Saving Grace (42 page)

Samuel searched her face. “Promise me that you will come if you need anything — anything at all.”

“I’ve Helen and Christopher here now, and Miranda and Harrison.”

“Promise me,” Samuel said.

“I promise.” Grace looked down at the gravel covered with a light dusting of snow. “What will you be doing tomorrow?”

Samuel smiled. “Having the grandest time.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “I’ve built Beth a dollhouse.”

Grace imagined the little girl with Samuel and felt grateful that he would not be alone.

His carriage came into sight, and she felt both relief and regret. She did not know when she might see him again, but she did not want Nicholas to discover them out here together.

“I also have a Christmas present for you,” Samuel said. “Will you come to the garden tomorrow so I can give it to you?”

“Oh, Samuel,” Grace said, feeling terrible that he had gone to any trouble for her and that she had nothing to give him in return.

His carriage came to a stop in front of the house.

“Please,” he said. “I will not ask you to come again after that.”

The footman jumped down and opened the door. Samuel made no move to go.

Grace looked away, not wanting to give her word and feeling awful for it. “I will come,” she said at last.

His answering smile nearly broke her heart. “Until then.” He moved to the carriage and bounded up the step.

Grace turned away, not waiting to see if he would wave goodbye, not wanting to do so herself.

What have I done?
Every second she had stood out there felt disloyal to Nicholas. Yet rebuffing Samuel had felt wrong too.

He is at least partially responsible for my being here,
she reminded herself. But somehow the thought did not make her feel much better.

She walked up the steps, past Kingsley’s disapproving look, through the foyer, and down the hall. She paused before returning to the ballroom and stood still, just beneath the kissing ball.

She was not prone to superstition, involving kissing or otherwise, but just then, she wished she were. If allowing Nicholas to kiss her beneath the ball tonight would seal her fate as his wife, she would gladly welcome it. She thought she’d wanted to be free; she’d never thought to have to make this choice. Now that it was before her, she wished someone would decide for her. That someone were here to tell her what to do — which man to choose, if she should marry at all, or whether to take her original path: the quiet country cottage with Helen and Christopher.

Before, her life choices had always been apparent. Now they seemed anything but, and she felt desperate for clarity. The only thing certain was that she could not continue the way she had been. She could not be friends with Samuel, and she could not live under the same roof as Nicholas.

Unless …

He appeared in the doorway the very second she glanced up at the kissing ball again. But the look on his face was not the one of tender affection she had witnessed earlier. His eyes neither had the desire she’d read in them, nor the humor he’d used when teasing her. He was angry — truly angry, as she had not seen him since her first days at Sutherland Hall.

“Where is Preston?” he demanded.

“He has gone home,” Grace said. “So you may stop glowering.” She attempted to make her tone light, hoping to tease him out of his mood.

He stared at her, his expression unreadable. “Your sister has gone up to bed. She was not feeling well. You should see to her.” He turned his back and entered the ballroom, immediately becoming lost in the crowd.

Bereft, Grace stood beneath the kissing ball alone, remembering the day they had hung it and how she had told Nicholas she would not kiss him again.

I did not mean it.

“You came.” Samuel sat on the fence, his thick coat around him, hair wet with falling snow.

“Did you doubt it?” Grace asked as she picked her way over the slippery path to the fence.

“Truthfully, yes. Last night I could tell that you did not wish to.”

She had doubted too, both her ability to break away from the busy house and festivities and her capacity to continue feeling torn between two men any longer.

Today must be the last time.

“It is not that I did not want to see you. It is just that —”

“You feel disloyal to Nicholas,” Samuel finished.

Grace nodded. “You know me well.”

“We have become good friends,” Samuel said. “I have enjoyed our time together immensely.”

“As have I,” Grace said. “When I felt the most hopeless, you were here to lift my spirits. When I was lonely, you were my comfort and friend.” She reached the bench but did not attempt to stand on it. She didn’t fear slipping on its icy surface but feared drawing any closer to Samuel.

“You make me sound rather like a close relative, like — a brother,” Samuel said. “But that is not the place in your heart I hoped to achieve.”

“What
did
you hope?” Grace asked. “What did you hope to accomplish by allowing Lord Sutherland to take me into his home and forcing him to keep me there after you sent that letter with my father?”

Samuel tapped his lip. “It is good you ask. The first gift I’ve come to give you today is answers to any question you wish to ask.”

Grace smiled encouragingly. “Go on, then. Before both of us freeze.” She stamped her feet to keep them warm.

“I could have kept you at my home the night of my ball,” Samuel said. “I’d certainly planned on your staying. I wanted to hear from you a full explanation of the rumors before making any judgment for or against you. Then Nicholas showed up. I couldn’t have been more astounded.”

“Nor I,” Grace said, recalling the startling moment when he’d joined her at the top of the staircase.

“I thought at first that he was only there to vex me. He had to have known that you’d fled to my house, and I thought he wanted to punish me, to brag, if you will, of his actions.”

“There were no
actions
,” Grace said, blushing over the implication and wondering how she’d managed to attend Samuel’s ball when everyone already believed the worst of her.

“I know nothing happened,” Samuel said. “And I suspected as much while watching Nicholas dance with you. I have seen him at other balls in London, and he does not dance. He does not converse with women. Yet he did both with you. All of that in addition to coming to my house — a place he swore never again to set foot in — to rescue you?”

He came to save me from myself.
Grace tugged her cloak tighter, thinking how different her life might be had Nicholas not come.
How sad it would be.
To think that she might never have known him beyond that first awful encounter in his room …

“When Nicholas argued so strongly to take you home, I let him. You provided an opportunity to rid myself of an enemy. Nicholas had never been in love before, and I imagined that if he was to develop such feelings for you, it might be just the thing to turn his anger from me.”

