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“Then we shall consider matters when the time comes.”

“You will consider them there. I shall be here,” she said.

His jaw tightened, and a muscle ticked beneath the skin. “I am trying to make a future possible for us.”

“I know.” She nodded.

“Then why are you speaking as though I wish to leave you?” he asked.

“Because you have decided to do so,” she said softly.

He turned away for a moment, passing a hand through his hair, and a lock fell across his brow. When he faced her again, some of his excitement had become impatience, and his eyes were dark and troubled. “What would you have me do? Remain here, living upon my brother’s generosity, hoping something more convenient will present itself?”

“I would have liked you to speak to me before you accepted.” How could he not understand that?

“Would that have changed what I should do?” he asked.

Charlotte stared at him, and the lilacs seemed suddenly cloying, the sun too bright. She could not answer at once. Her throat tightened, and she was determined not to cry while he stood there, waiting for her to come to her senses, so she bit the inside of her cheek and breathed through her nose. “It might have changed what we decided,” she said at last.

Alexander exhaled, a long, frustrated breath. “I thought you would be happy.”

“I was, when you said you had good news.” His expression changed, a flicker of dismay, but she stopped. The words were pouring out of her, hot and unplanned. “I thought you had come to ask me to marry you.”

“I have told you I intend to,” he said.

She tilted her head. “When you have done everything else without asking my opinion?”

“That is unfair,” he said, his voice rising.

“Is it?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “Everything I am doing is so that I may marry you.”

She looked down, pressing her fingers together until the knuckles whitened. Part of her wanted to give him the promise. It would be so easy to let him hold her, to accept his certainty until it quieted her own doubts. She could write letters, count months, and tell herself that missing him was simply what love required, and be brave and good. But she was already afraid of how little her wishes had mattered in the making of it, and the fear sat in her like a stone.

Alexander stepped closer, his shadow falling across her skirts. “Two years, Charlotte. That is all I ask.”

She lifted her face, her eyes bright with unshed tears. “I cannot promise you that.”

He stopped. For several moments, neither spoke. The gardener’s shears clipped steadily beyond the wall, an ordinary, cheerful sound that seemed to belong to another world. “You cannot,” he repeated.

She shook her head, and the lilac blossoms swam at the edge of her vision. “No.”

“Because you do not wish to wait?” he asked. His voice grew tight, and a muscle twitched in his jaw.

“Because I do not know what two years will bring,” Charlotte said, as gently as she could. Her hands had begun to shake, and she pressed them flat against her skirt.

“Neither do I.”

“Yet you are asking me to promise as though we do,” she said, and the quiet in her own voice surprised her.

He looked at her with a hurt she hadn’t meant to give him. It crossed his face slowly, the light draining from his eyes, and for a moment he looked so young. So bewildered that she nearly took it all back. The words crowded her tongue. Yes, I will wait, I will write every week… She held them behind her teeth, her nails biting into her palms.

“I thought you cared for me,” he said quietly.

Charlotte’s eyes stung, and she blinked rapidly, refusing to let the tears fall. “I do,” she said, and her voice broke on the second word.

“Then I do not understand,” he said, and the plain, helpless bafflement in it hurt more than any reproach. She swallowed, struggling to keep her voice steady, and pressed her palm flat against her chest as though she could hold her heart still.