he was for their marriage to begin anew.
He pulled open her drawers—empty. He yanked open the doors of her armoire—empty. He glanced at her vanity table, empty except for one single comb. And then a sight that made his stomach lurch: a book on her nightstand entitled How Women May Earn a Living.
She was leaving.
He sprinted downstairs and grabbed Mrs. Dilwyn. “Where’s Lady Vere?”
He could not disguise his distress, his voice loud and brusque.
Mrs. Dilwyn was taken aback by his abruptness. “Lady Vere has gone to the Hangman Cliffs, sir.”
He tried to digest this information and failed. “Why?”
“She saw a postcard in your study yesterday and thought the view marvelous. And since you and Mrs. Douglas weren’t expected until tomorrow, she decided to go first thing today.”
It was almost dinnertime. “Shouldn’t she have returned already?”
“She cabled an hour ago, sir. She has decided to stay the night. It was foggy on the coast today and she wasn’t able to see anything. She hopes for better weather in the morning.”
“The Hangman Cliffs—so she would have gone to Ilfracombe,” he said, as much to himself as to Mrs. Dilwyn.
“Yes, sir.”
He was out of the house before she’d finished speaking.
The sun seared her eyes, the sky so harshly bright it was nearly white. An arid mountain gale blasted. She was desiccated, her skin as fragile as paper, her throat sandy with thirst.
She tried to move. But her wrists were already bloody from her struggles against her chains, chains sunk deep into the bones of the Caucasus.
The piercing cry of an eagle made her renew her struggle, a frenzy of pain and futility. The eagle glided closer on dark wings, casting a shadow over her. As it plunged into her, knife-sharp beak gleaming, she twisted her head back and thrashed in agony.