Call off the wedding? A waiter had just started pouring tea, and the trickling of water made it hard for
Noelle to hear clearly.
She was sure that she had misheard Sebastian. Her eyes stayed fixed on him, slightly glassy.
Even though she had no idea how to read lips, in that tense moment, she still tried to figure out what he was saying just by watching his mouth.
He looked into her eyes and felt more certain than ever that she was there to call off the wedding. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be looking at him like that. There was a faint, pleading look in her eyes.
Sebastian lowered his head, refusing to meet her gaze. The look in her eyes was like a blade, cutting straight through him.
He forced a casual tone as he said, “It’s okay if you want to call off the wedding.”
His voice stayed soft, reassuring. “The truth is, my family hasn’t made any big arrangements yet. We haven’t even sent out invitations, and the hotel is one of ours, so we could cancel it anytime. Hardly anyone in Norland even knows about us anyway, so we could just pretend it never happened.”
He didn’t want Noelle caught up in any public gossip. The last thing he wanted was to give people more to
talk about when it came to her.
But she just sat there, a little dazed.
She felt it was strange. He was speaking coherently, yet for some reason it sounded like gibberish to her, something she couldn’t make sense of no matter how she tried.
It took her a good 20 seconds before she finally drew in a breath and asked, “Call it off? I never said I wanted to call it off. Are you planning to call off the wedding?”
She ran through the possibilities in her head, and that was the only one that made sense. He wanted to break it off, and all of this was just his way of easing into it.
If Sebastian wanted to walk away, she could understand. Even before Patrick’s incident, the Spencer family wasn’t exactly top–tier. And after everything that happened, it was only natural for the Cole family to see the Spencers as too ordinary. After all, the Coles were the opposite.
Her engagement to Sebastian had been like hitting the jackpot, something completely out of the blue for someone like her. She had always known it was a long shot from the start, which was why she could
accept it if he decided to walk away.
Noelle lifted her head to look at Sebastian.
His eyes widened in shock. “You’re not the one wanting to call it off? How could I possibly want to call it
off?”
Chapter 23
Almost without thinking, she echoed his words. “How could I possibly want to call it off?”
Both of them, who had no intention of ending their engagement, were now sitting here talking about ending it. They looked equally confused.
It wasn’t until a moment later that Sebastian realized he had misunderstood her, and that his misunderstanding had made her misunderstand him too.
What Noelle had just said sent a warm rush through his chest. How could he possibly want to call off the wedding? Was that truly how she felt too?
Chapter 74
Chapter 74