Passport to Romance by Anthea Lawson

Author:Anthea Lawson [Lawson, Anthea]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781680130829
Publisher: Fiddlehead Press

Chapter 11

Sara gazed into Tarek’s warm eyes, her emotions whirling as though some reckless child had set a top spinning inside her skull. The afternoon had become so peculiar, she felt completely suspended from her everyday life. Part of her was certain the events of the past half-hour were all a dream.

At any moment now, she would wake beneath the oak tree on the lawn of Whitley Manor, where she must have fallen asleep. And dreamed.

Of Tarek.

“Are you truly here?” she asked. The fragrance of lilies filled the air. The wall of the gazebo behind him shimmered with watery reflections.

“I am.” He squeezed her hand. “I ought to have been here all along.”

Suddenly he went down on one knee, and her heart gave a jolt. She equally yearned for and feared what he was going to say next.

“Lady Sara Ashford. Syrine. When I came to England, I never anticipated I would fall in love. But I did. With you. And now I can’t envision returning home without you. Would you consent to marry me?”

She closed her eyes as the top in her head careened about. How very strange that she was, in fact, being proposed to in the gazebo after all.

Just by the wrong man.

For years, she’d worked so hard to maintain Society’s rigid principles. How could she marry Tarek—a man that everyone would whisper about, a man who challenged her notions of propriety over and over, until she scarcely knew how to behave, herself?

She took a deep breath and opened her eyes again. He was staring up at her with a look of hopeless desperation.

“How can I marry you?” she asked. “We scarcely know one another.”

“That didn’t seem to be an issue where Lord Whitley was concerned.” His voice held a bitter edge. “I would venture to say that you and I know far more about each other than you and the viscount ever could, yet you were fully prepared to leap into matrimony with the man.”

“This is different.”

“Because I’m not a pompous English lord more interested in chasing skirts than finding a lasting love? Because I’m too dark-skinned and foreign to be deemed suitable by your precious Society? Because I challenge the adventuress inside you to cast off the shackles of respectability and live your life to the fullest?”

Every question cut into the heart of all her assumptions, and she winced at each one.

“I can’t imagine a life with you, Tarek,” she said.

“And I can’t imagine one without you.” His look softened. “I think you’ve spent years trying to envision a future too perfect to possibly exist, and denying the one you truly want. Is it really so difficult to think of what our life together might hold?”

Hot moisture pricked her eyes.

“Ever since Father died, I’ve tried to be good,” she said. “To be the very best, the most proper girl ever, so that Mama would be proud of me. So that she might return, and never go away again.”

A tear escaped to trickle down her cheek. Tarek sprang up and gently wiped it away with his thumb.

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