That she should have ordered the carriage to a halt, climbed out into the rain, and taken this path into the meadow was the most pointless thing she had ever done in her life.
Rain drenched her, sticking loose wisps of hair to her neck and cheeks. The stone fence glistened. The woods on the other side swayed and shuddered, and the wheat-colored meadow grass bent beneath the downpour.
Mr. Oswald had never appeared more injured.
Indeed, he had smiled at her—a bit shakily, perhaps, and his breathy laugh had quivered—but he had picked himself off the floor anyway. “You must forgive me if I do not so easily relinquish my hopes. I have a lifetime to change your mind.”
“I fear my mind cannot be changed.”
He had talked with her a long time after that, his manner calm, his words less cryptic and imposing than was his custom. He talked of Simon too. He even remarked on his bravery and said that Georgina might help herself to the trunk of paintings Simon left behind.
She should have wanted no part of those paintings.
But she did.
Every part of her ached and longed and shivered to treasure them, to carry them to her chamber, to keep a part of Simon no one would ever take away.
Perhaps accompanying Mr. Oswald to retrieve them was unkind to his heart. But somehow, she had been afraid that if she did not go now, she never would.
Leaning back against the stone wall, half-sheltered beneath the boughs, she wiped her face. Why had she come here?
A strange grief had constricted her moments ago, when she had departed Sowerby House for the last time. All her memories were shut up in that house. People she loved. Days she could not return to.
Perhaps she just needed one last chance to say goodbye to this too. The little road where Simon had always taken the carriage. The meadow path where once they had strolled.
If she had ever been happy in her life, it was here.
Everything before and after the summer carriage rides had been a void. She had come alive for such a short time. She was resigned to endure the rest of her life dead.
A prickling sensation crawled the back of her neck, as something moved in the corner of her eye. Likely the carriage driver, impatient she return to where she’d left him.
But when she turned, her breath caught.
Down the path, Simon stood alongside the mossy stone fence, rain dripping down his face, watching her.
Humiliation stoked flames in her stomach. To be caught here, to be seen this way—she was exposed in every imaginable way, and he would know everything. Why was he not on the ship? How long had he been here?
He should have moved. He should have called out to her.
He should have done something, anything, except stare at her as if—she didn’t know what. She had never seen him look this way. Not when they were children. Not even in the fire, when he had kissed her.
When she walked toward him, he walked too. They met beneath the ash tree, the limbs trembling above them, the leaves shiny and dripping.
She pushed wet hair out of her face and despised that her fingers shook. “What are you doing here?”
“I was on my way to Sowerby House. I saw the carriage.”
“The ship—”
“Sailed without me.”
She couldn’t imagine what had delayed his leaving. She only regretted it had. “The driver is waiting for me. I should not keep him—”
“Are you marrying him?”
Her chest hitched. When she didn’t answer, he said again, lower, “Are you marrying Oswald?”
“There is no reason, sir, I should not.”
