Landry Park by Bethany Hagen

Author:Bethany Hagen [Hagen, Bethany]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: BluA
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-02-04T06:00:00+00:00

It wasn’t the last time I saw David before he left. The morning before a train would whisk him away to the mountains, he paid an unannounced visit to my house. Jane Osbourne and I were taking tea in the morning room, discussing her father’s latest attempt to marry her to a local manufacturing heir, when David strolled in, trailed by our anxious butler. Crawford, I thought to myself. His name is Crawford.

Morgana twined around David’s legs, purring.

We stood and he bowed. “Ladies.”

I didn’t really know what to say. After what we had seen two days ago, what we had shared with each other, to be back here in a gentry house, staring at each other over a tray of frosted cakes and teacups . . .

He reached down to rub under Morgana’s chin. “Miss Landry, could I have the privilege of taking a turn about the grounds with you? Miss Osbourne is welcome to join us, of course.”

“Actually, I was just leaving,” Jane said tactfully, and made to go.

I quietly panicked. David and I had gone from outright fighting at Cara’s debut to confessing each other’s deepest secrets in the Rootless ghetto. And now that I was acutely aware of how he affected me and how much I cared about him, it made being near him that much worse, because I knew that he would never return those feelings, not as long as he dated Cara. The thought of being alone with him terrified me.

“Oh, no,” I told her. “Really, you can stay.”

She smiled. “My family is expecting me.” She curtsied and he took her hand and kissed it. “Mr. Dana,” she said, inclining her head. And then we were alone.

A few minutes later, we were out on the lawn. The sun was out and beating down hard; today was the first of the truly hot days that would dog the city until fall.

I felt acutely aware of the space between us—palpable and electrified. He was dressed in his usual expensive clothes—a well-tailored suit and tie, a charcoal color that set off the starched white of his shirt sleeves, pinned with onyx cuff links. His silky hair ruffled in the humid breeze—a few stray tendrils already beginning to cling to his neck—and the sunlight was catching on his blond eyelashes like drops of gold.

“I thought you were going to spend your last days in Kansas City drunk and insensate,” I said, unable to stand the silence any longer.

He squinted back toward the house. “I changed my mind.”

“Why?”

“Because of you.”

A breathless need blossomed in my chest, razored and painful.

“I wanted to come and give you my apologies for my behavior the other day,” he continued. “I was rude and I had no excuse, save for that I was frustrated and confused.” He stopped and plucked a small white flower out of the grass. I fought away a blush as he handed it to me.

“I have always known that I would enter the military like my father,” he said. “Despite our fortune, we have no estate, and I wouldn’t feel my future secure if I didn’t have an income.

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