A Question for Harry by Angeline Fortin Page A

unwilling to have him look down on her so, she, too, climbed up to the landing, oddly thankful for the relative stability she found there when Aylesbury had her so off kilter. “After all this time, it’s hard to recall.”
    “You are being difficult.”
    “A family trait. You always did say that I was the worst of the bunch, didn’t you?”
    “I said many things I regret .” Aylesbury sighed, resisting the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose between his fingers. While he appreciated her anger from a distance, he had forgotten how exasperating Fiona could be in a direct confrontation. She had a knack for deflecting his point with such off-topic comments. “I wanted to apologize for leaving Edinburgh so abruptly. I meant to do so straight away but was called away on a family emergency.”
    Dropping her contrived expression of incomprehension abruptly, Fiona’s wide green eyes narrowed as her brows snapped together irritably . “You’re apologizing for leaving Edinburgh? Is that all?”
    “No . I also wanted to apologize for hurting your feelings as I did,” he began awkwardly, having not really rehearsed what he meant to say. “As I said, I once said many things that I regret. Not the least of those was …”
    “My feelings?” Fiona’s brows shot up in disbelief as she cut him short . “Do you believe that you hurt only my feelings? That is was nothing more than that?”
    “You were a girl with a crush …”
    “I was in love with you !” Fiona cried out, immediately regretting the admission. Turning away she ran up the next flight of stairs, determined to leave him once again in the past where he belonged, but his short bark of disbelief had her whirling around, stomping back down to him until she was able to point a finger directly at his face.
    “You think I was maybe too young or too inexperienced to know my own feelings ? I may have been young but I knew what love was, Harry. And what it wasn’t,” she told him, struggling to keep the tears she was fighting out of her voice. “I saw it every day all around me. I loved you, wanted you. Wanted more than anything to share a love with you like the love my brothers have with their wives.”
    Aylesbury felt her words like a blade through the heart . He’d never meant to toy with her affections, telling himself that it had just been a lighthearted flirtation. That, at eighteen, she had merely been honing her skills on him, practicing for her Season ahead or that any affection she had borne for him had been nothing more than girlish infatuation. He liked to believe that his rejection hadn’t truly pained a girl of such tender years, that she would rebound quickly with the benefit of youth. That by now she would have been wed and started on a family of her own.
    That he had been denying no one but himself.
    “Just leave me be, Harry!”
    “Fiona!” Catching her by the arm, Aylesbury trapped her before she could run once more . “Let me explain.”
    “There is nothing to explain . Don’t you see? It doesn’t matter any longer. I’ve met a man I l-love very much.” She almost couldn’t say it. “I’ve moved on. Please let me go.”
    This time when she pulled away and raced up the stairs, Aylesbury didn’t try to stop her.
    He couldn’t say that trusting her words would have changed anything two years ago. Despite the death of his father when Aylesbury had been twenty and the burden of the title and its responsibilities, he had been alarmingly untroubled about life then. Abby’s teasing assessment of him – that he was too blithe to be believed – had never been far off.
    The attraction he had felt for Fiona had unsettled him more than Aylesbury cared to admit back then . But even while he was disturbed by just how much pleasure he took in her company, he had conversely continued to enjoy it, unable to forgo her friendship.
    Being around her had brought him a great deal of happiness though he had refused to consider it as anything more at