Page 111 of Charlotte

He had refused her.

Both truths sat beside each other and would not make sense.

For a while, she cried the way she had not cried in the parsonage.

She wasn’t loud, crying with her skirt crushed beneath her, her bonnet ribbons loose, and her handkerchief clenched so tightly the lace edge dug into her palm.

She cried for the kiss behind the meeting hall, for the dance in the dark, for the name he had given her and taken no farther.

Her tears fell for the library rising beside the schoolhouse, for the little lending desk placed in the light, for the man who could build a future and refuse to step inside it.

Then, after a while, the tears quieted.

The hurt did not leave, but she felt calmer.

Lottie wiped her cheeks with Delly’s handkerchief, now creased, damp, and entirely unequal to the day. She looked across the lake until the shine on the water stopped blurring.

“No,” she whispered. “Get yourself together, Charlotte Bellamy.”

Cecil Peterson did not get to decide her heart in secret. He had been made to speak plainly, and he had. Now she would do the same.

She would not chase him or plead. She would not follow him up the mountain, begging him to change his mind. But neither would she let him surrender, disappear, and leave the whole town to believe she had quietly accepted his decision like a girl with no say in her own future.

If he wanted to be alone with his nobility, he could have it. She had a library to tend, a Jubilee to prepare, and a life that did not become smaller because a frightened man refused to stand in it.

She would not pretend.

On the Fourth of July, in the broad light of day, Charlotte Bellamy would stand beside the lending table, beside the books he had helped shelter and the library he had begun, and she would tell the truth if anyone asked about the match.

Mr. Peterson had released her.

She had not released her heart.

She loved him, choosing him with her eyes open. If Cecil Peterson truly meant to refuse that love, he would have to do it while looking at her, not from behind the preacher, not from behind his fear, and not from the safe distance of a noble-sounding goodbye.

Not to trap him.

Not to shame him.

Her heart was not a parcel to be returned quietly, and her love was not a secret he could bury for both of them.

Lottie rose from the grass and brushed off her skirt. Then she heard footsteps on the lakeshore path.

She turned.

Cecil stood beneath the pines at the edge of the grass.

For one breath, neither of them moved.

He should have looked out of place there, still holding his hat, his shirt sleeves rolled, his wrapped hand visible at his side. Instead, he looked as if every ache in her heart had taken human shape and followed her down to the water.

“I did not mean to follow you,” he said.

Lottie’s laugh came out broken. “You are remarkably poor at leaving for a man so determined to do it.”

His mouth tightened.

She wiped at her cheek with the heel of her hand, hating that he could see the tears and glad, horribly glad, he had come anyway.