Addie forbore from pointing out that merely meant that Kirkwood was wily enough to understand how to project the right appearance. As Miss Flibbertigibbet, she knew how easily people’s beliefs could be manipulated by how someone behaved.
There was little conversation as they faithfully followed Kirkwood’s path. With nothing to distract her, she couldn’t stop her thoughts from sliding to consideration of the man riding beside her and the distractingly enthralling prospect of what life as his wife might be like.
She’d spent a long and largely wakeful night going over his revelations, weighing, considering, and assessing how and in exactly what way she might carve a place for herself in his life, and while she still had several questions on that score, none were of the sort where the answer would change her mind.
Indeed, as she’d realized in the wee hours of the morning, her decision was already made. The possibilities of a life at Nicholas Cynster’s side called to her in a more powerful way than she’d ever imagined they might. In fact, they lured and enticed.
She felt increasingly impatient to have done with Kirkwood and the entire blackmail plot so that she could focus entirely on Nicholas, on his pending offer, and on the question of how her response should be phrased.
So she could concentrate on the notion of marriage, specifically marrying him.
Until the exchange of the previous evening, she hadn’t been sure that prospect had truly been real.
Until he’d assured her that he remained intent on marrying her, she’d more than half expected him to have lost interest or at least to have started to. Yet the absolute unwavering sincerity and rock-solid honesty with which he’d responded to her queries regarding the firmness of his intentions, not once but twice—last night and two days before—had pulled her over the hurdle of her hesitation. The hurdle of her past.
As Miss Flibbertigibbet, she’d learned not to trust in the glib words of gentlemen.
Yes, there’d been some who’d been earnest and true, and she’d done her best to discourage them gently. She’d never been drawn to any of them as she was to Nicholas.
Indeed, she’d never been drawn to any man as she was to him…which, in reality, was her answer. Her response to his offer, when he eventually made it.
She shifted in her saddle. Her gaze fixed on the never-ending road ahead, she forced herself to face the truth that, deep down, one last niggling uncertainty remained.
One last Miss Flibbertigibbet-induced vulnerability.
How strong was what he felt for her?
The love that linked her parents had lasted for decades, apparently since they’d first set eyes on each other; if anything, it had grown stronger with the years. In a marriage within their class, it was that—the power of the link, the soundness and resilience of the connection—that counted most, that gave a marriage its strength. That encouraged a marriage to grow and evolve through the years and allowed a couple to weather the storms of a shared lifetime.
She knew what she felt for Nicholas, a fascination that had only grown more powerful with each passing hour, a potent connection that already surpassed anything she felt for anyone else at all.
With Dickie riding alongside them, she couldn’t question Nicholas, but regardless, how did one ask another person about that? How did one assess the strength of another’s feelings?
I might have to take that on trust. Simply trust that he truly feels for me as I feel for him.
Neither Lady Adriana Sommerville nor Miss Flibbertigibbet could easily approach that gate.
Nicholas rode beside Adriana and tried to limit the number of times he glanced sidelong at her.
He told himself—constantly—that the tiny line between her brows meant she was thinking. And given that she wasn’t looking around but staring, unseeing, into the distance, very likely she was absorbed with precisely those considerations he wanted her to dwell on.
From her questions of the previous evening—and that she’d followed him to seize the chance to ask them—surely meant that she was, as he wished, giving serious thought to accepting his proposal and becoming his wife.
Time and again, he told himself that such behavior on her part was precisely what he wanted, yet he was loweringly aware that beneath a certain impatience lurked a particular anxiety.
What if she said no?
What if, after all her questions and cogitations, she decided against his offer?
What then?
His mind stalled, balked, unable to even approach that possibility.
Is this what love makes men feel?
So helpless, so dependent?
So consumed by a yearning only another can slake?
