She stiffened and recoiled, and he withdrew his hand. Met her gaze.
“Marigold…” he breathed. “I won’t hurt you.”
Her brow furrowed as she looked away. “I’m fine. I’ve b-been st-st-stung before.”
His fingers twitched at his side. “But you still need to be cared for.”
“I can manage.”
“I don’t doubt it.” Archie took the risk and moved closer, lifted one hand tentatively. “But that doesn’t mean you have to do it alone.”
She swallowed, her throat working for a moment before she met his gaze. Her nod was barely perceptible, but his ribcage loosened all the same.
He hastened to his desk and dug through the top drawer. “I burned my finger last month on a candle—don’t ask. Jasper got me—aha!” He palmed the small jar of salve and hurried back to her side. “May I?”
He uncapped the salve and swept some of the rose-scented balm onto his fingertips, which looked wildly oversized to be caring for such a delicate woman.
But she wasn’t delicate, was she? She only believed herself to be.
Her eyes were hooded as he leaned forward, her pulse fluttering beneath his touch. He wanted to curl his hand around her neck, hold her close and let her fall apart. But she held herself so tight, so contained and protected behind her walls. How had he gotten past them that first night? “How are your bees?”
She shuddered, and her pulse slowed under his fingers. The wound was well and truly covered in salve now, but he would not release her, not yet.
“Well. I harvested several liters of honey.” Her voice was breathy, and she licked her lips as though she could taste the sweet nectar.
Damnation, but he wanted to kiss her. He wanted to wrap her in blankets and feed her, kiss every inch of her skin until she trembled with pleasure. Then he’d make her repeat, again and again, that she was strong and brave, capable and incredible until she believed it. Because he already did.
He spoke without thinking. “Come to the farm with me.”
She blinked as she stepped back. “Your farm? Why?”
“You can think there about what the marquess offered,” he said, hoping he wasn’t on the precipice of making a tremendous mistake. “It’s peaceful.” A lie. Between the herd of sheep, a petulant rooster, and his pestering sisters, there was no peace to be had at the Grant farmstead.
But he needed to see her there, to know how she might fit into his life, even if it was an impossibility.
She seemed to wait an excruciatingly long time before nodding, a small bob of her head as her lashes flashed over her hazel eyes. “I’ll go.”
Archie grinned as a shaky laugh escaped. “Really? Wonderful! You’ll have to meet my mother and more sisters, though.”
Her smile was slow, unfurling like a flower in the first light of a long-awaited dawn. “I’d like that.”
Chapter 16
Marigoldwishedshecouldbe a person who thrived in silence, but often her mind, when faced with a vacuum of stimulation, supplied a miasma of worries and fears.
But, from the moment she set foot on the Grant farm that Saturday, she realized silence could be a wonder.
The Grant family’s homestead lay at the end of a jolting carriage ride off the main road in Rotherham, paralleled by a crumbling stone wall that Hadrian himself could have built. A herd of puffy sheep clambered over the hill on the partition’s far side, and in the distance were fields of… barley? Beans? Lord help her, she wasn’t accustomed to the country, or at least the parts of the country where people labored for their livelihoods instead of hiring others to do the work for them.
A creeping shame climbed over her. Her family had been wealthy while she’d lived at home, then she married into an even more prominent household. The only time she’d been on a workingfarm had been when the village of Harrow experienced an outbreak of influenza and she’d delivered baskets to the mourning widows.
She couldn’t imagine what Archie’s life had been like, nor how his mother and sisters still lived. But when she stepped out of the carriage and thanked the coachman who had taken her for the two-hour journey to the south of Yorkshire, her heart caught in her throat.
A fence surrounded the main house, the roses climbing over the individual posts so thick she could barely see what supported them. The house itself was two stories of roughly hewn limestone, the dormer windows rising from the peaked second story, making the home look like it was watching her. Most likely judging her and questioning why she was about to set foot on its doorstep.
“Marigold!”
Archie loped down the flagstone path and his hip bumped the fence in his haste to get to her side. His blond curls were wet, dark and flattened against his forehead and curling over the open collar of a clean white shirt. Her heart tumbled at the sight, and she fought the urge to smooth her hands over her powder pink damask skirt.
