Page 6 of The Bride Chase

Speaking with her privately was what he’d wanted, what he’d come for, but Atlas was a bit surprised that Philippa had so readily agreed to allow him to follow her to the seafront tea shop.

Though, as she lowered herself into the chair across the table from him, it was clear that she might be regretting that agreement.

Atlas felt like he had on the pier. As if, at any moment, if he said the wrong thing, she might pitch herself over the edge into the water. Or just dash past him and disappear into the crowd.

She hadn’t been pleased to see him, but he’d never been happier to see anyone in his life. Even rain soaked, with wisps of dark hair clinging to her skin, she’d looked magnificent. Atlas couldn’t identify the day when he’d stopped regarding his best friend’s eldest sister as a little girl and saw her as a woman instead.

Maybe it had been the year of her coming out. Or in the months before the Season, when he’d visited their home and seen the preparations taking place. He’d known that Philippa would make a beautiful debutante. She’d turn heads and receive offers of marriage.

He’d asked her to dance only twice during her first Season, though he’d wanted to ask a dozen other times. But he told himself not to. He told himself that she wasn’t for him, and that he could never be for her. And then the Season had ended, and he’d felt ridiculously relieved that she hadn’t accepted either of the offers of marriage she’d received. The next Season had been even more of a nightmare. She had gained a certain confidence that made her shine like a diamond. He’d been shocked when she hadn’t been named as such by the matrons of London Society.

He’d asked her to dance at three different balls, and he’d relished holding her, talking with her, every time. Then, at a gathering at his own family’s townhouse, on a sultry night in the lantern-lit garden, he’d given in to everything he’d been holding back for so long.

And she’d given him the gift of confirming that she felt the same.

“So what is it you wish to talk about, Lord Stonefield?”

Lord Stonefield. Atlas couldn’t recall the last time she’d called him that. He couldn’t remember if she’d ever called him that. He’d known Douglas since they were ten, when Philippa was but two years old. She had only ever called him Atlas. He had only ever called her Philippa.

Pip had come out unexpectedly one day when she’d approached him after riding a horse across the fields behind her family’s country house like a hellion, and he’d laughed as he’d swiped a bit of mud off her cheek.

“Stonefield?” she prompted. “You’ve found me. What did you come to say?”

What did he want to talk about? He’d thought about it on the train ride down. Considered what he could say that might convince her to come back to London.

But now, sitting across from her, all he wanted to do was apologize. Because all that had happened was his fault, and he’d been a coward afterwards. Unable to face her. Unwilling to grapple with his own feelings.

He knew anything between them would be difficult. No, more than that, his own feelings terrified him. They were beyond what he’d ever felt for any lady. She invaded his thoughts day and night, and it had only been worse after he’d kissed her, touched her. So he’d simply avoided her.

Had the silence between them hurt her as much as it hurt him?

She arched her pretty brows expectantly, waiting for him to speak.

I’m sorry. I don’t regret it, Pip. I think of you all the time.

“Douglas is very concerned about you,” he said.

She scoffed. “Yes, of course he is.”

“Your sisters will miss you too, once he tells them that you’re gone.”

That affected her. She looked away and clasped her fingers around the napkin on the table. “I will miss them too, of course. But when I decide where I will end up, I will write to them.” She lifted her vibrant green eyes to him. “When I know it’s safe to do so.” Her gaze narrowed as she assessed him. “You forced Lizzie to tell you where I was?”

“I didn’t give her much choice.” That would require another apology when he returned to London. He’d leveraged a childhood debt between them, a moment when he’d taken the blame for one of her bits of mischief so that she didn’t have to suffer the consequences. “She would never have betrayed your trust if I hadn’t used a trump card I possessed.”

“That wasn’t very kind of you,” she said archly.

“You of all people know I’m not very kind, Pip.” He held her gaze for a moment, letting himself get lost in those eyes that haunted his dreams. Hoping she might see the regret he felt.

She dipped her head and took a sip of tea, as if she couldn’t bear to look at him.

“You don’t plan to go back at all then?” His stomach clenched at the thought of not ever seeing her again. That prospect was unfathomable.

“No, I do not. And unless you mean to kidnap me and take me bodily, I will not.”

Atlas swallowed hard. He was a true knave because the prospect of snatching her up and taking her away shot a hot spike of desire down his body. If only he could take her away from the arrangement Douglas had made. If only they could both ignore duty and practicalities and consequences.

“I take it you left because of the…arrangement with Kelmscott.” The man’s very name tasted bitter on his tongue.