Chapter 31

The faintest whisper of wind could have knocked Anna over as she stared at Percival, still not entirely convinced that she had heard him correctly.

“That is a cruel jest, even for you,” she managed to say, her throat tight.

Her palm still rested against his chest, and beneath, she felt the rapid thud of his heart. Well, of course he is panicking; he is moments away from being challenged to a proper duel by my brother. But his intense green eyes were not alight with panic; rather, a nervous hope. Or perhaps she was just seeing what she wanted to see.

“Then it is fortunate that I am not jesting,” he replied. “I mean it, Anna. I am in love with you. I suspect I have been for some time, but it took the Orangery to realize it. Then, of course, I tried to deny my feelings, but it did not work. They will not be denied.

“However, I am not telling you this because I have any expectations. My love, I have none. If you wish to slap me and tell me to never show my face again, that is what I shall do. If you wish us to be friends, I will accept it.” He paused. “But please, dearest Anna, do not for a second think that I regret what occurred in the Orangery. It was the happiest I have ever felt, in that one, shining moment.”

She wrenched her hand back. “You said it was shameful! You said you did not know why you did it! How do you explain that look on your face, if you are not monumentally jesting with me?”

“If there was horror upon my face, it was horror for kissing you without your permission, without knowing if my expression of affection was returned,” he replied in earnest. “And I meant, it was shameful of me. There was nothing shameful about kissing you, Anna. It was a thing of purity. Exquisite purity. As for not knowing why I did it—in that instant, I did not know. It was akin to solving a riddle, hours after you have heard it. Now, I know why I did it. I did it because I love?—”

She put her hand to his mouth, shaking her head. “Do not say that again. I am confused enough. I need a moment to think.”

He nodded slowly and, with some caution, she drew her hand back.

At the carriage door, both Dickie and Max had gone quiet, the latter no longer trying to heave his way through the former. Instead, they were watching the scene as if they were at a play, and something delightfully scandalous had just happened.

“I think we ought to give them some privacy,” Dickie said, nudging Max in the chest. “Do you not think?”

Max narrowed his eyes. “They will be unchaperoned.”

“We are barely ten paces away. That is close enough,” Dickie protested, as he grabbed the door and swung it inwards. With a shove, he knocked Max back into the carriage, and closed the door behind them.

“Shout if you need assistance!” Max yelled from within.

“Goodness gracious, Max!” Dickie shouted back. “This is why you would be utterly hopeless, if you ever were to decide to find a bride. You have no sense for the romantic.”

With their muttering continuing inside the carriage, Anna decided it would be best to put some distance between the conversation and her brothers. Turning, she walked back toward her own carriage… and kept on walking until both carriages were a suitable length away to actually hold a private discussion.

But Percival was still standing by her brothers’ carriage.

Rolling her eyes, she beckoned for him to come.

He strode toward her, looking very much like something out of one of her favorite novels, his greatcoat billowing out behind him. She imagined it was a dark and stormy night and she had lost her way on the moors, her horse lamed, and just when she thought all hope was gone, there he was: a hero, striding out of the gloom and the rain to her rescue.

And that is exactly the sort of silliness that got you into this mess in the first place, she scolded herself, adopting what she hoped was a stern look as he approached.

He waited patiently for her to say something, but her head was spinning. Indeed, if what he said was true, then that meant Matilda had been right for a second time: Percival had brought those orchids to apologize, and he had meant “it was shameful of me.” Of all the people worth listening to, Matilda was at the very top of the list. Yet, after eight years of being a wallflower, who could blame Anna for expecting rejection?

“You had plenty of opportunities to make it clear what you meant,” she said curtly. “I asked to talk about it, and you did not want to. Forgive me if your desire to avoid the subject entirely made me think that you had no interest in me.”

He sighed. “I did not want to discuss it because I was already in love with you, and I did not trust myself not to confess. I assumed that you would be appalled by such a confession, considering what you know of me—I asked for certain things when you were seeking a match for me, and they are all of the things that you vehemently oppose as grounds for a marriage.”

“Are you saying this is my fault?” She gaped at him, incredulous.

“No, of course not.” He groaned. “But you live and breathe the very idea of love, and up until a few hours ago, I thought it was the stuff of tomfoolery. I did not think you would take kindly to a confession that began with, “I doubt I am capable of love, so you should not expect it from me, but I want you to be my wife.” Would you?”

She balled her hands into fists, infuriated and bewildered and so out of her depth she felt like she could not breathe. “You might have at least tried to confess that way, to see my response.”