Grace shook her head. “I am sorry to say that I have not been successful in that regard. He does not love me. And he still — hates you.”

Samuel gave her a wry grin. “I rather noticed the last at his ball.”

Grace sighed. “So that is why I was sold off to Lord Sutherland.”

“You were not sold off at all,” Samuel contested. “I guarantee that Nicholas has realized from the beginning that he could send you back to me. I would have welcomed you wholeheartedly. Indeed, the longer I have known you, the more I have wished for that very thing, that I had not been quite so generous in my gift to Nicholas. After all,” he added softly, “it was I who saw you first.”

Grace turned away from Samuel, not wanting to see the pained expression upon his face. She heard a soft thump and whirled toward the wall again, only to see that he had gone. “Samuel!” she cried. “Are you all right? Did you fall?”

His hand shot up above the fence in a friendly wave. “Just fetching my second gift.”

“Oh.” Grace had hoped they were finished; she didn’t want to ask more questions of him. The what-ifs were too painful to consider. Being with Samuel like this, she knew that being happy with him would not be difficult. She wouldn’t have to suffer brooding and moodiness as she did with Nicholas. She would know that Samuel really cared for her; he’d said as much already, which was far more than Nicholas had ever told her. She could live in Preston’s wonderful house with his little girl. Helen and Christopher would be welcome too. He could give her everything.

I could be so very happy.

A section of the fence beyond the bench began to tremble. Snow and soggy leaves from the ivy beneath broke free and fell in a shower beside the wall. As Grace stepped back, a hole opened before her — rectangular on the sides, domed on top and made of thick, weathered wood, different from the stone of the wall.

She came forward again, touching it, not quite believing what she was seeing. “A door? This whole time?” She looked at Samuel, who stood, for the first time, on her side of the wall.

He shrugged. “I was trying to be proper by keeping a respectable distance. Not to mention that Nicholas would murder me were he to find me here.”

“You should go.” Grace marched toward him, hands outstretched, to push him back where he belonged.

“Not so fast.” He caught her hands and held them. “I have one gift more, remember?”

Grace bit her lip and nodded. She glanced over her shoulder. “Be quick about it — please.”

“‘Be quick,’ she says.” Samuel pouted, as if she had wounded his pride. “When a man is about to do one of the most important things in his life.” Still holding her hands, he knelt in the snow before her.

“Oh, Samuel, no,” Grace begged. “Please don’t.”

“Just listen.” He would not release her.

Grace felt her eyes filling with tears.

Samuel cleared this throat. “Miss Grace Thatcher, it would please me more than anything if you would do me the honor of becoming my wife. I have come to love you, and I promise that I will continue to love you. I will spend the remainder of my life in the pursuit of your happiness.”

“Oh, Samuel. I cannot.” Grace fell to her knees and into his arms, holding him even as she rejected him. “I have never been more sorry in my life.” She sobbed onto his shoulder, and he held her, saying nothing but crying a little himself.

Still shaking, she broke away and stood quickly. She turned her back and brought a hand to her face in an attempt to hold back a second wave of tears.

Behind her, she heard Samuel get to his feet and dust the snow from his trousers. “If it makes you feel any better, I thought you would say that.”

“Then why did you ask it?” Grace whirled to face him. “Why torture me so — and yourself, too?”

“To give you the gift you have most wanted these months, the thing you have told me you most craved and have sought after your whole life.”

Grace frowned. “Thanks to you, what I have most wanted, I have. Helen and Christopher are safe.”

“All right, perhaps it is the second thing you most wanted.” He smiled wistfully.

He will be all right. I have not broken his heart beyond repair.

Samuel stepped away from the doorway and held his hand out toward it. “I offer you a chance to go through, to marry me — or to go elsewhere, to have the freedom you have longed for.”

“I have no funds —”

“As of December twenty-second at three o’clock in the afternoon, you do.” He withdrew a sheaf of papers from his coat. “I asked Christopher to wait until today and to let me tell you the good news.”

“Oh my.” Grace brought a hand to her heart, but it was her head that was spinning.

“You may go wherever you like, whenever you like. I have already spoken with several landlords about properties available for rent. I know of some that are far enough from here that your reputation would not follow you.”

“What of Nicholas’s reputation?” she asked, feeling for all the world lost and completely stricken, as if what she wanted most had just been taken away instead of handed to her.

“It seemed to me last night — during that rather scandalous waltz — that he does not worry overly much about his reputation.”

“You saw?” Grace asked. “I thought you came later.”

“I was very much there,” Samuel grumbled. “Only not standing in such an obvious place that Nicholas could flaunt you in front of me.”

Grace wrapped her arms around herself, the cold long forgotten with the confusion of thoughts tumbling about in her mind.

“Well, what is it to be?” Samuel asked. “You can have anything you wish.”

Grace closed her eyes, not wanting to see him, not wanting to look at the papers in his hand, not wanting to exist. It was too painful. “I don’t know what to do,” she said, feeling as utterly hopeless as she had upon their first meeting at the wall. “I don’t know what I want.”

“I think perhaps you do.” Samuel slid the papers back inside his coat. “And I think it is what you already have, only you are too afraid to claim it — to claim
him
as your own.”

Grace opened her eyes and stared at Samuel.
Is he suggesting —

“Don’t ever be afraid of love, Grace.” Samuel stepped closer. He touched her cheek reverently. “Even if you lose it in the end, even if you pay the ultimate price, it is always worth the risk.”