“Of course I trust them. I’d trust them with my life.”
She tipped her head. “Do you trust them with their own?”
He made a small despairing sound, and flicked his eyes up to meet hers, half-amused and half-agonized. “I trust them to know their own minds, if that’s what you’re asking. I don’t trust them not to set fire to every inn between here and Scotland and reignite hostilities with France.”
“They’re twenty-five years old?”
“Yes.”
“You became Lord Warren at nineteen. I started a sheep farm at twenty.”
“That’s different. They’re mysisters,for Christ’s sake. They’re my responsibility. I have to—I have to—”
She could not help herself. She reached out and touched his hand, which had tightened into a fist. “Give them a little time to figure things out for themselves.”
Her bare hand looked small atop his. She did not think of herself that way—she was not small or fragile. Her fingers were darker than his, tanned where his were freckled. She had little scars and nicks from shears on her left thumb. Her fingers were tough and strong. Working hands. Not the hands of a countess.
As she watched, he opened his hand under hers. Slowly—ever so slowly—as though her hand was a wild bird, alight atop his own, and he did not want to frighten her away.
Suddenly, unaccountably, her heart was pounding in her ears.
He splayed his palm on the desk. Her fingers settled into the lines between his. The tip of her index finger trembled and curled up—sliding against the little V between his first two fingers.
His breath caught—or hers did. She had not known she craved this—skin on skin.
She snatched her hand away. Too quick—too quick and too clumsy—he would notice how off-balance she seemed. Heat rose in her face, fanned down her neck. She wanted to put her hand to her chest and cool her suddenly burning skin.
She wantedhishand there. Her belly flipped.
Fortunately, she was saved from any more inappropriate touching by virtue of Spencer’s sudden, slightly hoarse burst of speech.
“You should make yourself at home here.” He waved at the library. His voice had a faintly desperate edge. “With the library. The books, I mean. Read whatever you like. We have… I’m sure we have something on thread. Or sheep. Margo and Matilda have some novels. I…” He trailed off, looking at the soldierly little rows around his desk.
“These are yours, here?” She’d seen him bent over a book in the carriage, small in his large hands. He had been hasty with it, turning the pages rapidly, shoving it into his bag. She could not reconcile that memory with these neat lines.
“Yes.” He shifted beneath her gaze, a trifle uneasily.
“These books seemed untouched.” She tipped her head to where his sisters’ novels and art books sprawled. “Not the way those books are touched, at least. Touched and read and lingered over.”
“I do read them.” He hesitated, just a moment, before continuing on. “They were my father’s books. I am careful with them, that’s all. I try to put them back the way he left them.”
His words—his care—made her chest hurt.
She wanted, suddenly, to get away. To be free of this man and this place—his cautious diligence, the responsibility he held in those large, careful hands.
She could hurt him. She did not want to hurt him.
She needed to get these bloody necklaces back to their rightful owners and out of this beautiful house.
“I will need to visit my man of business,” she said abruptly. “There may be some changes to my schedule of production while I am here.”
It was true, no doubt—shewouldneed to visit the London office that arranged the distribution of her thread.
But it was not the whole truth. She meant to ascertain the whereabouts of the three aristocrats from whom her mother had stolen the jewels. She had a scheme coalescing in the back of her mind—something to do with a maid’s uniform and a delivery of soft cheeses—but she would need time to work out the details.
“I’m sorry you had to come,” Spencer said. His deep voice still held the echo of a rasp. “But you won’t need to be here long. You’ll go home. Everything will be—just as it was.”
Of course. His words were reminders, small and sharp as electric shocks.
