by Noelle Adams
“No, you’re not,” he said, helping her pull down her skirt in the back.
“I can’t go to the reception like this.” Her dress wasn’t wrinkled as badly as she’d feared. It must be some sort of miracle fabric. But she felt, and no doubt looked and smelled, like she’d been fucked hard in the grass. “Do I have grass stains on my butt?”
“No. Just on your back here.” He wiped at her dress just between her shoulder-blades, as if that could remove grass stains.
“I can cover that with my sweater.” She put on the little cardigan she’d dropped earlier. “But I’ll need to do some work on everything else. My hair must be a wreck.”
“It’s not.” He was looking at her now, her messy hair, her hot face, her mussed dress, like she was beautiful, like he loved the sight of it.
Sarah almost melted.
To distract herself from the feelings, she looked around on the grass. “I need my ring. I dropped it earlier. It must be around here somewhere.”
He helped her look and found it a minute later. He lifted her left hand and slid it on her ring finger.
He’d been focused on her hand as he put on the ring, but now he lifted his eyes to her face.
Her breath hitched at the look in his eyes, and her hand in his started to tremble.
It felt real. Like he meant it. And it looked again like he would say something.
He did. “We better get going.”
***
They returned to the estate and Sarah ran upstairs to her room to rescue her appearance. She cleaned herself up and redid her hair and makeup. She was tempted to change her dress, but she knew people would notice that. Plus, she didn’t really have anything else to wear appropriate for this particular wedding reception.
So she smoothed out the wrinkles as best she could, made sure the grass stain was covered by her cardigan, and decided she didn’t look too debauched.
She went down to the ballroom to find Jonathan.
It hadn’t even been an hour—despite how much seemed to have happened since they’d gotten back from the ceremony—and guests were still mingling over cocktails before the dinner started.
She couldn’t find Jonathan. She eventually asked Gordon, who said he’d just seen him go into an anteroom off the ballroom.
Sarah went to the room Gordon indicated and found Jonathan and Ben in conversation.
Conversation might have been stretching it, since they were just staring at each other stoically when she walked in.
“You guys aren’t fighting, are you?” She walked over to stand next to Jonathan, looking between the two men in concern.
“He thinks I’m an asshole,” Ben said, half-smiling at her through his beard.
“Well, you are.” She returned Ben’s half-smile so he would know there wasn’t any teeth in her remark, but then cut her eyes back to Jonathan. “But I do think it can go unsaid.”
Jonathan narrowed his eyes but didn’t say anything. He still was really angry at Ben, she could see, despite the great sex he’d just had.
“Did you all work things out?” Ben asked, evidently noticing their exchanged look. “I hate to see a fake engagement fall apart.”
“And that’s another thing,” Jonathan said. “If Sarah didn’t tell you, how the hell did you know we aren’t really engaged?”
“Excuse me.” The words were clipped and cold, and the new voice sliced through their conversation like a razor. “You aren’t engaged?”
Sarah gasped, and they all turned to see Cyrus Damon, standing in the doorway of the anteroom.
Jonathan froze, and Sarah’s heart started to race. Ben’s features twisted briefly, maybe with annoyance, maybe with concern.
“I was just playing around,” Ben said, in an admirably convincing attempt to keep their whole ruse from collapsing. “Teasing Sarah.”
It didn’t work, of course. This was Cyrus Damon, and he’d never in his life been manipulated. “I heard the entire conversation.” His eyes bored into Jonathan’s. “Your engagement is fake?”
Jonathan opened his mouth to respond, but his uncle wouldn’t let him. He pressed on, so frigidly it made Sarah shiver. “I think I understand. You were so concerned with the funding of your little lab that you were willing to deceive your family and take advantage of this young woman? Very nicely done.”
“Sir,” Sarah put in, her whole body shaking now in anxiety and her instinctive dislike of conflict. “He didn’t take advantage of me. And we really didn’t—”
“I appreciate your loyalty to him,” Cyrus said. “But he is your employer and thus he has power over you. This is his responsibility, and one he has evidently failed at utterly.”
