Page 51 of A Christmas Temptation for the Duke
How we left things last night was not ideal, and I have to believe that it was brought on by something other than his feelings for me. Surely, after all we did, he too is regretting how we left things.
Alison could not explain what had happened between her and Daniel, as she now referred to him. For a moment there, he had finally stopped fighting her and given in. He had accepted his feelings, she had accepted her own, and what followed was a moment that she would not forget.
Only then, he snapped out of it and fled the room. The words he had spoken sounded as if he was ashamed of what he had done, taken advantage of her. Even forced her into doing something that they both knew was wrong.
But nothing could be further from the truth!
All Alison could do was pray that a night alone had cured him of his woes. When it came to Daniel, pushing back against her was as common as breathing. And if she wanted to break him from whatever it was that saw him leave her, she would have to do as she always did. That being, push him back.
Or that was the plan.
Sadly, it was a plan which was unable to come to fruition because when she arrived at the breakfast room, she found it empty. No… worse than that, she found it abandoned.
“No…” she said to herself as she stepped carefully into the room. “Pickle!” she cried as the terrier darted between her legs and raced to the end of the room. “Pickle, stop!”
The reason that Pickle ran as he did was because of the plate of half-finished food which sat at the head of the table. There, Pickle jumped on the chair and then on top of the table, quick to finish what Daniel left behind.
Alison stayed at the other end, staring blankly at the plate. Daniel had been there already. He had eaten quickly, by the looks of things. And then he fled before giving Alison a chance to present herself.
Her stomach dropped and she felt a crashing sensation press down on her shoulders as if trying to drive her to her knees. She had worried that he might be awkward today, and that it would take some time to work through that tension so they would return to how things had been. But to avoid her like this completely? That was beyond her comprehension.
All night, Alison thought of Daniel and what he wanted from her. Now she knew the answer. He wanted nothing. It was a feeling that Alison was all too used to but was no easier to bear because of it. For a brief moment, he had seen her like nobody ever had, only to turn away so that she was back to being invisible.
It is not unlike how my family treats me… but worse. At least they pretend to notice me from time to time. I sense that with Daniel, going forward, I will not even be given that.
And so began the longest day of Alison’s life.
She spent the day in two minds. One was that which wanted to seek out Daniel so they could talk about what happened. So that she might force him to admit his feelings or at least explain to her that he had none and put her out of her misery. The other was to simply wait for him to come to her, as if that would ever happen.
Alison decided on the second option. A part of it was fear, because she did not want to hear the truth. Another part was acceptance, because she knew the truth already and did not want to put herself through that the agony of hearing him say it.
She spent the morning in the library reading. Not that she managed much of that. Pickle stalked the room as if it could sense her mood. Her mind wandered and refused to focus on the page in front of her. And every single time that she heard a noise coming from within the manor, Alison would look up, her breathing would catch, and she would wait until the sound faded.
She spent an hour or so after that simply pacing the manor; walking the hallways and entering various rooms. Alison told herself it was on account of boredom, but she knew it was done so that Daniel might hear her. Surely, he did not intend to avoid her for the next two weeks?
What she could not help but notice was how empty the manor felt. The rooms seemed larger than they had. The hallways were wider. Even when Daniel had not been speaking, his very presence filled those rooms in ways she had not noticed until he was gone.
Alison was used to being alone. Being ignored and treated as an afterthought was not uncommon. This felt different. Where her family simply treated her that way because she was an outsider and not someone who they needed to concern themselves with, this was purposeful.
“It looks like it’s just you and me,” she sighed as she scooped Pickle into her arms, still walking through the manor. “And you would never ignore me or cut me off, would you?”
To that, Pickle yelped and licked her on the nose.
The breaking point for Alison came in the late afternoon. So bored was she, so utterly depressed, that she considered taking a nap just so the time would pass more quickly. In her room, looking at her bed with grim remorse, she heard heavy footsteps crashing down the hallway. It could only be Daniel, and it was the first time she had caught wind of him all day.
Not certain what she expected, or even what she wanted, Alison hurried from her room and chased after the footsteps. She supposed she just wanted to see him, as if she needed proof that he existed.
And even if they said nothing, was he to see her finally, the look in his eyes would surely tell her how he felt. She needed that more than anything.
By the time she reached downstairs, the sound of the back door swinging closed took her attention. It was freezing out, snow drifting lightly through the wind, and Alison could not imagine why the Earl was going outside on a day like this one. But she was quick after him, breeching the back garden just in time to see Daniel for the first time since he stormed from her room last evening.
He was sitting atop his horse, pushing it across the garden and onto the surrounding fields of the estate. It wasn’t done at a trot or a canter. Rather, he steered the horse away from the estate as if his life depended on it. Faster and faster the horse raced through the snow, leaving in its wake the estate and Alison both.
She stood there and watched until Daniel vanished beyond the horizon. She stayed there long after, coming to terms with what this meant. That he had avoided her all day was one thing. Now that he was actively running from her…he truly wants nothing to do with me.
All his talk about protecting her was a lie.
His actions concerning her safety meant nothing.
