about it,” he suggested. “Perhaps I can help.”
They walked to the front of the stable together, and she smiled at her stablehand as he helped her up on a pretty sorrel mare named Jasmine she had favored for many years. She patted her flank and her tension seemed to bleed away. Cav remounted Hank, and they trotted off together at a gentle speed that didn’t allow the brisk morning breeze to chill them too much.
“Is it really the geese, Emily?” he asked. “Are you going to try to tell me that it’s only a flock of rude waterfowl that put you on the edge of tears?”
She worried her lip and glanced at him. “I would tell anyone else that but you. You have the annoying skill of knowing when I’m lying. But I feel foolish saying the truth.”
“And what is that?” he pressed gently.
She was silent for a moment, and then she scrunched her face. “I’m going to sound foolish no matter how I say it, so here it is. I feel like a…failure.”
He stared at her too long and nearly unseated himself. He managed to control Hank and keep his wits about him as he said, “How are you a failure?”
“My life is…out of control,” she said. “It has been for a very long time. After all, I had plans, I had dreams and they were all stolen when Andrew died.” She had that hint of sadness to her tone when she said his name, but it was softer now. Not so sharp or broken. “In the last few years, I’ve been in a kind of limbo. No longer in official mourning, but not ready to move on.”
“You were pressured to do so, I know. I always respected your ability to hold true to your own heart,” he said.
She gave him half a smile. “At least Andrew’s family has been exceedingly kind about it. They’ve allowed me to continue on in our old home in London rather than moving to my new one. They’ve allowed me to treat Crossfox as a primary residence, as well, and have my parties here and sleep in the chamber that belongs to the viscountess.”
“They adore you,” he said softly, for he knew it was true.
“And I them. They will always mean a great deal to me. But I told you before that Andrew’s brother is marrying.”
“Yes,” Cav said. “Gossip was already circulating before I arrived. Charles is marrying Phillipa Questington, isn’t he?”
She nodded. “She’s very sweet and has been nothing but lovely to me. They told me on Christmas Day that they will begin reading the bannes just after Epiphany, and I am happy for them. But…”
“But?”
Her sigh came shuddering out, and the sound was so painful that it nearly broke his heart. “This life I planned will become…theirs. This home and the one in London will be hers. I will be moving to my new residence when I return to the city. I’ll come here, I’m sure—they are not a family of ogres and have made it clear I’ll always have a place with them. But I’ll only ever be their guest.”
He gripped his reins tighter. Somehow he hadn’t thought about the changes she was facing. The world had become hung up, stopped turning when Andrew died, at least for the two of them. The past five years had almost seemed out of time. But the bubble of that would burst, of course it would.
“How is that a failure, though, Emily?” he asked gently. “None of it is because of something you’ve done or not done.”
“No, but I have struggled with losing these last vestiges of what I once believed would be my life.” She shook her head. “Perhaps more than I let anyone, even you, know. And this party…it was supposed to help.”
“Help?” he repeated. “How would it help?”
“I saw it as a way to say goodbye to this place, for one,” she said, glancing over her shoulder toward the house that was now hidden in the distance. “But also I hoped…oh, it sounds so foolish now, I can’t say it.”
He pulled Hank up, stopping him on the trail, and she did the same with Jasmine. He turned the animal so he would face her. “Say it. It’s me. You can say it.”
Her gaze flitted over him, and how he wished he could read her mind, because her expression was clouded with so much emotion that he couldn’t parse out what it all was and name it so he could react