Page 41 of A Dreamy Match Made in Heaven
Sophia glanced behind them and saw that Miss Wainwright and Lady Faversham had fallen far behind, gazing at a peculiar flower neither of them had ever seen before. She and Thomas were coming upon a turn, and once they had made their way around the path, she knew that it was her chance to take and it was time for her to speak to him about everything that was on her mind.
Sophia pulled Thomas off the little path and into a small gap in a grove of trees that reached far above their heads. He looked at her with surprise and intensity. She had caught him off guard, exactly as intended. He would have no time to splutter a rebuttal.
This time, he was stuck and it was with her own strength that was going to tell him the reality as it was.
Yet the small space afforded them little room and Sophia could feel the heat coming off his body. She dropped his hand where she had grabbed it to pull him in with her, but still felt the tingle of his fingers in hers.
A tension stirred between them and Sophia questioned it for only a moment before deciding that it was the feeling of betrayal. She could not allow it to be any other feeling. After all, he had done all of this to her. There was no love left between them.
The steely gaze of his dark eyes told her that he felt a similar sense of anger, although she could not imagine why. She had done nothing to wound Thomas. It had all been his actions that had sent her reeling.
“Do not pretend that it was not you who left me to the hands of the Earl of Bastion. You think I could just let that go? That I would freely move on as if nothing at all had occurred?” she challenged him.
“What on earth are you talking about? You betrayed me, leaving me for a man who was nothing more than status and wealth,” Thomas spat back.
Sophia was indignant; her mouth opening wide in disgrace that he should even suggest something so foolish.
“What is the matter with you? You must be a great deal more foolish than I ever realised if you are going to attempt to bait me with that. I loved you. I believed that you were going to make a proposal, that you would have the intentions that I thought I sensed from you. But instead you had a whiff of competition and fled,” she insulted.
The words landed and she saw the sting in his face. She had essentially called him a coward, and that was something that no man wanted to hear. But it was what she thought of him. A coward or a liar and she had no time for either.
“How dare you? I tried to fight for you,” he said.
“Fight for me? You were gone. You went back to the battlefield, chasing away any chance for us to be together. What was I supposed to do when I had an Earl doting over me, propositioning my family for a match? He had no one else to overcome because you left,” she clarified, as if it had not been clear enough in her mind already.
Thomas shook his head and Sophia saw that he was trying to remain calm. But the redness in his face alerted her to his anger. How was he so blind? How could he be such an idiot as to try and turn this around on her and accuse her of being the one to cause all of this heartache? Was it simply because she, as a female, was an easier target?
No, she would not settle for this.
“Oh, you-you coward!” she finally said in an angry, but hushed tone.
To her shock Thomas grasped her wrist tightly, sending a shock through her system at the warmth of his touch.
Both paused, unmoving. Their eyes were locked upon one another and Sophia could see that Thomas was equally shocked by his action. But he did not let go right away. Instead, they remained in the position, unable to break away.
For all the anger they each claimed, it was evident that there was nothing that could pull them apart for that brief moment. Only one another existed. Only the tension between them. Only the longings of the past remained.
But Sophia knew better. She knew that this was not what she had had in mind. This was not what was supposed to be.
And she read that same thought in Thomas’s eyes.
“Miss Hastings? Mr. Gregory?” Came the panicked voice of Miss Wainwright from where she had last been by the flowers.
And that was all it took to break the two of them apart.
Thomas dropped Sophia’s wrist and they turned quickly back around the corner, both with faces as innocent as possible.
“Yes, Miss Wainwright?” Sophia asked in her sweetest voice.
“Oh, dear! I had feared that the two of you were lost,” she sighed in relief.
Sophia placed a false smile on her face, as if in relief for Miss Wainwright’s behalf. It would not have been ideal for London’s greatest Matchmaker to allow her clients to wander off alone. Reputations were destroyed that way.
But as it was, the foursome continued onwards, with the chaperones closer behind and the conversation stalled.
There had been no progress in reconciliation or confrontation. There was no closure. Sophia wondered if they would ever be at peace with one another or if their history was too great to allow any option of coming to terms with all that had gone on before.
But she knew now, that all this time when she had been mourning the abandonment from Thomas, he had been feeling the same in response from her. They had been one another’s victims without ever realising it.
