Karen Whittenburg - The Blacksheep's Arranged Marriage

“Why do you think Thea allows someone else to make her miserable?” Ilsa asked, interested in gaining someone else’s insight. “If, indeed, she is.”

“Oh, how could she not be?” Ainsley said. “I can’t imagine why she stays at Grace Place when she can afford to buy a place of her own.”

“Maybe her money is tied up in trusts and she can’t touch any of it until she’s older.” Ilsa had a file on Thea—a woefully thin one—but of course, the financial information was private, so all she could do was speculate along with Ainsley. “That’s very possible.”

“She could get a job. She has a degree from Wellesley, you know. I don’t know what she studied, but she could get a job at a museum or something. I sure wouldn’t live in that dark old house with that old…” Ainsley let the intended epithet trail away. “With her grandmother,” she finished and Ilsa gave her full marks for being a quick learner.

“Maybe,” Ilsa said, “Thea is afraid of what will happen if she leaves.”

“Maybe with good reason.” Ainsley frowned, obviously still studying the oddness of Thea’s life. But then, like the sun coming out, her blue eyes went wide and she turned back to Ilsa, the light of conspiracy in her smile. “Holy Toledo, Mrs. Carey didn’t hire you to make a match for Thea, did she? I mean, who would you ever find to match up with her?”

A good question, if not quite an accurate observation. “There’s someone for everyone, Ainsley.”

“He’ll have to be a true Prince Charming,” she said, her attention returning to the couples on the dance floor, as if she thought she could spot a match for Thea just by looking. “And maybe very nearsighted.”

Ilsa let her gaze travel back to where Peter and Thea were still dancing. Not talking. Or looking at each other. But something in the way he held her, something in the way she moved in his arms, something about…

No. Ilsa knew she had to be imagining that indefinable something she felt when she saw Peter with Thea. They could never, in a million years, find the true heart of the other. Even if they were inclined to look.

“Ilsa?” Ainsley’s voice had softened to a thoughtful musing. “Have you ever felt that maybe Thea and…”

She didn’t finish the thought, left it dangling in the air between them, but the quicksilver clench of knowing caught Ilsa unaware. Peter. Ainsley felt it, too. That something Ilsa hadn’t been able to name.

Which didn’t mean either one of them were right about it.

“Davinia has not hired me to find a match for Thea,” Ilsa said truthfully. “Nor would she. Ever.”

Ainsley smiled, secretively at first, but then with blinding self-confidence. “Would you mind if I worked on a possibility for Thea?” she asked. “On my own time, of course, and I won’t actually do anything. I’ll just sort of think about it, look around for a nearsighted prince of a guy, ponder possibilities in my head. Would that be okay?”

Ilsa knew she should say no. Flat out. But Ainsley couldn’t, just by thinking and wondering and imagining, do any harm. Truthfully, she couldn’t do any worse than Ilsa had already done if she set out full-tilt to find Thea a match. “As long as you keep in mind that even a matchmaker can’t work miracles.”

“Gotcha,” Ainsley said, although a miracle was clearly what she had in mind.

Peter didn’t ask again if she wanted him to put down the top of the convertible. He just did it.

He didn’t ask if she wanted to head down to Point Judith, either. He simply turned the Beemer in that direction and drove.

He didn’t offer much in the way of conversation, just asked if the wind was too much, if she felt chilly, if she didn’t think this was one of those nights when the earth and the sky were in perfect accord.

To which she answered, respectively, with two separate shakes of her head and a singular nod. She didn’t say that the wind felt glorious on her face and in its wild fling with her hair. She didn’t say that she loved the faint nip of autumn in the air and the brewing fragrance of a distant storm. She didn’t confess that she, too, thought this was one of those perfect nights, which, in some mysterious alignment of nature, occasionally happened in a New England autumn. And she especially didn’t say that ensconced in the deep leather seat, her head resting against the headrest, her feet flat on the floor, sitting as close as she ever sat to another person and riding through the dark with the night rushing over her in an endless sensual wave, felt daring and somehow, extraordinarily brave.

Thea didn’t want to spoil the moment with words for fear Peter would remember who he was with, turn the car around and take her straight home. So she just closed her eyes and let the sensations weave their way through her with all their myriad pleasures.

When he stopped the car and shut off the engine, she heard the Atlantic chanting its rhythmic poetry to the rocky shores around Point Judith. She kept her eyes shut, recognized their location from the road they’d traveled and from the pulsating blink of the lighthouse which crept beneath her lashes and lightened the darkness every few seconds. The scent of the ocean surrounded them, more ancient than the forest primeval, its song as familiar and as soothing as a heartbeat.

“Thea?” Peter’s voice was soft as the night, almost as if he thought she really might be asleep.

“Peter,” she replied to let him know she was awake and aware, even if her eyes were still closed. There, in a darkness of her own making, she could drink in the fantasy of being alone with him, imagining for the space of a single breath that he wanted to be here with her, that he planned to kiss her senseless in full view of a million stars, that he had brought her here on this special night to make love to her with the eternal ocean as witness.

“We’re at Point Judith Lighthouse,” he said.

“I know. Did you get lost?”

“No.”

“Point Judith isn’t exactly on the way to Grace Place.”

“No, it isn’t.”

She nodded and the thought flitted through her mind that she might have read Peter wrong, that it was possible he hid a lecherous soul beneath his handsome face and gentlemanly manners. No matter how she dressed, or acted, or how hard she tried to make herself invisible, there were still men who thought they could take advantage. But Peter could have any woman he wanted. He was Hollywood handsome, deathly charming and rich as Croesus. He could have no design on her fortune or her figure. He probably didn’t even realize she had a figure beneath the shapeless clothes she wore.

But she trusted Peter, for no particular reason other than he had always been nicer to her than he had to be. He was being polite, stopping here, pretending in his gentlemanly way that he was in no rush to take her home. The idea he could want anything more was without substance and evaporated like so much wistful thinking into the cool night air.

“I’ll take you home, if you prefer.”

She opened her eyes then, to see the moonlight as it flared across the water and played tag with the surf. They were parked in an open area just off the narrow road, the only car in sight, so the night and the ocean were theirs for the moment. Thea rather liked the idea of that. She liked being with Peter and feeling, if not completely relaxed in his company, at least, at ease with him. She’d been to this particular place on Point Judith before—always in daylight and always alone—but here, on this same road. The rocks below were a good place to sketch, a good place to daydream. It felt right, somehow, to be here with him now, although her grandmother would have a fit if she knew.