Of course, her father had given his consent. Or at least that’s what her father told her mother and her mother in turn had told her. Edward didn’t mention the meeting on his next two visits and she was beginning to wonder if he had changed his mind about marrying her, but she wasn’t about to ask in case that was the case. If he didn’t want her anymore, then she wanted to spend as much time with him before he broke the bad news. He’d made it perfectly clear before that he hadn’t been asking her to marry him; he’d only been asking permission to speak to her father about the possibility.

A week after he’d spoken to her father he’d asked her on an afternoon ride in his carriage. The ride was rather silent, which really wasn’t unusual for the, but every now and then he would look over at her with that crooked grin and a gleam in his eyes that told her he was up to something.

Usually when they went for rides, he stuck to the same streets and never ventured too far from her home, so as he traveled further and further out to unfamiliar territory, she looked slightly confused and asked, “Where are we going?”

In response he’d only winked at her and urged the horses to move a bit faster. Eventually he pulled over to the side of the street in a well-off neighborhood that she didn’t know very well and he leaned over and kissed her cheek and whispered in her ear, “Will you do something for me, Elizabeth?”

She nodded without hesitation. “Of course.”

He smiled and pulling his large handkerchief out of his pocket he started to secure it around her eyes like a blindfold.

She drew back a bit at first. “What are you doing, Edward?”

He had only laughed and whispered in her ear as he finished securing her blindfold in place. “Trust me.”

Of course she trusted him. He was her everything.

She gripped the edge of her seat as she felt the carriage lurch forward again and then her other senses took over, the clip-clop of the horses’ hooves, the wheels on the cobblestone, the smell of the different gardens that they passed, and of course Edward’s cologne. He always smelled so clean and fresh, like a summer’s day.