Sarah made a choked sound at how much these words would hurt Jonathan.
Jonathan didn’t react though. He just stood perfectly still, staring at his uncle.
“And, evidently, he is also willing to betray his family.”
“No,” Sarah objected, too upset to know the most strategic response in this situation. “It wasn’t like that. We really didn’t mean—”
“I don’t blame you, my dear,” Cyrus said, as perfectly civil and courteous as he ever was. His chocolate brown eyes—just like Harrison’s—iced up when he flicked them back to Jonathan. “My nephew is the one to blame.”
Sarah was almost in tears—at the transformation of a kind, old-fashioned man into a stone-cold tyrant and at the retreat she saw in Jonathan’s face, liked he’d buried himself deeply inside himself.
He’d only just started to come out.
But she hadn’t forgotten about Ben, whose face had grown angrier as his uncle continued the verbal assault.
He met her eyes and, for a moment, she saw a sympathy so deep it made her ache.
But then he looked back at his uncle, and his expression tightened into angry impatience. He opened his mouth to say something.
Cyrus cut him off. “We will not have this conversation now. We will not ruin this occasion with such immaturity and selfishness. We can speak tomorrow.”
Jonathan still didn’t say anything.
Ben made a slight gesture with his hands—almost one of surrender—and he turned on his heel to walk out of the anteroom.
Sarah was quite sure that Ben would also walk out of the ballroom, out of the house, out of his family’s estate.
And he wouldn’t come back.
***
Jonathan stared down at his half-filled suitcase, dazed and unable to move.
He wasn’t sure how or why everything had fallen apart so quickly, but he was having trouble keeping up with it.
He’d been wrong to lie to his family. He knew that, although it had initially seemed like a reasonable plan.
But he’d just started to feel at home with them, feel like they were people who might like him, even when he hadn’t accomplished enough. He’d actually been thinking, on his way back to the house from the garden with Sarah, that he should probably tell them the truth and accept the consequences to his lab.
It was a moot point now. He’d been a fool. His uncle was never going to love him. He would never do anything good enough for that.
Sarah was downstairs with the others, giving Harrison and Marietta their sendoff of flung birdseed and happy cheers. He could hear them, but he couldn’t join them.
When Harrison discovered the truth, he would react exactly like their uncle.
Jonathan had managed to go back and get the rest of his shirts from the closet and was starting to fold them haphazardly in the suitcase when Sarah entered the room.
She stared at him for a minute, obviously processing what he was doing. “You’re not even going to talk to them?” she asked at last.
He shook his head in a slight gesture, since it seemed rude not to respond at all, and kept folding his shirts.
“Jonathan,” Sarah said softly. She came over to sit on the edge of the bed, idly pulling out the pins and shaking her hair loose. “He was angry and surprised. But, if you talk, you can p
robably work things out. Just explain what really happened.”
“He knows what really happened,” Jonathan managed to say, even though his throat hurt as if from disuse. “He’s not going to change his mind.” When she looked like she was going to argue, he continued, “I know him better than you do.”
“But what about the others? Harrison and Andrew and Marietta and Laurel? They’ve been nothing but nice to us, and to leave without a word to them…”
“You’re welcome to talk to them,” he said, not looking at her because her big anxious eyes and wobbling mouth bothered him so much.
She didn’t respond immediately. Just sat and looked at him as he folded shirts. Then finally, “I thought you were starting to like them.”
He had been starting to like them. “I’m going to leave tonight.”
“I don’t really think you have to. He hasn’t asked you to leave and, I think if you talk and explain everything to him, he might understand.”
“You don’t know him like I do.”
She paused again, as if she were thinking deeply or else working up the nerve to say what she wanted to say. “I don’t think you know him as well as you think.”
