He nodded, and then he put out his hand. “Let’s go inside. And then we’ll work out how to put things to rights together.”
Her lips parted. “We’ll… what?”
“Work it out,” he said again. “I’ll help you. It will be easier, the two of us together, than you alone.”
She could not make sense of him. It was everything she wanted—someone at her side,Spencerat her side, calm and steady and reassuring. But there was no reason for him to do it. She could not allow it, could not accept this gift she did not understand.
“Why?” she asked.
His gaze, when he spoke, was on her face. “I want to,” he said.
She had no defense for that.
His eyes were blue, a calm blue, a honey-sweet June blue. His freckled hand was open before her.
She put her fingers in his and let him help her down from the carriage.
Chapter 8
Spencer had roughly twenty seconds to feel confident in his life choices before all hell broke loose again.
Winnie’s fingers were in his. Her hand—God, he had developed something of a fetish for the calloused brush of her palm.
He had suspected from the first moment she had slipped into her cottage and emerged holding a travel bag tight to her chest that she had ulterior motives. He had tried to make her feel comfortable enough to tell him whatever secret she kept. When he’d seen her melt slowly to the ground behind the leather-goods counter, his first thought—well, second, after he’d ascertained her well-being—had been a surge of curiosity and relief. Finally, he’d thought, he’d find out whatever the hell she was hiding.
And now she’d told him.
He had thought for a moment that she would not accept his help. He recalled the way she had resisted the assistance of her neighbors in Llanreithan—determined to do everything herself, not to be indebted to someone else.
But she had taken his hand. They were in this, finally, together.
Everything would be well, he told himself, as he towed her up the steps to Number Twelve. They could sit down in the library and conspire about the jewels. All professional. All business. No more sneaking about.
And then Fairhope opened the front door, and Spencer sensed catastrophe a moment before it occurred.
Fairhope’s long, gloomy face was… glowing. He had tears in his eyes.
“Oh,” he said damply, “your ladyship!”
He was looking at Winnie.
This, Spencer thought, was not a good sign. When they’d last been in the house, Winnie was still Mrs. Coplestone-Scott. Surely… surely Fairhope could not already have heard…
Fairhope bowed so deeply he nearly prostrated himself before Winnie, rebounded to his full height, and then turned on Spencer. “It is the greatest honor of my life to welcome the new Lady Warren, my lord.”
Spencer stifled an insane urge to laugh. “I suppose,” he said, “that news traveled from Bond Street faster than our carriage?”
“Indeed, my lord. Please accept congratulations on behalf of myself and the household on your union.” Fairhope bowed again, though Spencer noted that the bow he directed at his lord did not even approach the depth of the bow he’d directed at Winnie. “I have readied the countess’s suite.”
“Ah.” That was…
He had not anticipated that. Some small part of him had supposed he might not need to make his staff aware of the alteration in Winnie’s status. Indeed, the extent to which anything had actually altered was somewhat unclear in his mind. He still needed Henry to clarify whether they were, in fact, married.
He had not, under any circumstances, imagined Winnie in the countess’s suite. Number Twelve was a large residence by London standards, but the earl’s and countess’s suites had been designed by what Spencer had always presumed was a rather lusty architect. While each suite had its own bedchamber, they shared a combined bath and dressing room. The walls were disturbingly thin. Every time she went to wash—or dress—or stand before the long mirror and unpin all that heavy hair, pulling it over one shoulder, tipping her head beneath its weight to bare the golden column of her throat—he would hear—
He chanced a glance at Winnie. She was standing stock-still beside him, a gracious smile pinned to her face.
“Wonderful,” he managed. “Thank you, Fairhope. I shall, er, show Lady Warren to her rooms.”
