Page 14 of An Earl Like You (Games Earls Play #6)

Chapter

Seven

“ I never agreed to accompany you on the lilac walk, Lord Windham. Indeed, I don’t believe I’ve even bid you a good morning.”

How could she have done? He’d seen her when she arrived—she was certain of it—but he’d kept as far away from her as possible. He hadn’t spared her a single word or glance all morning, but she’d known where he was at every moment.

The lawn, the terrace, or fetching lemonade. It didn’t matter where he was, or what he was doing. She was as aware of him as she was the warmth of the sun on her face.

It hurt, no longer being his friend. Perhaps she might have learned to live with it in time, though the space he’d once occupied in her heart would never have healed entirely.

It would have always remained tender and bruised and achingly empty, but in time she would have reconciled herself to the loss of him.

But now, since she’d come to London they seemed to have somehow become enemies.

Was this how it would end? After twelve years of friendship and dozens upon dozens of letters, was it truly going to end like this?

It might have been easier if she’d understood why it had happened, but he’d simply vanished on her, more than a decade of friendship over in the blink of an eye, and in its place, nothing but baffling silence.

He hadn’t bothered to answer any of her letters for months, but all at once he was adamant that he, and only he could escort her through the lilac walk.

His behavior made no sense, and she’d had quite enough of it. She’d simply repeat herself until he answered her. “I never agreed to accompany you?—”

“Yes, I’m aware of that, Lady Harriet, and I beg your pardon, but I won’t leave you at the mercy of Lord Egerton.”

“I’d hardly be at his mercy, my lord. It’s a stroll among the lilacs, not a duel to the death. As for Lord Egerton, he appears to be a perfectly respectable gentleman.”

“He isn’t.” Cass’s voice was flat. “He’s neither respectable, nor a gentleman.”

If he was as wicked as Cass made him out to be, then why was he here at Lady Farthingale’s garden party at all? “Lady Fosberry doesn’t seem to share your opinion. If Lord Egerton is as awful as you say, she would have warned me away from him.”

“I doubt she knows the truth about him. Lord Egerton is a master at dissembling. Trust me when I say you need to keep well away from him.”

She had trusted him, once. There’d been a time when she’d trusted him more than anyone else in the world, a time when he’d been her best friend, but that time had passed.

“I know you don’t trust me anymore,” he added, with that uncanny knack he’d always had of knowing what she was thinking even before she knew it herself. “But I wouldn’t lie to you, Hattie.”

Hattie. Not Lady Harriet, but Hattie.

A crack in his armor, at last! Oh, it was a tiny one, to be sure, but even the tiniest crack eventually gave way to pressure. This was what she’d come to London for, this moment right here. This was a chance for her to talk to him, and she might not get a second one.

But where to begin? What were the right words to say to remind him who he’d once been? “The lilacs are lovely, are they not?” It wasn’t an auspicious start, but their friendship had begun with a daisy crown.

Why should it not resume with lilacs?

“Lady Fosberry said all the ton pants for an invitation to Lady Farthingale’s garden party,” she went on. “Now I’ve seen her lilacs, I don’t wonder at it.”

Cass glanced around them, as if only just now noticing the lilacs. “I’ve always been fond of them, perhaps because they’re one of the first flowers to bloom in the spring. They, ah…they put me in mind of the time I spent in Kent.”

Kent. He was speaking to her of Kent. It was the very last thing she’d expected, and she was obliged to swallow before replying.

Even so, when she spoke her voice wasn’t quite steady.

“But you’ve never seen the lilacs in Kent, Cass…

I mean, Lord Windham. They were finished before you arrived that summer. ”

“The bluebells were finished as well. I distinctly remember Sarah lamenting that fact on that first day I spied on you. Neither cornflowers nor bellflowers would do for Lady Sarah, if I recall.”

“No, and she remains quite as imperious as she was then.” She hesitated, but the words were on the edge of her lips, and there was no holding them back. “Perhaps you should visit Kent in the spring sometime.”

“Perhaps I should, but even though I never did get to see the bluebells in bloom in Kent, I can picture the great swaths of deep blue color set against a sea of green grass rippling in the wind. Whenever I see bluebells now, I think of that meadow.”

The longing in his voice, the melancholy there…did he know he gave himself away with every syllable, every sigh, every word? But she wouldn’t say so. The moment was too delicate, a mere wisp of a thing, and the wrong word might send it scattering like dandelion fluff.

