The Way to a Gentleman's Heart - Theresa Romain Page 0,5
“You used to think I was funny.”
“I did. You used to think I was a lot of things.” Roll, roll, cut, cut, press, press. A tart shell took form in one of the cases, then was set aside as Marianne took up the next round of dough.
How could he explain what she’d meant to him? She’d been more than a first love. She had been his companion for as long as he could remember. He’d wanted to marry her. When he was twenty-two and she twenty, he’d asked her, and she had agreed as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
But Helena Wilcox had had money, and the Redferns hadn’t, and if the Grahames hadn’t got money at once, they would have been ruined. Tenants lost, lands fallow, dowries drained. All Jack had needed to do was wed the merchant’s daughter, and he’d spare everyone.
Everyone but himself and Marianne.
In the end, the marriage had lasted only six years before illness took Helena. Marianne knew she died, because she sent a proper letter of condolence—not to Jack, but to his mother and his eldest sister, Viola. She’d done the same when Jack’s father had died a year later. Only recently had Jack put off mourning clothes for them both.
“I thought you were everything,” he said slowly. The knife cut the pale flesh of the apricot, revealing the stone. If it weren’t for the stone, the fruit could go right into the tart. But there was always a stone.
He cut another, and another, a whole pile of them as tart cases stacked up under Marianne’s quick hands. Finally, she replied. “I loved who I thought you were. I’ve missed that man.”
He couldn’t argue with that. “I miss that man too. Do you know, you’re the only person who ever loved me without thinking of how I could serve, or who else I could become?”
She stared at him. “Surely not.”
Which was not a denial. Her disbelief warmed him, that not only did she grant she’d loved him just as he was, but she thought someone else must have too.
“Not that I’m aware. Anyway. That’s why I wanted to find you. Not because I want anything from you now, but to remind myself that once, it was enough for me to be Jack Grahame.”
“You said you wanted my forgiveness.”
He cut more apricots, wanting to finish this small thing she’d asked of him. “True. I do want that of you. I couldn’t have acted differently eight years ago unless I were...not me. If that makes sense?”
“Yes, it makes sense.” She slid the bowl of cut fruit toward herself, eyed the quantity, then added a few fistfuls of flour. “If I had to marry to save my family from ruin, I’d probably have done it too.”
His heart skipped upward, lightened. He tossed the last few apricot halves into the large bowl. “Then you don’t blame me?”
She added sugar to the fruit. “Who else am I to blame, Jack?”
When she put it like that... “If you’ve the need in your heart to blame, then no one. There’s no one to blame but me.” A sapskull with a pile of stones before him, his hands covered in juice.
“I don’t know,” she said, and he drank in every flicker of emotion that crossed her features. “I hold you responsible for your actions. For the way you dropped me so quickly. But do I think it was the wrong choice? No, I don’t suppose I do.”
“Then you forgive me?” He was holding his breath.
“There’s a distance between don’t blame and forgive. I’m not ready to step across it yet.” She took a breath. “But if you’ve two weeks to give, I could use a kitchenmaid.”
He laughed.
She raised a brow.
“Oh. You’re serious? A kitchenmaid?”
“I’m serious,” she said, worry creeping into her tone. “I can’t take any more time like this, to talk with you and eat strawberries. I’m behindhand with today’s custards and sauces, and there’s a great dinner to prepare in two weeks’ time for all sorts of people who help fund the academy, and we’re short on staff since Katie left, and—”
He popped another strawberry in her mouth. “Don’t eat the leaves.”
She bit the red fruit from the top, still in mid-word, and questioned him with her big green eyes.
And because he’d never been able to deny her anything but his hand in marriage, he agreed.
Chapter Two
BEFORE SUNRISE THE next morning, Marianne was up and dressed and ready to work. She lit lamps in the kitchen,