“I have known you since we were both children, Anna. I am entirely aware of how you would have responded,” he replied, more gently. “I would have ended up hurting you more.”

Anna turned her back on him, needing a moment without his handsome face and shining eyes and sweet lips distracting her to think. “But what has changed so drastically, Percival? I do not understand. Indeed, I still feel as if this is a very twisted joke, and Max and Dickie are going to burst out of that carriage any second, laughing their heads off.”

“I spoke with my brother,” Percival said, and though she could not see him, she sensed him step closer. “He is to be married. He told me of his own love story and… I realized what the tight feeling in my chest has been, all this time.

“But what you must understand, my love, is that since I was a boy, I believed that love was one specific emotion. Rather, I believed that only the very worst version of love existed; that it was like a curse upon a person that could be manipulated and twisted for convenience and benefit. I believed it was a powerful and wicked enough curse to turn a father against his son.”

Guilt pinched at Anna’s insides, her face flinching as she remembered his sorrowful tale. Of course he had shunned the very notion of love, considering the vicious manner in which he had been raised, and the cruelty of his stepmother. But if he had confessed the way he had said he might have done, she realized she would have accepted regardless. She would have given up the certainty of love for the potential of something like it. A different version of her dream for a different version of love.

“What I forgot were the years before,” he continued, “when I witnessed another kind of love. The rare and sweet kind that makes a man gentle and makes a woman seem to glow from within. My mother and father were like that. I had allowed myself to forget. I had buried it deeply, because I suppose it did not help me to remember.”

He stepped up behind her, his hand brushing back the loose locks of her hair so they would not get in her face. “There is no one in this world that I trust like I trust you,” he said quietly. “And I know that you will be honest with me now. Is there any part of you that feels as I do?”

She struggled to control her breathing as a cool wind whipped around them, the moonlight fading in and out as clouds scudded across that silvery glow. The trees that flanked the sides of the road trembled and shivered, while the sound of Percival’s greatcoat flapping was akin to wings—but those of a raven or a dove; she could not be certain. A bad omen or a good one.

“It is getting cold,” he said. “Perhaps, I should put you back in the carriage where you will be warmer.”

“You are not putting me back in the carriage,” she remarked, her back still turned. She could not, would not, look at him until she knew how to feel, for if she were to gaze into those beautiful eyes and see his sadness, she would be done for. Worse, if she were to look at him and see mirth or amusement in his expression, there would be no recovery from such a mean trick.

Come now, even you know it is no trick, her mind urged, for she knew that he was not unkind by nature. Circumstance had made it hard for him to express himself, that was all. Yet, he was doing rather well at expressing himself now.

“Very well,” he said.

Her heart leaped into her throat as he took off his great coat and draped it over her shoulders, his arms briefly encircling her in order to pull the sides tighter around her front. Instinctively, she leaned back into his chest, and his arms lingered where they were—not an embrace of the deliberate kind, but a gesture of protection to keep out the biting wind.

“I have waited for six-and-twenty years to find the sort of love I have dreamed about,” she said, almost to herself. “I have waited so long that I assumed it would never happen.”

“I am not asking you to settle for less than your dream, Anna,” he told her, his arms still loose around her. “Your friendship means more to me than anything, and if friendship is all you desire, then?—”

“Would you be quiet for a moment,” she interrupted, though not unkindly. “I am trying to soliloquize to make sense of my thoughts, and one should not be halted when one is doing so.”

He chuckled softly. “Forgive me. I shall not say another word until you are finished with your soliloquy.”

“I have read so very many novels and stories, have studied every manner of plot and narrative, until it has reached a point where I can guess the twists and turns of a tale from the first few chapters,” she continued hesitantly. “It is always obvious who is going to fall in love and how they are going to fall in love, so I assumed that it would be obvious in reality, too. I thought I would see a gentleman and just… know that he was to be mine, bringing me a true love to last a lifetime.

“I did not see you because I was not looking for you. I was looking for poetry and mystery and that bolt of instantaneous love across a ballroom,” she persevered, perspiring a little despite the whipping wind. “Yet, I should have known that there was more to you than met the eye, for I have never felt more assured or confident with anyone. I have never bickered and quarreled with anyone, the way I do with you. I have never been bold enough to speak my mind with anyone but you. And I always thought it strange.”

His arms tightened around her. “You did?”

“To the rest of society, I am as quiet as a mouse. It is why I was able to do my work as The Matchmaker so well, because no one noticed me.” She smiled and settled deeper into the solidity of Percival’s chest. “Even with my brothers, I eventually back down. But never with you. You have always ignited a fire in me that, by rights, should not exist.”

