Her entire body tensed at the sound of his voice, low and gentle, utterly changed from his ordinary tone with her.
She didn't dare to look around as she felt his grace inch closer behind her.
“Yes, Your Grace?”
She was barely able to utter the words, her mouth dry.
“Might I have a word?”
He stood by her now, barely just out of reach, his own hands on the balustrade as if he, too, needed some stability.
“Of course.”
She barely dared glance at him out of the corner of her eye, and when she found him gazing at her, she was quick to look away in favour of viewing the gardens, gardens they had played in as children.
“Might we sit?” he suggested, and Cecelia sensed more than saw the way he gestured to a nearby stone bench.
Feeling as though her legs would barely carry her there, Cecelia steeled herself and moved to the bench, waiting for his grace to sit before she carefully perched herself on the far end, as far from him as physically possible.
There they sat in silence until she began to feel dizzy with the need to speak but was entirely unsure of what to say.
She opened her mouth to say something,anything,but his grace was the first to break the silence. “I wish to apologize.”
Cecelia's head snapped up, and she stared at his grace in shock. “I beg your pardon?”
“My behaviour in the park was entirely unwarranted,” he said, and the way he looked at her, with such sincerity, made her chest ache.
“It … it is entirely forgotten, Your Grace,” she assured him, suddenly wishing they could put everything behind them.
His grace shook his head.
“Please, allow me to say this,” he insisted, his tone almost melancholy. “I am sorry for how I overreacted.”
Cecelia swallowed hard.
“I felt as if you were mocking me,” he admitted, and Cecelia blinked, unsure of what to say.
“Mocking you, Your Grace?”
She could have sworn she saw his grace shiver.
“When you proposed we play blind man's bluff,” he said as if that might answer the thousand questions swimming in her mind.
“I … I do not understand, Your Grace.”
His grace looked at her then, a turmoil of emotion in his startling blue gaze. Though everything in her told her she ought to look away, she couldn't bring herself to do so.
“It reminded me of that day at Fernworth, the day you named me a coward,” his grace said, and she saw the way his entire body tensed as he spoke.
“Your Grace, I do not understand—” she said, shaking her head, though her gaze never left his. She saw the hurt that flashed there. “That was so long ago.”
His grace scoffed, and he looked away, causing a well of disappointment to open up in Cecelia's gut. “And, yet, to this very day, the memory has never left me.”
Cecelia's throat constricted. The sheer pain in his tone made her nauseous.
“Oh, George! I had no idea!” she exclaimed as suddenly so many things started to make much more sense. Forgetting herself entirely, she reached for his hand.
She anticipated his pulling away, expected it even, yet his fingers gripped around hers. The heat of his touch through their gloves was enough to make Cecelia quiver.
