Page 59 of To Wed an Heiress
Only then did she come and stand next to where he was working on the wing assembly.
“I escaped,” she said. “I ran away from home. I never thought to do such a thing, but my life was all planned out for me. No one ever asked me what I wanted.”
“What do you want?”
She looked startled, and then began to smile. He’d never been affected by a smile before, but something about Mercy’s expression made him want to smile in turn.
“I’m not quite sure,” she said. “Isn’t that terrible? I’ve spent all that time being certain that I didn’t want what I had. But what do I want? I don’t know.”
She glanced away and then focused on the ground as if the courtyard held some kind of answer.
“I don’t have an airship,” she said. “I don’t want to nurse anyone. Or carry dispatches. Or shoot anyone.”
He didn’t know what she was talking about, but rather than interrupt, he kept silent.
“I wanted my freedom, but why?”
“Why freedom?”
“Why bother?”
“You’re asking a Scot that? We fought for our freedom for centuries.”
She pointed one finger at him. “You see, that’s exactly what I’m talking about.”
“Mercy, I have to confess I’m totally confused with this conversation. I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t,” she said.
She didn’t speak for a moment and he wondered if she would continue.
“It just occurred to me that I have nothing to believe in,” she finally said. “I don’t have a cause. I don’t have some abiding interest. There is nothing that fascinates me.” She pointed to the frame of his airship behind them. “That’s your cause. That’s your abiding interest.”
“Is it important that you have one?”
She nodded slowly. “I think so. Everyone I know has one. My father’s is his business empire. Douglas’s might be the feud with you, if you’re right about him. My grandmother even has one. Once it was her home in North Carolina. Now it’s hatred. She grooms it and holds it close as if it’s a pet. Even my mother has one: me.”
“Perhaps you’ll find one,” he said. When she didn’t speak, he continued. “What do you not want?”
“To be a puppet.”
He hadn’t expected that answer. “How so?”
“To be told what to do and how to do it every hour of every day. To have my schedule made for me. To dictate where I’ll go, with whom I’ll meet, and what I’ll say.”
“Is that how it was with you?”
“To some degree, yes. But plans were being made for me that would make it even worse. I decided I didn’t want that.”
“So you came to Scotland.”
She nodded.
“But not to stay.”
“No.”
“So what will change once you go home?”
