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‘I love you a great deal as well,’ she said. She nearly said not as a wife, but then, she still did not know exactly what that meant. And yet somehow... She knew she didn’t.
‘I will be there for you
. As a friend.’
‘Thank you,’ she said.
And whatever else might happen, she knew that she had him. And that mattered. But she was left to turn over what he had said about Briggs. About her feelings for him.
And there was no satisfactory answer anywhere inside her.
Chapter Four
It was the eve before his wedding and Briggs found that he could not sleep. Not that a wedding was overly consequential to him.
Particularly not one to Beatrice.
Beatrice...
She was sweet. But what an insipid word it was for her.
An image of her face, her expression fiery, filled his mind. And it was more than just the image of her. It was the feel of her.
When she had thrown herself into his arms as a woman flinging herself off a cliffside. Heedless, determined.
Fearless.
Soft...round in all the places a woman should be.
He tightened his jaw, his hand clenched into a fist.
She was not sweet. Look what she had done in the name of gaining her freedom.
Poor girl.
She had got herself tied to him, and while he saw no purpose in altering the course of his life over her misstep...
Her life would change.
Or perhaps it wouldn’t. Perhaps it would be much the same. But her dreams might be just slightly crushed.
For she had sought a life she would not find with him.
He stood from the chair he was seated in and walked over to the window, looking out over the estate. It was dark, the tops of the trees rustling. And in the shadows, he could see a flash of movement.
Something white fluttering in the wind.
He watched the strange, haunting movement for a moment.
Then, found himself walking out of the bedchamber, and down the stairs. He did his best to minimise the echo of his footsteps on the hard floor. He walked out through the front door, and turned to the right, following the walls of the great estate home, out towards where he had been facing. It was a clear night, and the air had a bite to it. And he did not know why he was compelled to chase ghosts outside his bedchamber window.
Perhaps he preferred them to the company of the ghosts that he found inside it.
He stopped there, at the edge of a grove of trees, and he could still see the fluttering white. Moving forward and backwards. Closer and further away. He took a step forward, then another. And suddenly realised.
‘You could catch your death out here,’ he said.
‘Briggs?’
