Chapter 53 Blessings in Disguise

"So it is an elopement you re after, rather than an offer to help me to freedom," I say slowly, more to myself than to him as I sit down on a nearby bench, one hand on my forehead. This is all just too much to deal with right now. What I wouldn t give to be alone! "I should have suspected as much. You suggest I trade an engagement for a marriage on the run, with no ceremony and barely any legitimacy, to a man who has been only a combat tutor to me, and that with all the grudging my fiancé could muster." "Not quite. He didn t kill me," Giacomo mutters. "In fact, he told me several times that you were engaged to him and that I must never forget that for a moment." "And yet you seem to have forgotten it now, to make such a ludicrous offer to me." "Hardly. Now more than ever this 'engagement of yours preys upon my mind, for I was in the library when you caught Yekaterina and your fiancé at a rather inopportune moment for them