He wrenched his gaze away, cursing under his breath. “I doubt your daughter would ever allow an estrangement to happen, my lady. She is dedicated to her family, as all Fords are known to be.”
“That is true.” The countess sighed softly. “She is so strong a character, so much braver than me. I could not be prouder of the choices she has made for her life.”
His contentment in the evening dimmed. Of course Ellicott would be popular with Lady Templeton. He was as rich as Rutherford and almost as titled. Sally would remain a lady and not an inferior Mrs. Hastings, as she would have become upon their marriage. “An excellent connection,” he murmured with an agreement he did not feel.
“Oh, but you must think it odd to be talking of this now.” The lady smiled quickly. “Forgive a mother’s vanity that her daughter will have a home of her own.”
“There is nothing to forgive you for, my lady. I cannot say the same for my own behavior.” Felix glanced at the Duke of Rutherford. The old man was watching his granddaughter with a puzzled expression on his face. “She seems happy, and that is all that matters, is it not?”
Lady Templeton nodded. “It is what Sally wants, and so we let her have her way. What better outcome is there for a woman but to make a respectable match?”
There was love.
Sally might have been wild with him, but he had not thought her indiscriminant in her passion at that time. He had thought they had been falling deeply in love and that the reason they had behaved so shamelessly together was a binding connection. Sally would only have agreed to marry Ellicott if she loved the man. Which meant she could not possibly love Felix anymore. Not even a little.
He had to give her up or he would only be torturing himself needlessly. When the women excused themselves for tea in the drawing room, Felix escaped to the terrace to rage in private under the stars.
Chapter Seven
Sally slipped from the house, heart pounding with panic, and ran far into the garden and away from her family and guests.
Panic. Shock. Anger. Hunger. Her skin practically vibrated with sensations she had thought she had given up.
Felix was at Newberry, not fifty yards away. Smiling and laughing as if he had not a care in the world, as if the heart he had shattered six years ago did not matter in the slightest.
She kept running.
He was supposed to be aboard his ship, not breathing the same air she did. His precious Selfridge, the command and promotion he had valued more than her love. She did not know how he had wrangled an invitation to Newberry Park, but she would ensure it was the last one the blackguard ever received. Bollocks!
And if her reaction to seeing him again after so long was any indication, she might not recover at all. She could not seem to catch her breath, and suffering through the interminable meal with her family around them had been almost beyond her capability.
Her eyes had been drawn to him all through dinner, though he barely looked her way again after being presented to her. He had charmed her mother, she could tell, which annoyed her to the ends of the earth and back again. Her mother was supposed to despise him, as was all of her family, for the fool he had made of her.
She did not want Felix to be here.
She stopped at her favorite place, a small pond full of fishes that no one else came to, and lifted her knuckle to her mouth. She bit down on the scream she wanted to let out as a seafaring curse filled her mind. She savaged her finger until it ached and then let it go. “Damn you, Felix.”
All she had wanted, for the rest of her life, was to forget him.
“It is lovely to see you too,” he remarked from the darkness.
She whipped around, searching the shadows of the gardens, attempting to locate where he stood.
Felix came forward slowly, large and dangerous as he skirted the pond. Her pounding heart probably gave her away and her cheeks grew hot as he neared. Could he not have changed? A limp, a scar to mar that handsome face? Was it too much to ask that he be as wounded on the outside as she was within?
For a moment she wavered between running toward him or away. Not that she was afraid of him, but what he represented was hazardous to her carefully made plans for a proper marriage. “What are you doing?”
“Strolling the decks of Newberry Park beneath the stars and asking myself the very same thing.” His deep voice rumbled over her, and she shivered.
She had thought she had forgotten that voice, but when he had spoken behind her in the white drawing room, she had known who it was without turning around. She had desperately wished to be wrong.
“I mean what are you doing at Newberry.” Sally turned away in an effort to gather her scattered wits. She hated him. She truly did for the mockery he had made of her young love. “Are you looking for a way to advance to admiral now?”
He growled, a dark and dangerous warning. Something he had never done around her as a young man. “I have never wanted the distinction because it means playing games with people’s lives the way your father has with mine.”
She spun about and advanced on him, doing little to hide her fury. “Do not say a word against my family!”
“Against your family, no, but against the admiral I will say what I like to you. I will not pretend he did not ruin my life.”