Falling for Your Madness by Katharine Grubb Page B

blossoms.
     
    I didn’t know what to think about this. I had assumed I wasn’t the first girl to meet him for tea, lunch, and dinner, but I had never thought about them specifically.
     
    I knew David. At least I thought I did. He was so dapper and gallant, I think that part of me expected him to only go out with leggy models. Part of me believed that, because I was so not a leggy model , he was, in a way, out of my league.
     
    These cards told a different story. One girl had a nose ring. One had purple hair. Two were decidedly plus-size, but they were smiling at the camera and holding their flowers as if they were a prize. All of the girls were ordinary.
     
    “David has unexpected taste in women. What did he see in them?”
     
    “He saw that they were beautiful, smart, talented, romantic, and sensitive. He saw that they were ladies.”
     
    “Were they his friends, or his sweethearts, or his fiancées?”
     
    “Mostly sweethearts. Never fiancées. Never once.”
     
    That meant that at the very most, he had kissed them goodnight. He was never in their apartments alone. These girls were treated well. If I had seen Trey’s or Chase’s or Andrew’s face with a lineup of girls, I would have assumed that the girls were conquests. I would have been desperate to be the one who was different. I would have wanted to be the one who was treated better. The one who was special.
     
    “So, all of them met him for at tea, lunch, and dinner?”
     
    “When we first designed the project, we didn’t structure it quite that way. We’ve worked out the kinks since then.”
     
    “We?”
     
    He looked at me as if he had said too much. This bothered me.
     
    “So then, all of these girls released him. Why?”
     
    “The most common complaint against David is that he is too intense. And that he talks too much. This one, Bianca, she was lovely, but felt overpowered by the hundreds of texts David sent her daily.”
     
    “Texts? David doesn’t have a phone.”
     
    “He doesn’t now. We took it away from him. This one, Lisa, lasted only a week. She made a comment about how great it was that someone took that Lord of the Rings film and made it into a book.”
     
    “She didn’t!”
     
    “And then Susannah. She called it off because David parked his car in front of her house a few too many times.”
     
    “Wait, you took the car away from him too?”
     
    “David’s complete freedom was one of the kinks that had to be ironed out. He is, however, very good with boundaries.”
     
    Boundaries. Like not being alone in my apartment. I fell back into the sofa. Who was this man? Is this the same David who had texted a girl hundreds of times a day? Who’d stalked another?
     
    “He’s never been arrested or had a court order against him or anything, has he?”
     
    “Not since high school. He’s come a long way since then. We—and I might as well tell you, I mean his father, his aunt, and I—created the rules for him. The rules are there to protect him, as much as to protect the lady, and he knows it. The Arthurian codes of Chivalry provide a very helpful context.”
     
    I felt like I needed more brandy. “What does he get out of following the rules?”
     
    “We hope, eventually, a bride. Until then, we reward him with fountain pens, cashmere socks, and Bacco Bucci shoes in a sixteen and a half. He is so terribly vain.”
     
    “This is all so weird. Why can’t he just be like all the other guys? Something normal?”
     
    “Because he is not normal, not at all. He is behaving in a way that is fitting for him. I know that he has told you that he is bound by the rules of chivalry, body and soul. This is not an exaggeration. It is true. He sees himself as a knight of the highest order. His quest for a bride cannot be and must not be reduced to what young men do today.”
     
    “What do you mean by a knight of the highest order?”
     
    “It is his story to tell. I’ve probably told you too much. Now, the last