Page 7 of However Long the Wait (Sweet Treat Novellas #4)

Y ou never used to be hurtful. Carina’s words echoed in Grant’s mind for hours on end.

He hadn’t been hurtful. He’d been civil and polite. He’d not embarrassed her or himself. He’d kept their interaction as serene as possible despite the many question swirling in his mind. What more could she expect of him?

The question weighed heavily on his mind as he stepped into the Beaumonts’ house that night for a Society gathering. He had actually been looking forward to it. His enthusiasm, however, had waned after what transpired that morning.

She would be there. He knew she would. And those words— You never used to be hurtful —would follow him all evening long.

There were a lot of things he never used to be, things she never used to be.

Strangers, for one. Alone, for another. They used to have each other.

Nothing had been the same since that changed.

Miss Beaumont met him not three steps inside the music room, her open, friendly manner weaving its usual spell. He felt content in her company, something he appreciated even more than usual just then.

“We have secured an unparalleled performer for this evening,” she said, slipping her arm through his. “She is in demand on the opera stages in London, as well as Milan. Quite a coup for Mother.”

Carina would be pleased. She had once attended a musical evening and heard an operatic soprano. She’d spoken of the experience on more than one occasion, waxing poetic about her enjoyment of the performance.

How had she entered his thoughts again?

“You seem distracted this evening,” Miss Beaumont said. “Did you have difficulties at the mill?”

He smiled apologetically. “No, my thoughts are simply wandering. I believe a musical evening is precisely what I need to calm this overworked mind of mine.”

“Then I am even more pleased you are here.” She led him toward the rows of chairs set in place in anticipation of the evening’s entertainment.

A few of the guests were seated already, but most were moving about, mingling. As his luck of late would have it, Miss Beaumont led the two of them directly to Miss Chadwick and Carina, who stood a few paces from a small gathering of attendees.

“Miss Chadwick, Miss Herrick,” she greeted. “How pleased we are to see you here this evening.”

Miss Chadwick’s gaze darted from Grant to Miss Beaumont and back again, pausing only long enough to eye their interlinked arms. “How very gracious of you both to greet the guests so personally.”

Something in that observation felt like a challenge to Grant. If Carina noticed anything odd, she did not allow it to show. Her focus remained to the side, not acknowledging the conversation going on directly before her.

Miss Beaumont noticed. “Is something amiss, Miss Herrick? You appear displeased with your company.”

“Not at all.” Her denial was spoken softly, not unlike the denunciation she’d offered him earlier. “I have simply had a taxing day.”

“You and Mr. Ambrose both,” Miss Beaumont said.

The comment brought Carina’s eyes to him at last. What he saw in their brown depths pulled him back five years to the day he’d told her he was leaving Rafton: worry, uncertainty, even fear.

But, on that long-ago day, those emotions had been directed at fate and the vagaries of the future.

In this moment, he knew without question that what he saw in her eyes was directed entirely at him.

You never used to be hurtful.

“I have managed to pull Mr. Ambrose from his doldrums,” Miss Beaumont said. “We simply must find someone to ease Miss Herrick from hers. I know any number of young gentlemen in attendance tonight who, I am certain, would be quite pleased to spend the evening at your side.”

Before Carina could say a word, her aunt spoke. “You should know that Miss Herrick’s parents have bestowed their blessing on a suitor who lives near their family home. I do not imagine her spending an evening on the arm of another gentleman would meet with his approval or theirs.”

A suitor? Was she engaged? Promised? Her expression gave away nothing, though she blushed a little.

“These tired bones of mine need resting,” Miss Chadwick said. “Let us find a place to sit, Carina.”

They stepped away and moved toward a back row of chairs. Grant could not be satisfied with so uninformative an answer.

“Pardon me.” He slipped his arm free of Miss Beaumont’s and followed in Carina’s wake, weaving around guests obstructing his path.

He reached the ladies before they sat.

Carina saw him first but didn’t speak. Her attention was immediately focused on her aunt.

Miss Chadwick’s brows turned up in surprise. “Did you think us incapable of finding seats on our own?”

He shook his head. “I only—” How did he explain this? He didn’t know if Carina had told her elderly relative about their history. Yet he had to know. His mind would never be at ease otherwise.

“Who is he?” he asked Carina.

