It was painful for her to call them a mistake. For something that should have been as simple as two people in love to be considered a mistake and the word drove a knife into him because of the truth in them. He was not blind to what they'd face, nor was he blind to what he'd go through again. This had been a mistake. A mistake that Percy would make a million times over if only to see Maggie happy.

"I haven't been living like a ghost!" Percy was quick to object, even though she was right. He had been. But for the thirteen years he had been she hadn't seen him, hadn't known that had been his life and had no right to suggestion as much. He'd met ladies who would be perfectly suitable - Lissy threw them at him with startling regularity - but he had never grown attached. Until Miss Beauregard. Miss Beauregard had shown him that such a life could still be possible for him. It hadn't mattered though. He wasn't a good match, no lady would want him. Miss Beauregard hadn't, Maggie hadn't, who was to say Miss Jennings would? Or Miss Welsh? What was two years in the grand scheme of things? It'd make him no less lame, no more interesting. He'd still be Percy Adlard, the boy who was never good enough.

"Maggie," Percy started, taking her hands in his despite the deep frustration he felt rising again. "How can you ask me to walk away again when you said it would kill you?" His tone was soothing, complacent, appealing to her common sense. To throw his life away for her's? It was the only thing that made sense to him. "Two years isn't a very long time." He added, thirteen years had passed already. What was two more?