Page 64 of Bluebell’s Fate

“I am not accustomed to people taking me seriously enough to show me what is really going on. Your honesty is a gift, Nathaniel. I assure you, I won’t take it for granted.” Her blue eyes met his with such an intensity, he was left breathless. “My parents had an arranged marriage, and they get along tolerably well, but they also have differences that wedge them apart. I don’t want that to happen to us.” Her chin quivered, even as she raised her head confidently.

Nathaniel’s heart stuttered. “I won’t let that happen to us, Bell.”

“How did your parents find each other?”

There was an unspoken concern in that question. Nathaniel’s parents had never really been loving toward each other. They worked together, and they had similar goals and outlooks about the world, but the love that he knew Bell wished for simply didn’t exist between them. “Theirs was also an arranged marriage. I think their fathers were old school chums, and the families would spend holidays at each other’s homes. So, they’d known each other for their entire lives when they were married.”

Bell bit her bottom lip.

Nathaniel tried not to think of her biting his own lip. Luckily, her expression made it easier for him to push those thoughts aside. He could read the concern on her face. If his parents had an entire lifetime to come to love each other and failed, what did that say for himself and Bell? Wasn’t that the precise recipe they had planned for him and Miss Stone? Was she worried that their marriage didn’t stand a chance?

“Do you think Ian fancies Miss Stone?” Bell asked.

Nathaniel stood abruptly. “I don’t know. Hopefully Miss Stone has more sense than to give Ian a second thought.”

Bell was taking such an interest in Ian’s situation, he was beginning to question her reasons for it. Had Ian been able to weave his manipulation over Bell in some way? Did she believe that he felt anything for her? Or was it Miss Stone she was worried for? He didn’t want to talk about Ian anymore. He didn’t want Bell to think about Ian anymore. The best way to accomplish that was to make sure his cousin left the estate.

“You are free to look over anything in this office, Bell.” He bowed and left the room. He knew it was a terrible ending for their conversation, he even knew that he was making decisions based on emotion, but Bell was probing into matters that were more than frustrating. He took the stairs two at a time and rapped his knuckles on the door to the blue room. The room Bell imagined would make a good nursery one day. If only she could stop thinking about Ian for a moment to understand the repercussions of the idea of a nursery.

The door swung open, and his grandmother raised her eyebrows at him. “Now, that is a look that makes me worried. What is on your mind?”

“Would you like to go for a walk?”

Her sparking eyes narrowed on him. “Yes. I think I would.” She turned back into the room and put a bookmark in the book she’d been reading before coming to join him in the corridor. “How is Bell today?”

He gave an indiscernible grunt.

“Ah, that well after her father and brother left? Give her some time to regain her footing.”

If only that was the problem. As they meandered out the back of the house and toward the copse of trees, Nathaniel berated himself inwardly for what he was about to do. “Grandmother, when do you need to be back in London?”

“No one needs me in London, Nathaniel. How long do you think you need me here?”

He sighed. “It’s not that. I’d love for you to stay indefinitely, as would Bell.”

She laughed. “Well, that settles it. I can be gone as soon as I can get packed up.”

“What?”

“You heard me. If I am here to serve as a buffer between the two of you, the best thing I could possibly do is leave. You need your own time and space to work things out. Besides, although I’m not strictly needed in London, I do have some friends I’d like to check in on.”

Nathaniel didn’t want to argue with her. Bell would likely be devastated that her godmother was leaving, but her departure was second to someone else’s. “I admit I was going to ask you to leave, but not for the reasons you believe. I…I would like Ian to leave.”

“Ah. Of course you would.” She sounded a little sad. “It is for the best, of course. It may have been a mistake for me to bring him along for this particular trip. He’s been spending far too much time with your father while here.”

Overall, Nathaniel had enjoyed the fact that Ian was accommodated at Cairnsby Hall instead of here at the cottage. Neither his father nor Ian had spent an alarming amount of time with him, keeping to themselves at the big house. “My father always did like Ian better than me.” Nathaniel tried to laugh the connection off.

“That is precisely the problem.”

Nathaniel wished he didn’t feel the sting of his grandmother’s blunt assessment, but he did. Until now, he’d been able to trick himself into thinking that perhaps it was just him who thought his father favored Ian, but his grandmother was someone he trusted implicitly. “Why?” he managed to tear the heavy word from his throat.

She sighed, long and heavy, like a farmer pulling a hoe through deep, wet soil. “I have my suspicions, but even if I were correct, it wouldn’t change anything.”

“It might change something for me. I need to know, Grandmother,” he pleaded.

Grandmother stopped walking and reached up to take his face in her wrinkled hands. Her gray eyes pierced his own. “No, you don’t. There is no healing in knowing someone else’s sins.”

“I’ll try to take your word for it.” Nathaniel didn’t know if she was referring to Ian or his father, perhaps both. It was a much higher probability that she was talking about Ian when she spoke of sins, however. Nathaniel was shocked that he wasn’t buried by all the terrible things his cousin had done over the years. But when Ian was here, at Cairnsby Hall, he was different. Or at least he put on a show of being different. He was just like Edwin, manipulating those around him for his own gain or for sport. The more Nathaniel thought about it, the more likely it seemed to him that his grandmother was correct. He didn’t want to know the latest bit of gossip about his cousin.