He was angry then—not as much at her as at the fact that she believed her words were true. “Less than a year ago, he didn’t talk to Harrison for two months because he disapproved of his relationship with Marietta. You think he’ll be more accepting of the fact that I lied to him and tried to trick him into funding the lab?”
“Maybe not,” she admitted, ducking her head and hiding her face behind the curtain of her hair. “But I don’t think I was totally wrong about him. When I talked to him, he really wanted to get closer to you. I wasn’t wrong about that. He loves you, you know.”
Jonathan shook her head, staring down at his folded clothes in the suitcase. “I understand why you want to believe that. Your family loves you, and so you can’t imagine a world in which they didn’t. My family just isn’t like that.”
He cleared his throat. “I’m leaving tonight, but you don’t have to come with me. You’re welcome to stay. No one is angry at you.”
Sarah made a choked sound. “Of course I’m coming with you. What do you think— Surely you know I’m on your side in this.”
He let out a short breath and closed his suitcase.
Sarah stood up and grabbed his arm. “You know that, right?”
He managed to grit out, “Thanks.” It felt like there was a clamp around his chest, like it was suffocating him. He just wanted to breathe normally but couldn’t seem to do so. “We can stay in London tonight and fly out tomorrow, if that’s okay.”
She nodded. “I can get packed quickly. I might say goodbye to everyone, if that’s okay with you. They were nice to me. I…I liked them.”
Her voice broke on the penultimate word, and Jonathan shot her an instinctive look of concern. Her face twisted briefly, but she smiled at him. “If you want to leave sooner, you could throw my stuff in the bags, and I’ll run down now and say goodbye.”
He told her this was fine and went to the closet to get her largest suitcase. He tried to pack her stuff as neatly as he could, but it all looked so pretty and delicate he wasn’t sure he did a good job. It felt strange—intimate—to pack her underwear and stockings. A few minutes later, a footman arrived to help him haul the bags to the car.
They’d loaded the car when he came back into the hallway. He heard familiar voices in the parlor, so he automatically paused to listen.
“Why did he give me a note?” Sarah said. He couldn’t see her but he could hear her voice clearly.
She must be talking to Gordon because the butler replied, “I’m afraid I can’t answer that, miss.”
“Does Mr. Damon know we’re leaving?”
“Yes, miss.”
“And he’s really not going to come out to talk to Jonathan?” Sarah’s voice held a surprised hurt that made Jonathan’s chest ache even more.
He’d known what to expect. And she hadn’t.
“I’m afraid I can’t say, miss,” Gordon replied, as perfectly discreet as ever. “Perhaps you might read the note for more explanation.”
There was a pause, during which Sarah must have read the note. Jonathan knew he shouldn’t be eavesdropping, but he felt awkward about showing himself, since they were talking about him.
“He says he greatly enjoyed meeting me and I’m welcome at the manor anytime. He is sorry it ended the way it did. He doesn’t say anything about Jonathan. Should I go try to talk to him, do you think?”
“I wouldn’t advise that, miss. He isn’t entertaining company this evening.”
“I don’t understand. Jonathan is his nephew. If they would just talk, I’m sure they could work it out. I thought he—” She stumbled over her words, sounding like she was swallowing over tears. “He’s intimidating, but I really did like him.”
There was silence from the parlor for several long seconds. Then Gordon finally said, “My family had a dog when I was a boy.”
“Oh.” Sarah sounded confused, off-stride. She wouldn’t know Gordon’s absolute loyalty to Cyrus Damon. He would never dream of saying a word against his employer or speaking inappropriately on private family matters. “Did you?”
“He was an ornery creature and barked relentlessly at anyone who came close to the house.”
“One of our dogs was like that.” Sarah still sounded like she wasn’t sure of the point of this conversation, but she would never be rude or show disinterest in someone else.
“I was very young, and I was terrified of that dog. The barking was so loud, and he would snarl and show his teeth. I was sure he would attack and hurt me.”
“Did he ever bite you?”
