“Freddy.” A tone refusing to be dismissed.
“The groom will escort us home, Mr. Webster. Your … diligence and kindness marks you as the … the best of men. I hope Mr. William heals quickly. Do give him our best wishes.” Her tongue had ballooned, feeling too large for her mouth. She felt the pressure of entire oceans pooling behind her eyes.
Grant’s eyes fired lightning. “‘The best of men’?” He stepped closer, caressed the top of Izzy’s head and kept Freddy’s gaze like glue. “You are the best, the”—he lowered his voice—“only woman. We have more to discuss. Come to Garrison’s for the Sunday matinee.”
“I don’t think we should.”
“Oh, yes!” Izzy bounced on her toes. “Please, Mama. Please say we can.”
Cornered. “Perhaps.”
In a move as swift as the lightning in Grant’s eyes, he grasped Freddy’s hand, lifted it to his lips, and placed a soft kiss there before dropping it. Kissed her in the park, before everyone and God. As if they were a matinee worth viewing. “Come. Please.” All mirth had left him, it seemed, and the hunch of his shoulders as he turned and strode the opposite direction across the park made him unrecognizable.
She saw nothing else on their walk to the Cavendish residence, where they left the pony, and nothing but the hard angles of his beautiful face as they traversed the short distance to Max’s townhouse.
She wiped the tears away and steadied her shoulders as she ushered the girls inside.
The sounds of conversation echoed down the hall from the parlor, and Freddy and the girls followed them to find Sarah sitting with her stepdaughters, the young Pansy and Nora.
Pansy burst from her seat and rushed toward Izzy and Bridget.
Sarah stood with a smile that quickly turned south. “Something has happened.” She took Freddy’s elbow and brought her further into the room, settling her into a chair near the tea cart.
Nora pushed the children toward the hall. “Bridget, take Pansy and Izzy upstairs to the nursery. Put a blanket down, and I’ll have cook bring up something special. A treat for all of you. And you may have a little picnic indoors. Does that sound lovely?”
A chorus of cheers lifted toward the ceiling as the children ran from the room, a rumbling earthquake caused by an excited stampede.
Sarah pulled a chair near and set herself next to Freddy. “Will you tell me? Will you tell me what has happened? Is it something to do with Mr. Webster?
“I … I believe he wishes to marry me.” The only words she’d been able to think during the walk home. The only words that would trip from her tongue now.
“Oh!” Nora gasped. “How wonderful. But … I had no idea there was anything between you!”
Sarah placed a warm hand over Freddy’s where it rested on the chair arm. “Is it … not wonderful? He’s a good man. And you have seemed so much happier since you have been”—she cast a cautious eye toward her stepdaughter—“reveling with him.”
Ha. Reveling. What a perfect word for her interactions with the man. And she had been happier. Incandescently so.
“Reveling?” Nora asked. Then her mouth dropped open, stayed in a wide O. “Do you mean to say that you … and he … have been …” She leaned forward, raised her eyebrows. “Reveling? In the bedroom?” The last words a low hiss.
Freddy felt the blush from the tips of her toes to her very hairline. “We have. But I cannot marry him.”
“Because your father is a marquess and he is a circus performer?” Sarah asked.
“No! No. Not that at all.”
“I did not think so,” Sarah said. “It’s good to clarify, though.”
“I do not care at all about his background. These things have shaped him into the man he is, and they make him happy.” How could he sacrifice them for her? Another reason not to wed him. “I want him to be happy because I—” She could not finish the thought aloud. Would not let herself do so. She could not speak the one word she’d been avoiding, but now that it had butted up against the back of her teeth, she did not know what to do with it. Swallow it and pretend it did not exist? Or let it slip out into the open and take up space? Change the way she saw the world, the way she saw herself, change everything.
Sarah must have plucked it from her mouth anyway. She rose, poured Freddy some tea, then sat once more, placing a steaming cup and saucer in Freddy’s hands. “If you love him, and you do not care about the differences in your stations, then I see no impediment.”
Freddy squeezed the cup so hard she feared she’d crack it.
Nora made a sad sound and moved closer so that the Cavendish woman bracketed her like sentinels. “But there is an impediment, isn’t there? A painful one. Will you share it with us so we can help?”
Freddy stared into the deep amber of the tea, still as the surface of a lake on a windless day. She could see a wavy outline of herself in it.
“He might die.” She knit each word together, but unlike most of her knitting, these words made sense. They fit together perfectly, the start of a shape that would not only be recognizable to herself but to the women before her—Sarah, a former widow, and Nora, a circus performer herself. They knew death’s sting.