Blunt and to the point
“Alexander I have told you many times you are the man I wish to marry.” Dorcas told him once again, he heart beating faster as she spoke. Would he ever see the truth?
“You are very forward.” Alex told her when he thought about how many times she had told him that.
“I have the money to be forward.” Dorcas told him with a huff.
Alex almost liked the thought that she wanted to be forward, but he didn’t want to marry a woman that was to forward. It would be hard to keep control of her. Dorcas wasn’t the controlled type of woman. A wife needed to listen to her husband and obey him. Alex knew that this woman would never allow herself to live that way. It would be a fight but what a fight it might be. Alex could almost see it in his mind. The way she would huff and puff about things that he did. How he would just watch her. To see that slight blush on her face.
“Even with such money, marriage means you have to answer to a husband.” Alex told her with a grin.
Alex would have laughed at the look on her face but he knew that she secretly wanted to be controlled. So the glint in her eyes and the way she changed her stance told him that she really liked the idea.
“I think that the right man can make the control so much fun.” Dorcas hide behind her fan as she spoke. She could feel the blush rushing to her cheeks.
Alex watched as she flushed from the thought. The way she switched from foot to foot. When she moved her fan to try and cool the heat away from her face he knew that she wanted something and it wouldn’t wait.
“Dorcas, I do believe you are giving yourself away.” Alex turned toward her seeing the light in her eyes as he focused on her face.
“I had forgotten that you could see so much more of what I meant then most men.” Dorcas took a small step toward him.
Her small hand touched his arm and he felt the lightening run up his arm. This woman had a power over him, but he didn’t want to admit it. The night was full of music that pulled him closer to her.
“How long have we been acquainted?”
“Let me think, around a year.” She spoke with her hands, waving them in front of herself. Many would say that he was slow or couldn’t control herself. Alexander knew that she just got very excited about things.
“That long?” Alexander could recall many memories of her and it was in those moments that he found that he had a stronger attraction to her.
“Yes, we meet at the summer ball that my father threw.” Dorcas explained but hated to recall that ball because one of the ladies had spilled punch on her dress.
“Dear Dorcas, we meet many years before that.” Alex told her with a smile.
“We did?” Dorcas looked shocked that she couldn’t recall knowing him before the ball.
“Yes, I was a young lad when I came to this very house with my father. It was a hot summer day. I wanted to go swimming in the pond but father refused to take me.” Alex spun the store around them.
“I don’t recall.”
Alex put his finger to her lips to keep her from talking.
“No you wouldn’t, you were only two at the time. I ran from my father and yours to fall into the pond. Needless to say I forgot that I couldn’t swim. Father had to jump into save me.”
“Dear lord.” Her lovely blue eyes twinkled with mirth at his trouble.
Alex could feel her lips moving behind his finger.
“I was switched by my father, but came down with a horrible cold after. I was sick in bed for almost a week. Father thought I would die, never took the switch to me again.” After he was done speaking he pulled his finger away from her lips.
“Alexander I never knew. Father never told me that I knew you.” Dorcas couldn't even fathom that they had known each other that long.
“No our fathers didn’t speak of the event. We meet again a few years later. At the age of ten I believe.”
“I still do not recall you.”
“Dear Dorcas you really do not have any memory of me. A young boy with floppy black hair. His shirt tails always out even though his father kept telling him to tuck them in.”
He could see that she remembered but she didn’t want to say. The truth was he could recall her to the smallest details. The way her brown hair had been pulled up but small curls had escaped. The simple dress she had been wearing and how she kept pushing the tutor. The fact was that he knew that she had been a horror as a child and had grown into a rebel as an adult. It might have been in that moment that he new the truth of his future.