She’d imagined him intent on her, watching her ever so closely. But she hadn’t expected that look in his eyes, hadn’t expected him to exhale when she finally looked at him. She hadn’t expected him to move closer still, as if he’d spent long years alone and only she could fill that hollowness inside him.
He leaned forward. His lips were close to hers, so close that she might have stretched up the barest inch and kissed him. But she wasn’t going to close that gap. She willed it into existence, demanded that it stay there. And he didn’t move any nearer.
“How deceptive,” he remarked.
It was such an odd thing to say; she blinked and looked up at him.
“It’s some kind of illusion,” he said. “Or a painter’s trick. Until this moment, I had the distinct impression that you were a lady of ordinary dimensions.” His fingers stroked her cheek with a gentle brush. “But now you’re close and you’re not moving, and I can see the truth. You’re tiny.”
“I am small,” she said, “but mighty.”
His touch was warm on her jaw. “Have you ever watched ants? They scurry about carrying crumbs three times their size. You’ve no need to remind me of your strength. It’s great big fellows like me who crack under the strain.”
He was great. And big. He was touching her as if she were some delicate thing.
“Tell me, Miss Marshall,” he said. “As unconventional as you are… Hypothetically speaking, have you ever considered taking a lover?”
As he spoke his fingers slid down her neck, resting briefly against her pulse. He must feel it hammering away, must know the effect he was having on her.
“As we are speaking hypothetically,” she told him, “I suppose that a woman can only break so many rules. I’ve chosen the ones that I shatter very, very carefully.”
“Ah,” he said. But he didn’t move away.
“I tell myself all those things,” she said, “but I’m a suffragette, not a statue. I have the same desires as any person. I want to touch and be touched, hold and be held. So yes, Mr. Clark. I have, hypothetically, thought of taking lovers.”
His eyes darkened. But perhaps he could tell that there was more to come.
“But we are speaking hypothetically. I don’t think I would do it in truth unless one thing were true.”
“Yes?”
“I would have to trust the man.”
His fingers came to a standstill on her throat. His eyes sought hers. For a long, fraught moment, he didn’t say anything. He didn’t protest. He didn’t demand an explanation. He didn’t erupt in anger.
Instead, ever so slowly, his mouth tilted up in a sardonic smile. “Well.” He spoke quietly. “That rather rules me out.”
She hadn’t known she was holding her breath until she let it out. “Yes. It does.”
“Just as well,” he returned. “I wouldn’t like you half so much if you let yourself spin breathless fantasies about me.”
Oh, she’d spun breathless fantasies. She was spinning one now, damning herself for having good sense when she could be getting a proper kiss instead. Later, she’d think back on this moment and imagine a thousand different endings.
For now, she swallowed back all that ill-advised want. She smiled at him—teasingly, she hoped, with no limpid doe-eyed desire—and shrugged a shoulder. “Oh, look at that. I am coming up in the world. I have graduated from mild indifference to a moderate preference.”
But she couldn’t trust even that assertion on his part. He was charming, but he was a terrible scoundrel. And if he intended to seduce her… Well, he was doing a bang-up job of it. How she wished her foolish reason didn’t assert itself over her desire. She suspected he was the kind of bounder who could make her feel very, very good before he casually destroyed her life.
“If ever you change your mind,” he said, “do let me know.”
“You mean, if I decide to trust you?”
For a moment, his eyes grew dark. His fingers tapped against her cheek. And then he moved away. “I’m a realist, Miss Marshall. I don’t hope for things that can never be. I meant that you might one day relax your requirements.” He turned away. “Now go home and sleep. I’ll watch the mails.”
Chapter Seven
“IT’S SO GOOD TO SEE YOU, Lady Amanda.”
Lady Amanda Ellisford sat, her hands clasped around a saucer, trying to remember why she was doing this again. Oh, yes. That was it. She was doing this because apparently, she loved pain.
Not that there was anything inherently painful about visiting Free’s sister in law. Nothing at all. Mrs. Jane Marshall was perfectly lovely. Her secretary was…more than that.
Once, Amanda had made morning and afternoon visits alike with no sense of unease. Now, though, the trappings of the social call—the plate of biscuits and sandwiches, the clink of cup and saucer—served as an ever-present reminder of what she no longer was.
She was no longer the girl who sat in pink-papered drawing rooms yearning for more.
And yet here she was. Sitting. In a drawing room.
“Just Amanda will do,” she said, trying not to sound stiff. “There’s no need to Lady Amanda me.”
Time was, there’d been nothing stiff about her under circumstances like these. She’d known how to make small talk about nothing at all for hours on end—a consequence of having had nothing in her life to talk about. But the skill had atrophied after years of disuse, and now, it seemed as if it had been some other girl who had been able to chatter away without flinching.
Today, even the tick of the clock behind them seemed to reprimand her. You no longer belong here. You walked away. Why do you think you can simply come back?
It echoed a long-remembered voice. You went away once. I wish you’d do it again, and never come back.
Mrs. Jane Marshall obviously had never known what it meant to be conscious of her every move. She wore a day gown of pink-and-orange checks, trimmed with yellow lace. It would have been a hideous combination on another woman—like imagining flamingo feathers stuck haphazardly in a chicken’s tail. On her, it just…was.
Amanda felt like the badly feathered one in the room.
“I’m only in London a few more days,” she said. “Free asked if I would bring by a few letters—and this for the boys.” She held out an envelope and a brightly wrapped package.
“She spoils them,” Jane said, but she smiled as she took the package. “I’ll be sure to write her a thank-you. And thank you so much for bringing it by.”