“The meadow hasn’t changed much since then. It’s an ocean of wildflowers still.”

“Or as Sarah would call them, weeds.”

She laughed, giddy, her head spinning with bluebells and memories of Cass as he’d been then, a sweet, lost boy who was searching for a place to belong. “Well, to be fair, they are weeds.”

“So, they are.” He reached up to pluck one of the tiny blooms. It was more of a tunnel than a walk, with walls of lilacs on either side of them and hanging in dainty clusters above them. It was cool and quiet inside, as if they’d stumbled into their own private world.

“I shouldn’t have…” He paused and blew out a breath. “I shouldn’t have scolded you as I did in Lady Fosberry’s garden yesterday. I was shocked to see you in Berkeley Square, and I didn’t acquit myself as a gentleman ought to do. I beg your pardon.”

His words were a balm to her bruised heart, and she let her eyes drop closed for an instant as they weaved a spell around her.

But there were so many unanswered questions between them still, and nothing would ever be right again until she asked the one that made it feel as if the weight of the world had settled on her chest.

The one that had broken her heart.

“Why did you stop writing to me, Cass?”

He didn’t answer her, not at once, but brought the blooms to his nose and inhaled, drinking them in as the silence lingered between them, as heavy as the sweet scent of lilacs.

Finally, he tossed the bloom aside and turned to face her, and his eyes…dear God, but there was a world of pain in those dark depths that astonished her.

“I’m the Earl of Windham, Hattie, and the Windham earls are not good men. A friendship with me would only end up hurting you. You deserve better than that.”

There it was, the answer to the question she’d asked herself a thousand times, the question she’d shed a thousand bitter tears over. Perhaps it should have comforted her to have the answer at last, but it didn’t.

It broke her heart all over again.

“You don’t get to decide that for me, Cass.” She grabbed his arm, her fingers tightening until somehow the fine material of his coat was twisted in her clenched fist. “You don’t get to throw away twelve years of friendship as if it meant nothing to you.”

“Is that what you think, Hattie? You think it meant nothing to me? It meant everything , but it’s better this way, better if we don’t?—”

“No, it isn’t! How can it be better for us to no longer be friends?”

“It’s not as simple as?—”

“You’re not like your father, Cass! You may be the Earl of Windham now, but you are a good man.” She clutched his coat, her eyes holding his, because maybe if she could make him look at her, he’d see the truth in her face.

“You don’t understand, Hattie?—”

“I do! I understand everything. I know you, Cass. I know you better than anyone else ever has or ever will.” She slid her hand to the center of his chest and rested it there, over his heart. “I know you here , inside your heart.”

She had the bluest eyes he’d ever seen. Years ago, he’d looked into her eyes, and something had clicked into place inside him. He’d been hardly more than a child then, but even so, he’d known he’d never again find eyes as blue as Hattie Parrish’s.

Not cornflower, or bellflower, or even bluebell-blue, but a blue all her own, such a deep blue looking into them was like hurling himself into the ocean.

Her eyes had ruined him for every other pair of blue eyes in England.

He shouldn’t touch her. Touching her would only confuse things, and it was already so complicated between them, but he was reaching for her, and then he was touching her, her smooth cheek warm against the palm of his hand.

He gazed down into the endless blue of her eyes. “Tell me what you’re really doing in London, Hattie. I know you too well to believe you came for the season.”

“W-why…” She cleared her throat, the slender line of her neck moving in a rough swallow. “Why else would I have come?”

“You tell me.” He caught a lock of her hair between his fingers, unable to resist caressing the silky strands. “The truth this time, Hattie.”

“I—I already told you the truth.”

She hadn’t. He knew her words for a lie before they were even out of her mouth. She’d never been able to lie to him. “Tell me again.”

She closed her eyes, her eyelashes brushing her flushed cheeks, but when she opened them again she met his gaze, and for an instant he was in Kent again with the thick branches of her brother’s beech tree swaying between them.

“I-I came for the season, and…and to hear Sir Joseph Banks.”

If he hadn’t known her as well as he did he might have believed her, but even after a decade apart, he knew her as well as if he’d spent his entire lifetime with her.

She did know his heart, just as she said she did, but he knew hers, as well. “You’ve never been much of a liar, Hattie.”