Page 100 of Charades and Chivalry
“True, but according to Louisa, Clara looks at Finlay the way I look at you. I watched her for a while on our wedding day, and it’s true. She appears to be besotted. She hardly took her eyes off him.”
Julian frowned. “Is it reciprocated?”
“It doesn’t seem to be,” Annie replied. “We don’t think Finlay is even aware of it.”
“Does Evie know?” Julian huffed. “Never mind, don’t answer that. Of course she knows.”
“Does it bother you?”
Julian pondered a moment. “No,” he said at last. “It doesn’t bother me at all.The heart has its reasons which reason knows not.”
Annie parted with a soft gasp. “Julian! What a lovely thing to say.”
“Can’t take the credit,” he replied. “A French fellow by the nameof Pascal wrote it, apparently.”
“Well, I’m very impressed.”
“Actually, it was Josiah who said it to me the day I met you,” he said. “I told him all about you, Annie. How I felt about you. How it shouldn’t be possible to feel what I felt when I’d only known you for half an hour. It didn’t make sense. And yet, somehow, it did.”
Annie touched his face. “I felt the same, Julian,” she said. “When you walked away from me that day, I felt as though I’d made a terrible mistake, but there was no way to fix it. And yet, despite everything, here we are.”
“Yes, here we are,” Julian replied, drawing her closer. “As it should be.”
End of Book Two