“No. My mother kept telling me that he only barked that way because he was trying to protect the family, and he didn’t really know how to behave around people. She said I needed to trust the dog, get close enough so I could pet him—and then he’d be my best friend.”
“And did you?” Sarah sounded breathless now, as if she’d figured out the point of Gordon’s story at the same time that Jonathan did as he listened.
“Yes. That dog was my best friend for eleven years.”
Jonathan walked away, back outside where the car was waiting. And Sarah came out a few minutes later with Andrew.
Andrew wasn’t smiling—which was so uncharacteristic of the man that it caused a stab of guilt to slice through him. He and Andrew had never been close, but he still felt like an ass for lying to him.
“Sarah explained what happened,” Andrew said as they approached. “We understand. I called Harrison too. It’s his wedding night, so he’s a little distracted, but he’s not angry either.” He glanced back at the looming, dignified Georgian mansion behind them. “Lord Uncle will get over it. He always does.” He extended a hand to Jonathan. “Keep in touch. I mean it. You and Sarah should come visit me and Laurel at the inn. Santorini would be like heaven after Iceland.”
Jonathan shook the hand Andrew offered. “Thanks.” He wasn’t sure what else to say, since so much had been packed into his cousin’s words. But he was glad Harrison and Andrew at least weren’t resentful of the lies they’d told.
Sarah didn’t look surprised or flustered at Andrew’s assumption that they’d be vacationing together, even though he knew they weren’t really engaged. She kissed Andrew on the cheek, and then she and Jonathan got in the back of the chauffeured car.
They drove in mostly silence to London. It was late, and Sarah was tired. She leaned against him in the backseat and seemed to doze off after a half-hour or so.
They checked into a hotel and, because Jonathan wasn’t thinking, he just got a room with a king-sized bed. Sarah didn’t seem surprised though. She just put down her bag and pulled her phone out of her purse. Glancing at her watch, she said, “I might call my parents, if that’s all right.”
He wasn’t sure why she was checking with him. She could do anything she wanted. “Of course.”
She went out to the balcony to make her phone call in privacy, and Jonathan took a shower and got into bed, since he felt absolutely battered.
Sarah came back in after about a half-hour. Jonathan had never talked to a member of his family on the phone for that long in his life. He wondered what she’d told them—about him, about all of this. He didn’t ask her, of course.
“I’m going to take a shower too,” she said. “I feel kind of ick.”
Jonathan could hardly believe they’d made love in the garden. Only a few hours ago. He left the light on beside Sarah’s side of the bed but turned off the rest of them in the room. He lay in the dim room until she came out, wearing a little shorts and tank pajama set.
She turned off the light and crawled into bed beside him. He was on his side, facing away from her, but he could feel her eyes on him in the dark.
“Are you okay?” she asked at last.
He grunted, which was all the answer he could articulate.
She rolled over closer to him. He could feel the bed shift. “Did you want to talk about it?”
He did want to talk about it, but he couldn’t. That would mean he’d have to say out loud that he’d failed, that he hadn’t lived up, that nothing he’d ever done had been good enough.
“It’s too hard a world,” she said, very softly.
He didn’t know what she was talking about, and he wanted to know. So he managed to grunt, “What?”
“It’s too hard a world to live in. The one where you always have to earn your place.”
He took a couple of shaky breaths. He suspected Sarah was still staring at his back, and this suspicion was confirmed when he felt her scoot even closer to him. Then her arms wrapped around him and she was spooning him from behind.
“I don’t want to live in that world,” she murmured, just behind his shoulder.
He had to say something then. To tell her. To make sure she knew. To say the truth out loud. “Neither do I.”
He heard her release a thick breath. “Then we won’t.”
She didn’t say anything else, but he could feel care and sympathy he could feel in her arms, in her hands, in her soft little body behind his.
He didn’t sleep, and neither did she. Her hands would sometimes stroke his chest, his belly. After a long time, he found he could breathe naturally again. He took long inhales and exhales, and his body started to relax.