Awakening Love: Reborn to Be His Duchess novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: The Chapel Garden

Edmund offers peace and a second chance in the chapel garden; Linnet refuses and the dowager drives him out.

I went to the chapel garden at noon, because I wanted to see his face when I told him no.

Edmund was waiting by the sundial in a blue coat that fit him perfectly.

He had always known which colours made him look kind.

"You came," he said, and opened both hands. "I wasn't sure you would."

"You threatened my father in a note."

"I reminded you what your father stands to lose." His green eyes were warm and sad. "I'm not here to fight, Linnet. I'm here because I'm tired."

I stood where the path was wide and a gardener was clipping a hedge in plain view.

"Tired of what?"

"Of that house. Of five years of it." He took one step and stopped when I did not move. "I woke up the night of the ball and I could not bear it, what I did. You must know I never meant for it to end that way."

I looked at him for a long time.

When I was twenty-four I would have wept at that.

I had wept at less.

"You never meant for my father to hang?" I said.

"I never meant for any of it. Things got away from us. My mother, my father's creditors, the Crown's questions." He lowered his voice. "But we have a second chance, you and I. Nobody else in the world has it."

"And what would you like to do with it?"

"Break it off with Wexmoor. Say you've fallen ill. Come back to me in a month, and I'll marry you in the spring, and I will treat you like a queen." He smiled. "Your father keeps his land and his neck, and nobody has to be hurt."

He had practiced it.

I could hear every pause.

"And Seraphine?" I asked.

"Seraphine is a friend."

"She tapped her fan on my wrist at the ball while you whispered in my ear."

"She loves you."

"She told you my letters. In the first life she read every one before I sent it."

He did not blink, and that was the answer.

"You are angry," Edmund said gently. "You have every right. Let me earn it back. Only don't marry that man. He's cold and he's dangerous, and you don't know what he is."

"I know what his seal is."

His eyes flashed, and I saw I had said more than I meant.

I saw something else too.

He was not surprised.

"The warrant," he said slowly. "You think it was him."

I said nothing.

"It's not a bad idea, you know. Keep believing it." He came close, and the smile came back. "Marry him, hate him, and when it all falls apart you'll know exactly who to run to."

"Edmund."

"Yes?"

"I'm going to take your house apart brick by brick, and I will do it while you watch."

For the first time in two lives, Edmund did not know what to say.

"You've changed," he said.

"I died," I said. "You'll find that changes people."

A cane struck the gravel behind him.

It struck twice, quite hard.

"I wondered who was loitering in my chapel garden," said a small, white-haired woman, advancing up the path with a footman carrying her shawl. "Young Rook. I thought I smelled something."

Edmund bowed with a perfect smile.

"Your Grace. A pleasure."

"It is not. My grandson is marrying this girl in nine days, and you've come to plant your boots in her flowerbeds." She pointed the cane at his chest. "Go home, young man. And tell your father that if his hounds go near the Trevanion stables again, I will have them shot, and I'll have the Rook hunt cancelled for good measure."

"Madam, I only-"

"Out."

He went.

He did not hurry, and he did not look back at me.

Only his hand, at his side, curled shut.

The dowager watched him go, then turned the full weight of two black eyes on me.

"You are Trevanion's girl."

"Yes, Your Grace."

"Maud," she said. "I'm too old to be Your Gracing my own granddaughter. Sit with me. These legs have an opinion about walking."

We sat on the stone bench by the sundial.

She smelled of peppermint and lavender.

"You did not ask me to send him away," she said. "I like that. A girl who needs rescuing wants a cheering crowd. You had it handled."

"I had not quite."

"Nobody has, with a Rook." She patted my hand once, briskly. "I'm not going to ask what he said. I'm going to tell you something, and you may do with it what you like."

"What is it?"

"My grandson hasn't slept in a week."

I waited.

She smiled at the sundial.

"You might ask him why."

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