“Please, my lord. I must say this.” William’s voice throbbed. “Since I last saw you, my situation has altered greatly. I now own a small estate in Leicestershire, Rosenleigh, and I—”
“You have my blessing.”
William blinked. “My lord?”
“You wish to marry my daughter.”
“Yes.”
“Then you may do so as soon as the banns can be published and read. You possess both my blessing and my enthusiasm.” Was that emotion wobbling the man’s tone?
William took a step back. Confusion webbed through him, tangling him in too many thoughts to sort through. “I do not understand.”
“You must go to her at once. She has taken a small excursion to the seashore.”
His limbs were frozen, his boots stuck to the wooden floorboards. What had changed? He had not yet fully explained the inheritance, his change in position, and already Lord Gresham consented? Was it possible?
As if sensing the questions, Lord Gresham took one step closer. “We are all allotted our treasures in life, and I daresay, there is much from which we derive pride and satisfaction.” Fervency rippled from him, a pulse of regret. He shook his head. “There is but one thing that truly completes us. I shall not rob my daughter of what I have lost myself.”
William’s heart thumped for several seconds before he nodded. “I thank you, my lord. I shall go to her at once.” He turned for the door—
“William.”
Pausing, he glanced back over his shoulder.
Edward Gresham stared at him. A flicker of something moistened his eyes, some indistinguishable emotion—almost a glint of admiration or affection, if such a thing were possible. “You are not my son, Kensley.” The tears rimmed. “But I should have been most proud if you had been.”
A long-unmet craving was sated. William did not know what to say, nor what to do, so with nothing more than a second nod, he fled from the study.
He would carry the words with him as long as he lived.
The last thing she wanted was to cry again. Father would know. When she returned to the dinner table, when she pasted on a smile and tried for a cheery tone, he would see her eyes and know the truth.
But there was little she could do.
She hurt.
Deep in the caverns of her soul, where other emotions were too weak to reach, she fissured in a hundred more places. She missed him. How was it possible to long for someone this way? To need them so much you were blinded to everything except their memories?
Standing back to her bare feet, she brushed sand from the white muslin folds of her dress. She ambled along the water, her hem wet and clinging to her ankles, until she paused near the giant limestone archway.
She approached when she should have run away. Touching the rough rock, leaning into the opening, she closed her eyes and wished she could step back into another time.
The day she followed him through Mulcaster Square in the rain.
The afternoons they whiled away with chess or walks in Hyde Park.
Those quiet, pleasant evenings when they rode along the shoreline, and that first startling moment when he’d folded her into his arms and kissed her.
She would never marry. The resolution vibrated through her as she smeared away another tear. No matter if Father never found William. No matter if she never received a letter from him or saw him again in some London street or village walkway.
If she could not belong to William Kensley, she would belong to no one—
“Lose these, miss?”
She jumped, hand flying to her chest, as she pivoted to the voice.
A dream stood facing her, one real and distinct enough she might have imagined him true. With dark blond hair tousled across his forehead by the ocean breeze, William Kensley dangled her half boots from one hand.
