“Shall you travel on without me, or should we continue our way to Mr. Abram’s to deliver his funds?”
“Continue,” she whispered. Not four miles later, however, before they ever gained sight of Mr. Abram’s cottage, she glanced back at him again. Tears pooled in her eyes, and she kept the edge of her lip tucked between her teeth. A habit he’d noticed before. A habit that endeared her to him now. “Iamsorry for being so terrible, William.”
“You were not terrible.” He schooled his features against the realization she had used his Christian name, his heart pumping warmth. “Indeed, I would dare to say you were wonderful.”
“It is just the sort of thing Sophia Kettlewell would have done. Nearly casting up her accounts and running off that way.”
“I do not think so.”
“Why not?”
“Because Miss Kettlewell, I daresay, would not have gone to the butcher shop at all.” Not with a servant. Not in a farmer’s wagon. Not with a pig tied to a rope in the straw-strewn back.
But Isabella had.
For him.
Because they were friends, despite all the differences between them. Differences he should be heeding, if he had any sense. Differences that, sooner or later, would drive them apart.
But he would not think of that now.
He would keep her every last minute he could and worry about the torture of losing her later.
The next day, Isabella dawdled about the house, doing things she ought, pleasing Mrs. Morrey with needlework and mind-numbing piano-forte lessons.
But when the second dinner was finished, she slipped upstairs, changed into a riding habit, and hurried for the stables. The groom half grinned, half scowled when she requested William to accompany her.
They rode for the beach. The wind tugged at her hair pins, the roar of the ocean hummed in her ears, and the taste of salt stayed on her lips. How pleasant all of it was. How wonderful.
And how wrong. She tried to push back the guilt, but it stuck in her middle like a rock lodged into a crevice. What would Father say if he knew she was wasting time on the very one he had run away from?
But it was not a waste. How could it be, when the only thing she thought of, all day long, was seeing William Kensley again?
She glanced at him.
With the burn of an orange sun sinking into the water and glowing over him, he seemed surreal with his blowing hair and flapping coat. Duke’s muscles rippled as he galloped. Sand kicked into the air in creamy white sprays. William reached down, patted the animal’s neck, then glanced up at her and smiled.
A smile that ran through her. Like lightning. What was the matter with her? She hardly cared. He was the brother, the companion, the friend she had needed the whole of her life.
He was easy in every manner. He was comfortable. He was calm. He was true and real and made her better upon each encounter, in ways she could scarcely begin to understand.
Like yesterday, when they’d gone to Mr. Abram’s and sat on stools again in the humble cottage. The old man, with his patched clothes and simple goodness, had shown them a grave through the cottage window. He’d talked of hair the color of honeycombs, eyes the shade of the sky, and a touch so tender it made you near warm enough to need no hearth.
William had looked away a couple of times, perhaps so no one would see. Tears had moistened his gaze. Tears she respected because he had a heart for the old man and the wife who had died and that lonely grave outside the cottage window.
How good he was. How she longed for such goodness in herself. Would to heaven she could have his compassion and his strength and—
“It shall be dark soon.” He pulled on Duke’s reins, the sky now a bluish dusk. “We had better return.”
“Not yet, please.” She glanced up ahead, where the limestone arch was just in view. “Let us get down and sit for a moment or two first.”
He nodded and they both dismounted, the sand thick and wet as the tide drew closer. They led their mounts to the arch then sat next to each other on a smooth-topped rock.
“It is lovely.” She breathed the moist evening air into her lungs. “Is it not?”
“Yes.” Hushed. Quiet.
“Tell me how I ought to grasp it.”
