She Fled Her Wedding — Then Found the Duke Escaping on the Same Train
Chapter 8
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It was not forgiveness for everything. It was enough for her to lean down and kiss his cheek.Three days later, Annora traveled to Lynmouth in an ordinary brown dress.Rowena met her on the platform with a fierce embrace and an immediate complaint about the wind. Her husband, Lucius, had returned to London on business, leaving rooms that looked directly over the sea and a sitting room in which nobody had arranged white flowers.For the first week, Annora slept late, ate more than she expected, and discovered that freedom could be very quiet. Nobody proposed to her. Nobody discussed her future. A boy selling postcards called her "madam" and did not know whom she had failed to marry.On the ninth morning, she reached for a second cup at breakfast before remembering there was nobody for whom she needed to pour it. She sat with her hand suspended over the table. She had not wanted that wedding; it was becoming inconveniently clear that she wanted to know what had happened to the man.She wrote him a note that afternoon. It began with an inquiry after his mother, continued with a description of the sea, and ended with a sentence she crossed out so heavily that the paper nearly tore.Rowena found her making a fresh copy. "What did the first one say?""Nothing. An unusually violent nothing." Annora laid down the pen. "I should like to see him.""Then say that.""He may think I'm trying to get him back.""Are you?""I never had him."Rowena sat on the edge of the desk, dislodging three postcards. "Write the note you wish to write. You need not submit it to a committee of imaginary aunts."So Annora did. She told Piers that she hoped he was well, that she had discovered a bakery which ought to be protected from all sensible advice about moderation, and that if he still wished to visit his house in Lynmouth, she would be pleased to have tea with him.After she posted it, she spent two days wishing she could recover it from the bottom of the sea.His reply arrived on the third morning. He was well. His mother was alternately cross with him and anxious that he was not eating enough, which he thought a hopeful sign. He would come to Lynmouth the following Thursday. He had once lived there for a summer as a boy and remembered the bakery, though he was sorry to learn that its influence had spread. Then, beneath the formal conclusion, he had added a line:I should like to see you, too.Annora read it three times. Rowena, watching from the other side of the breakfast table, said nothing at all.