Page 125 of Charlotte

“Was that your first step?” she asked.

He glanced at her.

“Perhaps.”

“It was a good one.”

“Small.”

“Most first steps are.”

The corner of his mouth moved, but the smile did not fully come.

“I wanted to take your hand when the hymn ended,” he said.

The words were so quiet she nearly missed them. Her heart lurched. “Why didn’t you?”

His gaze moved past her to the church doors, the road, the town beyond. “Because I had given up the right, and I was in the back of the church.”

“Rights are not always taken, Cecil.” She lowered her voice around his name. “Some are given.”

Lottie held her hand out.

Not far, just enough so he could decide if he wanted to take it. Cecil stared at it as though she had offered him something far more dangerous than fingers in a glove.

Shuffling the hat to his left hand, he reached with his right. The wrapped fingers closed around hers with painful care.

Lottie’s breath caught.

His grip was awkward. Warm. Unsteady.

He looked down at their joined hands, and something passed over his face that made every hurtful word in the parsonage ache again, not with fresh pain but with the knowledge of how nearly he had thrown this away.

“I do not deserve this,” he said.

“No,” she said softly, “but you may receive it.”

His eyes shut. For a moment, Lottie thought he would lift her hand to his mouth, but he didn’t.

She inwardly sighed. Too many romance novels.

He only stood there holding it, which somehow felt more intimate in the churchyard than any kiss could have.

Almost any kiss.

His thumb moved once against her glove. Lottie’s heart forgot its manners.

“Cecil,” she whispered.

He opened his eyes. There was longing in them now, and grief, and the first edge of hope. He took one half-step closer. Close enough she had to tilt her face to keep looking at him.

Not hidden behind the meeting hall.

Not in the shadows by the lake.

Here.

In the churchyard.