Here’s the scene I’ve been working on; the one where my hero and heroine confront their differences and realise that they do not have a future. I was trying for an irresistible force and immovable object thing. Disclaimer: this is first draft, unedited, and not proofread.
Just to set the scene, it starts as Rede and Elizabeth leave church on Sunday morning. Rain has stopped the birthday picnic, and so Rede has been commissioned to keep Elizabeth away from the house while the other members of the house party prepare a party for her.
A grinning Willie Bush had the chaise ready for them in the lane, and Rede handed her up into it. He slid in beside her, took up the reins, and told Willie, “Stand away, Bush, and thank you.”
Anne was silent while he guided the horses through the home-going crowd. They passed the gates to the Squire’s house, and turned right into River Road.
Rede had planned this. She should have realised earlier that morning, when she saw his two prize bays hitched to the chaise for the under groom to drive. She was torn between annoyance and a certain pleasure at his persistence.
He broke the silence. “You have been avoiding me, Anne.”
“I have,” she acknowledged, deciding that confrontation was safer than conciliation. “You do not seem to have taken the meaning I intended, however.”
He let out an impatient huff of air. “Should I take silence as an answer? No. I need you to say the words.”
They were silent as he coaxed the horses onto the bridge, then turned to pass the mill.
“I have been told to keep you from the house for one hour,” he said, “so I thought we would drive past the Roman fort, and then back across the bridge at the far end of the estate.”
An hour! How could she bear it, with his long warm thigh pressing against hers under the waterproof cover. She shifted, moving slightly to the left.
“You don’t need to be afraid of me,” Rede told her. “I will never do anything you did not want.”
“And yet, here I am,” she replied, tartly.
He shifted too, withdrawing slightly so that they no longer touched. Perversely, she missed the comfort, and had to fight the urge to follow.
“I won’t deny that I want you,” he said. “I think about you constantly. I dream of you at night. I imagine caressing every inch of you, kissing you, tasting you, completing what we began the other night. If you are honest, Anne, you will acknowledge that you want me, too.”
“What I want or do not want does not matter.” Anne sat up straighter. “All that matters is what my family needs.”
“Can you not have both?” he coaxed. “Can you not meet your family’s needs and your own?”