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‘It appears we must leave you, sir,’ and he bowed his farewell. ‘Thank you again for your good wishes.’
He began to walk towards the Chinese bridge with Sophia in tow, already beginning a complicated discourse on his understanding of the water-management system. Equally bewildered by her sister’s request, Christabel turned to follow them, but was stopped in her tracks by Richard roughly grabbing her arm. He hardly waited for the others to be out of earshot before grinding out, ‘You can’t really mean to marry that man!’
‘I beg your pardon!’ She was genuinely shocked.
‘I think you understand me, but, just in case, I was questioning your sanity in agreeing to marry Julian Edgerton.’
‘How dare you presume to question whom I marry!’
‘I dare to presume because I seem to know you better than you know yourself. But even you must be aware of how unsuited you are to each other.’
The red cascade of curls trembled with anger. ‘You are insulting, sir!’
‘I would call it honest rather than insulting, but it’s better to be insulting than concur in this charade.’
‘You are misinformed, my lord. There is no charade. Sir Julian and I have known each other for many months and have agreed that we will suit admirably.’
She wondered why she was defending her choice of husband to Richard of all men but she felt compelled to continue and found herself declaring, ‘Sir Julian is a man of the highest honour and integrity.’
‘I’m sure he is. He’s also a gudgeon if he thinks he can control you.’
‘No man controls me and Sir Julian is far too wise to wish to do so.’
‘But not wise enough to refrain from marrying you,’ he retaliated.
She glared furiously at the tall, elegant figure in front of her and responded in a voice crackling with ice, ‘This is mere ranting and I will listen no more. I bid you good day, sir.’
Her cream skirts swished to one side as she made to walk away. But Richard would not concede. Ignoring her cold fury and the summary nature of his dismissal, he called out, ‘If you value his happiness as much as your own, don’t do it.’
She retraced her steps and stood looking directly up into his eyes, now dark and glittering.
‘If we are to give each other marital advice, I would suggest that wedding a child fresh from the nursery is unlikely to guarantee success. I, at least, intend to marry a man of my own age and one I have known for many months.’
Brushing aside his supposed alliance with Domino, he coldly countered her logic. ‘But how much of a guarantee is that? You once agreed to marry another man of your own age and one you had known a very long time, but that alliance wasn’t too permanent, was it?’
He smiled derisively at her. ‘At the moment Sir Julian is living in his own little paradise, but how long do you give him? He would be well advised to grow steel armour in the very near future, say three weeks from his wedding day.’
‘You have been as offensive as it is possible to be, Lord Veryan, but nothing you say can touch our happiness.’
He grimaced. ‘How charming! And how strange that there was a day when I felt that too. I looked deep into your green eyes, touched your luminous skin, tangled my hands in that wild red hair—and what a premonition that was—and believed that I was as happy as it was possible to be, that nothing could ever touch that happiness. How wrongly can a man judge!’
Christabel swallowed hard. ‘Yesterday you assured me that you considered the past dead. Can you not accept that we made a mistake and forget?’
‘You made a mistake, Miss Tallis. For myself, the past is nothing. But I find it difficult to forget those others for whom the pain still lives. But then you never cared too much about them—friends, parents, all could be sacrificed. All that mattered was that you had your desire, a desire, it seems, which died almost as soon as it flickered into life.’
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