“Who is whom?” She wore her dignity like a shield.

“This suitor in Rafton. Robert Caraway?” He had spoken more than once of an interest in her years earlier. “George Wilson?” He was the right age, though not at all suited to her clever and quick intellect.

“You, sir, have no right to ask me such personal questions. You forfeited that privilege five years ago.”

He lowered his voice, not wishing to air this grievance at full volume. “You knew perfectly well why I had to go to Preston. You agreed to it. You supported the decision.”

“And you didn’t come back,” she added firmly. “Your life proceeded without me. You cannot object to hearing that mine has as well.”

Didn’t come back? He hadn’t been able to in those early months; there’d been no time. By the time he was able, there’d been no reason. Their letters had long since grown impersonal and infrequent.

“Miss Beaumont appears to be wishing for your company,” Carina said. “It would not do to disappoint her.”

Miss Chadwick went so far as to wave Miss Beaumont over. She sent Grant a look of challenge as she lowered herself onto her chosen chair. Carina sat beside her, once again refusing to look at him.

Miss Beaumont arrived and immediately slipped her arm through his. “Mr. Whiting wishes to speak with you. I suspect he may be interested in discussing your mill.”

Normally, that bit of information would grab his entire attention, but he hesitated. Who was Carina’s intended? How long had her heart been engaged elsewhere?

“Your thoughts really are wandering today.” Miss Beaumont laughed as she urged him away.

One step, and Miss Chadwick spoke. She uttered only two words, but they stopped his heart. “Mr. Baskon.”

Grant was afforded no opportunity to obtain an explanation—one he desperately hoped would ease his horror.

Miss Beaumont kept to his side throughout the remainder of the evening, she and her parents pulling him into one conversation after another.

By the time he slipped free, long after the operatic performance had ended, Carina and her aunt were already gone.

He hardly slept that night, his concern for Carina growing by the moment.

He remembered Baskon all too well. There were no polite words strong enough to describe the type of man he was.

Grant, being male, had been privy to even more details of Baskon’s despicable nature than Carina likely was.

Surely she knew enough to give the horrid man a wide berth. Surely.

If, however, she did not, she had to be warned. She had to know the life she would be choosing—one in which misery would be unavoidable and the life drained from her.

***

By the next morning, Grant had formulated a course of action. He sent word to the mill manager not to expect him and, instead, hied himself to the far edge of town and directly to the door of Chadwick House.

He was ushered to a small, private breakfast room where Miss Chadwick sat enjoying her morning meal, despite the morning being half over. Carina was nowhere to be seen.

“I wondered when we might be seeing you,” Miss Chadwick said.

“I was expected?” Odd, considering he had decided upon this call only that morning.

“One does not live as many decades as I without learning a great deal about people.” She motioned him to an empty chair at the small table.

He sat. “Is Car— Miss Herrick about?”

Miss Chadwick smiled knowingly. “She has gone for her morning walk, which gives me ample time to see to the matter of your version of all this.”

He eyed her more closely. “Of all what, precisely?”

“Come now.” She set herself to the task of buttering a scone. “I may be an old lady, but my wits have not gone begging.”

“She told you?”

Miss Chadwick pointed at him with her butter knife. “Told me what?”

They were talking in circles now. “That we were sweethearts.”

She laughed lightly. “I sorted that out on my own. I’m hoping to hear from you what ended that connection.”

“What did she say ended it?”

Miss Chadwick tsked. “That would be cheating, Mr. Ambrose.”

She was a formidable verbal sparring partner, that was for certain. Grant had no desire to cross swords over this; he had come on weightier matters. A quick explanation seemed best.

“We drifted apart.”

Miss Chadwick appeared unimpressed—extremely so.

“Is that not how she described it?”

She arched a silver brow. “That is not how she described it to you last evening.”

Grant hadn’t truly pondered much of last evening beyond the revelation that Mr. Baskon had been chosen for Carina.

“She said I left,” he remembered.

“And?”

“And— And I didn’t come back.”

“Your explanation is that you drifted apart,” Miss Chadwick said. “Her experience was that you stopped caring.”

Stopped caring? How could she possibly believe that? Even after years of silence, of enduring the heartache of losing her, he still cared. She, however, had grown more distant, a shift he’d felt long before the Beaumonts’ dinner party.