“It has always been something of a competition between us,” he admitted, and though she still could not see him, she thought she could feel him smile.

“And we have always mistaken one another’s words and misjudged one another’s actions,” she added. “I believe we are quite terrible at communicating, in truth, though I daresay we have potential.”

His breath caught. “Potential? Do you mean…?”

Slowly, she turned in his arms and pressed her palms to his chest. His heart was beating quickly, his throat bobbing as he gazed down into her eyes. “Do not put words in my mouth, Percival,” she said with a teasing smile. “I am still trying to find the right words to say that?—”

He dipped his head and caught her mouth with his in a soft, slow kiss, while his arms pulled her closer. She smiled against his lips as she grasped the lapels of his waistcoat, raising up on tiptoe to kiss him more deeply in return. She would chastise him after, for old time’s sake, but right now she was determined to enjoy the moment. Indeed, her favorite heroines would not have scolded him for making a dream come true.

It was the sort of kiss that changed everything, so similar to the kiss in the Orangery, yet so utterly different. Knowing that he loved her made it all the sweeter, her nerves jittering with a simmering excitement rather than shivering confusion.

She relaxed into his embrace, kissing him with all of the hopes of her eight fruitless years in society, pinning every last one on him. Her hands smoothed up his muscular chest and over his shoulders, meeting at the nape of his neck. He stooped slightly, to allow her to cling onto him, smiling all the while.

Sliding her hand into his hair, she marveled at the silkiness of those chestnut brown waves as her lips moved with his, guided in a slow and wondrous dance. In truth, she marveled at all of him. He was still the Percival she had seen every summer for years, yet, somehow, he was entirely new.

For he is mine… and I am his.

Pulling back, certain that he would hold her steady, she peered up into his beautiful eyes… and made the most believable scowl she could muster.

“How dare you,” she whispered.

He frowned, taken aback. “Pardon?”

“How dare you… kiss me before I have said my piece,” she replied, fighting the grin that longed to curve upon her lips. “I told you not to interrupt while I am soliloquizing, and you should certainly not interrupt while I am thinking very deeply indeed. Evidently, you believe a kiss is the best way to distract me.”

His frown softened into a slightly raised eyebrow. “Am I mistaken?”

“No, but that is beside the p?—”

He kissed her again, his smile giving him away. She had never known a kiss could be playful before. Truly, she was looking forward to discovering every kind of kiss there was to discover.

“Outrageous!” she chided through her laughter, as she pulled back once more. “Why, it is almost as if you do not wish to hear my response!”

He bent his head as if he was about to interrupt her with a third kiss. Instead, he rested his brow against hers and brought his hands up to cradle the sides of her neck, his thumb brushing that sensitive skin.

“I love you,” he murmured. “Now, I shall be silent.”

She closed her eyes and gripped his lapels. “Despite everything you might have witnessed to the contrary, I am so very fond of you,” she whispered, her heart swelling in her chest. “If I had my paper and ink with me at this very moment, I would write a letter to myself, detailing my perfect match. My true love. It would be a letter containing just one word.”

“And what word would that be?” he asked.

“Barnacle.”

He chuckled in the back of his throat. “And what would mine say?”

“Catchweed,” she replied softly, opening her eyes as she smoothed her hand upward, until she reached his cheek.

“Quite the pair.”

Anna nodded. “Quite the pair.” She swallowed thickly. “I do not know how long I have been falling in love with you, Percival, but… I am entirely on the floor now.”

“What does that mean?” he asked, visibly bemused and amused at once.

“It means…” She took a deep breath, not knowing why she was so nervous. She had read the words ‘I love you’ so many times, she had daydreamed of those three words being given and received, she had heard her dearest friends saying it so easily to their own beloveds, so what was the matter with her? Why did it feel like she was about to be pushed on stage to give a grand speech she was ill-prepared for?

Because you never thought it would happen. Because saying it to him, and meaning it too, is the stuff of your dreams.

“Anna, if you do not feel the same way, do not feel obliged to say it,” he told her gently. “Perhaps, it is something that will grow with time. Perhaps, it is?—”

“I love you,” she said, her heart almost bursting with giddiness. “Percival, I love you!”

Rising up on her tiptoes, she kissed the delighted surprise from his lips, sealing her words with a promise that she meant it. Wholly. Truly. With every fiber of her being, she meant it, and as someone who had lived and breathed love for the entirety of her life, she did not take that lightly.