“I might ask what you are doing alone in the darkness,” Nathaniel countered. “Where is your mother?”
Leah forced herself to take slow breaths as he had taught her. “She went to… the stalls to… find something to eat for us. I said I would… wait for her here, thinking it would… be perfectly safe. Apparently not.”
She could not admit that she had seen him go behind the theatrical tent with a strange old man and had been too curious to stay away, instructing her mother to fetch some delicacies while she waited close to where Nathaniel had disappeared. And as she had seen Jonathan staring at her throughout the earlier dance, she had figured it would be better if she stayed close to Nathaniel, even if he did not know she was there.
As for the conversation between Nathaniel and the old man, she had heard snippets—something about his father and a boxing match and miscreants. It made no sense to her, but it had piqued her interest.
“Are you telling the truth?” Nathaniel demanded to know.
“More or less,” she replied, her heart slowing. “Who was that man you were with?”
Nathaniel closed his eyes and took a breath. “An old friend. He used to be the kennel master at Bergfield Manor.”
“Areyoutelling the truth?”
He managed a stiff smile. “More or less.”
“I was not eavesdropping,” she insisted nervously.
He frowned a little. “I did not say you were, but now, I am suspicious. Did you hear something you should not have?”
“I heard you mention your father, but that is all,” Leah admitted, deciding to be mostly honest. “I suppose I wondered if that had something to do with your aversion to marriage. I know so little about your history, and your mother will not speak to me about her marriage, so… I can only make assumptions, even if they are woefully mistaken. You see, if my mother could marry again, I do not think she would choose my father. He is like… a giant child, and I know it grates upon her, but when one is married, one is rather stuck with whomever they have been bound to.”
To her relief, Nathaniel laughed. “Yes, I suppose they are.” He sighed and took her hands, holding them gently. “All I know is that marriage is a very… cruel thing. It can change people, and not for the better, and I do not wish to be changed in case it does not changemefor the better. I am… babbling, I know, but it is the only way I know how to explain it.”
“No, I think I understand,” Leah said, wondering what her own parents were like before they married.
It had not been a forced union, as far as she knew, which meant that her father must have had some admirable merits before he became Sarah’s husband. Enough merits to entice Sarah into marriage in the first place. Perhaps, his childishness had seemed endearing back then before turning into a later nightmare of constant squabbles and churlish behavior, throwing tantrums when he did not get things his way.
“Still, I cannot understand how any man could leave a woman like you at the altar, even if they had their doubts about marriage in general,” Nathaniel said, quite unbidden, his hands squeezing hers with a reassurance that disarmed her. “If it was me, dear Leah, I…”
He stopped sharply, and so did Leah’s breath, her entire body thrumming as she silently urged him to continue. She wanted to ask him to say more, but the words could not squeeze past the lump of nervous anticipation in her throat. All she could do was stare at him and will him to finish the sentence.
“I think I see your mother,” he said, her heart sinking like a stone. “Come, let me escort you to her.”
Leah allowed herself to be led, casting a sideways glance at Nathaniel, desperately trying to read his expression, but it had turned blank and illegible as he concentrated on the space ahead of him, leaving her with one gnawing, infuriating question:Whatwouldyou have done, if it was you?
CHAPTEREIGHTEEN
For the rest of the evening, Nathaniel did his best to forget what he had almost said, if he had been the one set to marry Leah. He did not know what had possessed his tongue to eventhinkof saying it, but he had chosen to blame Bill and all the old man’s talk of Nathaniel looking happy and of settling down and of his heart not being as black as his father’s. It had thrown him, and he was struggling to right himself.
“You are quiet,” Leah said as the rowboat sculled along the water of Round Pond. She had convinced him to take one of the boats to see the merfolk on the rocks, and though he had expected Sarah to join them, she had professed to have a terrible fear of water. A white lie, judging by the overjoyed grin on Sarah’s face where she stood on the shore of the lake.
Nathaniel put on a smile. “Apologies, dear Leah. I was in something of a trance. I cannot profess to have rowed much, not even in my Oxford years, but I find the sport rather meditative.” His smile became genuine. “Would you like to try?”
“I have the arm strength of a grasshopper,” she replied, her tight expression relaxing as if something had thawed between them.
“A grasshopper has rather strong arms for an insect. One ought to judge oneself by something of similar size.” He chuckled. “You would have weak arms in comparison to a gorilla, for example, but if you were to arm wrestle with your mother, I believe you might win.”
Leah laughed. “My mother hides her muscles beneath those sleeves of hers. She is quite powerful. I saw her hurl a snowball at my father’s head one winter—she almost concussed him!”
“Ah, perhaps that is why he says such nonsensical things.”
Leah tilted her head to one side. “What nonsensical things?”
“That you are a lost cause, for one,” Nathaniel admitted, his heart pounding strangely as if there was a chrysalis where the organ should be, and something was in the midst of emerging, breaking free.
It is the rowing,he told himself, for it was more of an exertion than he had anticipated. And though he was in fine athletic form thanks to his bouts in the boxing ring, they were short rounds, unlike this exercise in endurance, navigating around the fake rocks and platforms.
