“Wait. I’m thinking,” he says. “You’re so damned fast.”
But Nell wants to leave, to move, to put miles between herself and this. She’s not coming back here. She doesn’t belong here. It’s instinct—certainty without thinking—that urge to flee. Nevertheless, at the look on Louis’s face she pauses, waiting.
“This is some bullshit,” he says. “Marry me.”
“What? You’re not serious.”
He comes to her then, takes her in his arms. “As a heart attack.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“So? I know what I want. Why wait?”
“Even the way you said it, I marry you. Why isn’t it you who marries me?”
“Okay,” he says quickly.
“Be real.”
He kisses her then, a most persuasive argument. “I love you. I knew it that night. We’ve gotten to know each other all long-distance and chaste-like. I know who you are, and I don’t want to wait or be without you. I was coming out there to get you.”
“You were coming to get me?”
“Yeah. That’s where this is all going anyway. It’s where you went in your head just now. You feel it, too, don’t you? So why draw it out? Why not do the romantic thing? The impractical thing. The impossible?”
“You can’t propose to get me to spend the night with you. You can’t coerce me like that.” It’s a blatant attempt to manipulate her with the brass ring every woman supposedly wants. His proposal is infuriating, but it’s also enticing. She’s never been that woman, pining to be a bride, but she isn’t immune to a brash and handsome man either.
Nell wonders at his confidence, his outrageousness. Does he really feel this way, or is he merely throwing out a proposal he knows she won’t accept? And what if she did? What if she called his bluff? He’d likely backpedal. Or he might book tickets on the next plane to Vegas. She wouldn’t put it past him. And this thought softens her a bit.
“Stay. Let me convince you how right we are for each other.”
She has a thought for staying, for one more night of his particular brand of escape, a way to forget about the world. She’d like to forget again.
He is energy and optimism, competence and calm, and she just wants to feel him pressed up against her skin. “You’re going to convince me?”
“Just need one more night,” he says with a playful smile.
“One night, then,” she says, looking forward to a getaway from the mundane.
“Excellent,” he says as he kisses her, his hands in her hair, backing her up toward his bed. “I can work with one night.”
THE LEATHER JOURNAL
Days passed in a haze for Ambrose. He and May spent most of their time outdoors to avoid the staff. Riding to secluded spots, he would coax her off Blueskin and down next to him on saddle blankets he’d take from the barns and spread on the grass. They did things that apparently frightened the horses, who both managed to slip their leads and take off at a pace for the stables. Ambrose and May dressed and ambled after them, straggling back in rumpled clothes, to the raised eyebrow of the barn manager.
Down at the pond, Ambrose dared her to climb up on the top of the bathhouse and jump. She’d done it and come up laughing, complaining that her feet hit mud when she leapt from that height. They’d wasted afternoons in the humid sun and the mossy water.
They ate together in the dining room at night, small dinners à deux, with furtive clasped hands under the table and whispered plans that stopped when the maids would come in with more champagne or to clear plates. Ambrose rarely let May out of his sight; he was so absorbed by her and the real physicality of her after so many daydreams that he couldn’t think about anything else. But when she was in her bath or riding alone or discussing things with the cook, when he had even a moment by himself, he was silently plotting their escape and a return. Ambrose wanted it, and he’d create it—the chance to begin again, to go back and make a decision differently, for the both of them. And he didn’t care now which one of them should have chosen differently, if the fault lay with him for trying to jump May through a set of hoops or with May for marrying while he was gone. It didn’t move anything forward to look back like that.
Each night before dinner he brought her violets from the greenhouses, though she didn’t wear flowers in her hair anymore, which he thought a pity.
Each night after dinner she tiptoed down to his room in her long white nightgown, returning back to her end of the house before morning, lest the help talked.
This morning she’d announced the need for a walk, alone. Though it made his stomach sink, Ambrose smiled, wary of seeming overbearing. Continually beating under any moment that May wasn’t with him was the desire to just take her away, to convince her to leave before Ethan came back and go where no one would be able to find them. He sat in the living room, fumbling over a leather-bound journal, trying for calm. He was inspired, as he hadn’t been since India, to try writing verse. His frustrated scribbling and many crossed-out words showcased his inability to capture the moment.
He worked, hoping to have something to give her by the time she was back. When he heard the front door creak, thinking it was she, he called out, “Darling.”
Heavy footfalls alerted him that it wasn’t May, and Ethan entered the room, his face placid.
Ambrose rose, willing himself not to blush, and hoped his “Darling” sounded casual, like an offhand, teasing thing between a hostess and her long-standing houseguest.
“You’re back. How’d it go?” Ambrose regretted it the minute he said it. He’d kept in little contact with his father’s office, making only a few halfhearted phone calls, during which he’d been told all was under control and there was nothing for him to do, no decisions to be made. They’d call if he was needed, they assured him. Ambrose suspected that they were glad to have him out of the way, and he’d been only too happy to oblige. There’d been telegrams from Ethan, and letters, too, which Ambrose had left unopened on a never-used table in the library.
He felt it then, the fragile bubble he’d been living in with May, and seeing the look on Ethan’s face, Ambrose felt it pop.
“Drink?” Ambrose asked, searching for something to do, something to offer.
When Ethan had his glass and was settled, the sound of the front door silenced the brothers. Ambrose tried to think of some way to warn May as her boots clacked across the hall. “There you are,” she said, coming in the room with a wide, fond smile. “You were right, I feel so much . . .” She turned then, seeing the look on Ambrose’s face.