A Kiss To Remember | Herophine

Chapter Thirteen - The Midnight Walk

Josephine

Sometimes she tends to act before she thinks without counting the cost...

It should have been the happiest night of Josephine’s life.

Tomorrow morning at ten o’clock, she would stand before the altar of St. Michael’s and pledge her heart and her life to the man she had wanted before she even knew he existed. He would tenderly take her hand, gaze deep into her eyes, and vow to keep himself only unto her for as long as they both should live.

She should have been snuggled beneath her sheets , hugging her pillow and dreaming of the day to come. Instead, she was pacing back and forth across the bedchamber, nearly frantic with apprehension. She paused beside Katy’s iron bedstead to smooth a tumbled curl from her sister's cheek, envying her the sleep of the innocent.

It was a luxury Josephine hadn’t enjoyed since the day she found Hardin in the wood. And if she failed to heed the prodding of her conscience, it might very well be a luxury she would never enjoy again. She almost expected God to force her hand. Expected Him to send John galloping down the long curving drive with word that Hardin already had a fiancée waiting for him back in London.

Even if John failed to return before the wedding, she knew it wasn't too late to redeem herself. All she had to do was march across the darkened corridor to Lady Martha’s bedroom and confess all, throwing herself on the mercy of a man who would suddenly be a stranger.

But then there would be no sunny wedding morning, no white crepe gown trimmed in Brussels lace, no towering bride cake iced with almond paste. There would be no Maggie beaming at her as she pinned a circlet of roses in her hair, no Katy to hold her fragrant posy at the altar, and no Anthony to offer his grudging congratulations as he was forced to admit that her plan had been a sound one after all.

And there would be no Hardin to gently lay his lips against hers, sealing their vows with a kiss.

Josephine could feel the tendrils of temptation securing themselves around her heart, as cunning and sinuous as the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Thinking only to escape their hold, she unlatched the window and threw it open, settling herself on the broad wooden sill. The night was warm and windy, thick with the scent of jasmine and honeysuckle. A fat slice of moon brightened the sky, defying the scudding clouds with its brilliance.

It was the sort of night that sang of pagan enchantments, the sort of night that had always quickened Josephine's blood and compelled her to throw off the constraints of her safe, tidy life. But now she knew the price of surrendering to those reckless urges.

If she could only return to that moment when she had found Hardin sleeping in the wood! Perhaps he would have fallen in love with her anyway. She would never know because she’d never given him the chance.

Sighing forlornly, she rested her cheek against the window frame. It was as much of a sin to lie to herself as it was to lie to him. A man like Hardin probably wouldn't have spared a glance for a humble country girl like her. A girl whose cheeks were sprinkled with few freckles because she so rarely bothered to wear her bonnet. A girl whose nails weren’t manicured, but were blunt and chipped from digging in the garden dirt. Winning his love would have been as unlikely as Apollo reaching down from the heavens to bestow his favors on a mortal maiden. He might have found her a pleasant enough diversion for a summer’s day, but not for a lifetime.

Josephine gazed across the rolling lawn to the wood beyond-a wood draped in shadows and secrets. She had been so eager to believe Hardin had tumbled from the heavens in answer to her prayer that she’d never bothered to explore any of the more rational explanations for his appearance that had been taunting her ever since that day. There had been no trace of hoofprints near the old oak, but it was entirely possible he could have been thrown from the other side of the gorge. Panicked at finding itself riderless in an unfamiliar wood, his mount might have bolted back the way it had come.