He had no trouble parsing that, especially not when she'd clearly slowed down for him. Secure in the idea of her happiness, indeed. The irony of Don Juan's situation was that he could have dissolved the arrangement very easily by talking to anyone else; if he'd said even once to her siblings or parents that he didn't love her or didn't want to marry her, they would have dropped him instantly. But having just fled a duel in England he was eager not to find himself on the receiving end of another one any time soon — and nevermind what it would do to her to have the engagement disrupted so unceremoniously.

"I wish," he said wistfully — in English, because he was more soliloquizing than he was trying to convey anything to her at the moment. "I could take you somewhere. The Cliffs of Moher. The Alpine Mountains. The tulip fields in Holland. I wish we had something special. It's hard to do anything romantic in a situation like this, but I wish we had something grand to look back on." It would have been nice to think that when he left there would be some mix of memories; something sweet to accompany the hurt that he was sure to leave. As it was, the best he had given her was a handful of hurried kisses in the corner of a garden at someone's party. Hardly enough to stand up in the face of what would come next.

But it made him feel better about himself to think that he would have given her some fond memories, if the circumstances had made it easier for him to do so. Obviously he couldn't kidnap her and whisk her away to the Alps; he could barely pry her away from her mother and grandmother long enough to walk down a hill alone. But if he couldn't act on anything, it was at least helpful to his self-image to think his intentions were good; that he had only ever wanted to give her some fun and a touch of adventure.

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