Isla was dressed and eager for breakfast, so they came down together hand in hand. Most of the other guests were finishing their meals, and Sabrina had a chance to say her goodbyes to her hosts and the rest of her new friends. She helped Isla with her breakfast, and Rafe found them in the entryway after they had finished.
“Well, we are packed and ready to depart, if you are prepared to leave,” he informed her.
She hesitated, wanting desperately to see Peregrine one last time, even knowing it was a terrible idea.
“Sabrina!” Peregrine appeared at the top of the stairs as if her thoughts had summoned him.
Rafe shot him a glare before turning to Sabrina. “Isla and I shall be outside.” He picked Isla up and teased her until she was giggling as they left the house.
Peregrine rushed down the stairs and clasped her hands in his. She should have stepped back for propriety’s sake, but they were alone, save for a single footman who was politely looking away.
“Please, let me speak to you.” He led her into the library, where they would have some privacy to speak. Once they were alone, he grasped her hands in his again.
“Sabrina, would you . . .” He held his breath. “Would you stay with me at Ashbridge?”
Her heart leapt, and she was suddenly dizzy. “Stay?”
“Yes. I could easily make a place for you. You and Celeste would be cared for the rest of your days. I would shower you with jewels, gowns, anything your heart desires.”
Her heart leapt with such joy that it startled her, and for a moment she couldn’t breathe. All she could do was embrace the feeling of excitement for what he’d just asked her.
“Yes, I will marry you,” she answered quickly, too afraid he would change his mind. Perhaps that other woman he was supposed to marry had changed her mind? Or Peregrine had changed his and had broken off their engagement?
Confusion lit his eyes, and in that instant after she’d spoken, she realized she had made a mistake. He wasn’t offering marriage.
“Oh . . . Sabrina, I . . .” He cleared his throat. “I can’t marry you.”
I can’t marry you. There were no greater words of pain and sorrow for a woman to hear from a man she loved. Yes, she loved him, and that fresh realization was only more agonizing knowing that he did not love her in return. He was still going to marry that other woman, the one Perdita and Alexandra had spoken of a few days ago. The enormity of what she had so briefly believed she was to have as her future and then to lose it—it all settled over her shoulders like a mighty stone, pressing down until she felt she couldn’t stand a moment longer.
“Sabrina,” he whispered and reached for her.
She pulled away before he could touch her. “No, please. Do not speak. We both said things last evening, and we should have left it at that. It was my mistake to think that I would be a worthy countess.” She hadn’t thought until just a moment ago that she might have such a life. Now it had been proven how silly that fleeting hope had been, to be loved and cared for by this man and to love and care for him in return.
“Mr. Lennox is waiting for me. I must go.” She started for the door, but he moved quickly, catching her arm, but he didn’t hold fast. Her arm slid through his grip until all she had left of him was the brief touch of their fingers before they separated. She fled the library and rushed out to the waiting coach, climbing inside and sitting opposite Rafe. She felt the tears well up, and she wiped frantically to clear them from her cheeks.
“I warned him to stay away from you,” Rafe said quietly and shot a gaze at Isla who was staring out the window, seemingly uninterested in their conversation. “I told him not to seduce you.”
“He didn’t,” she whispered.
Rafe’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t want her to defend Peregrine.
“He didn’t. Truly. Please do not be angry with him.”
“Not be angry? He’s clearly hurt you. Of course I’m angry! Men should not go about hurting women, whether by action or by word.”
She tried to smile. “You act so gruff at times, yet you are the sweetest man I’ve ever known, Rafe Lennox.”
At this, Rafe chuckled darkly. “Sweet? I’m anything but. However, that is a discussion for another day. Now tell me what he’s done to you.”
“He hasn’t done anything,” she insisted.
“Sabrina, I hired you for Isla because I sensed you were honest and trustworthy. Please do not disappoint me.”
Sabrina blinked away a fresh set of tears. “I fear you will dismiss me from your service.” Isla scooted away from Rafe and crossed the coach to sit next to Sabrina. She hugged herself against Sabrina, trying to comfort her.
“Please don’t cry, Brina,” Isla said in a woeful little voice. Brina was the child’s nickname for her, and somehow it only made the tears come harder. She put an arm around Isla’s shoulders and hugged her back.
Rafe’s harsh gaze softened as he watched them. “I highly doubt there’s anything you could do that would make me terminate your employment, but I swear on my honor—what little my brother believes I have—that I will not terminate your position as Isla’s governess.”
That trust she’d felt from the first moment she’d met Rafe hadn’t vanished. She knew he would not judge her.
“Shortly before I met you at that inn, I fled my home. My brother ran out of money, and he and his wife schemed to sell me to a man in marriage to have all of his debts erased. But that man was no gentleman. He demanded that I be inspected, to have my virtue proven to be intact before he would marry me, and he made it clear that my sole purpose in life would be to provide him with an heir. He cared not a whit for my feelings. Naturally, I had to dream up a way to avoid this fate.”
A frown furrowed his brow. “Naturally,” Rafe agreed.
“That night, I overheard my sister-in-law complain that she could not go to Lady Germain’s ball.” She looked down at her hands folded in her lap. “It was a masquerade, and so I put on my mother’s court dress and an old mask. I walked to the manor house and danced with the most wonderful man before I slipped out into the gardens with him and . . . well . . .” She didn’t continue. Isla was watching her and Rafe intently, trying to figure out what came next.
Rafe’s eyes widened with sudden understanding.
“No . . . it can’t be. He was the man you chose?”
She nodded. “I did not know it at the time, of course. He danced so wonderfully, and I felt so at ease with him. When we walked into the gardens, I felt at peace in a way I never had before. We were together that night beneath the stars, and he was everything I never knew I could wish for, but we never removed our masks or shared our names.”
There was a moment of silence in the coach, and Sabrina focused on the pounding beat of the wheels hitting ruts in the road. Rafe considered what she’d said, staring out the window, tapping his upper lip. He turned to look at her again.
“But how did you know it was him here?”
“When he rescued Celeste from the mud, I thought he was a land steward. I felt that same ease with him as I had with the masked man.”
“But surely that was just your mind seeing what it wished to see.”
“True, but I could not shake the feeling. I didn’t realize he was the man in the mask until . . .”