She pried it from his hand and ripped open the brown paper to the jewelry inside.
“Ohhh,” she breathed, eyes wide and shining. “Mother, look! A beautiful, beautiful necklace, with the most cunning little portrait-locket I’ve ever seen.” Her fingers pried open the clasp. She glanced up at him, brow furrowed. “It’s empty!”
“I know.” The words came out so garbled, he had to clear his throat and begin anew. “I know,” he said again, jamming his hands in his pockets. “I thought…If you like, that is, while we’re waiting for Madame Rousseau to arrive…I would paint a miniature for you. Your portrait, I mean. If you’d like to sit for me.”
“I’d love it!” She clasped the locket to her chest, the chain dangling between her fingers. “Oh, Mother, say yes! Say yes, say yes, say yes.”
Rose said nothing.
Gavin shifted his feet.
“I suppose,” she said at last. “But afterward, we’re leaving.”
Jane squealed and danced about the room, oblivious to the finality in her mother’s tone, and the blankness in Rose’s eyes.
Gavin, however, was not. Her careful tone, her tense posture, her guarded expression all combined to say the words she hadn’t spoken aloud, to confirm his worst fear. All the gifts in the world couldn’t keep them indefinitely. In less than a week’s time, she and her daughters would leave him.
And they wouldn’t be back.
Chapter 24
With the gifts delivered safely to his nieces and his discovery of Lady Stanton’s matrimonial plan souring both his appetite and his muse, Gavin avoided the breakfast room and his studio alike in favor of his office.
His steps quickened as he strode away from the nursery. A few hours solitude would not come amiss before a flurry of birthday activities. Having already dispatched his response to Miss Pemberton’s stepfather, Gavin now needed to confront the duplicitous woman herself. Not outside her chamber, where anyone in the guest quarters might overhear. Not in the middle of Jane’s birthday party, either, where curious eyes would be on them at every moment. He needed her now. He needed her alone. He needed her—Good Lord, what the devil was the woman doing outside his office door?
Gavin stood in the shadows and waited. Miss Pemberton gave no indication of having heard him approach from a connecting corridor.
She raised a gloved hand and poised her fist a few inches from the door’s surface, as if to rap her knuckles against the wood. She paused, frowned, lowered her hand without knocking. She tugged off her gloves and shoved them in a pocket. No pocket. The crumpled kidskin fluttered to the floor. She bent to retrieve them, unwittingly presenting Gavin with an unexpected view of the perfect derrière.
As she swiped for the gloves, pins flew from her hair. The longer she stayed bent over to retrieve the lost pins, the more gravity worked on her heavy mass of coiled hair. What might’ve once been a chignon slid from the back of her head to off-center of her crown, and then exploded in a jumble of tangled curls.
Miss Pemberton sighed, righted herself, shook her head. Any lingering pins tumbled to the floor. She allowed them to remain there. After dumping the handful of pins she’d managed to collect into one of her gloves, she returned her attention to the door. Once again, she made as if to knock, then seemed to think better of the movement. She used her raised hand to comb through her unruly curls instead, as if belatedly realizing a lack of hairpins might well portend a lack of style. Locks tamed as much as they would ever be, Miss Pemberton lifted her chin, straightened her shoulders, and reached directly for the doorknob.
Gavin stepped forth from the shadows. “You wanted to see me?”
She squeaked and spun to face him, hands clutched to her throat. This action dislodged both gloves and hairpins, sending the entire collection on a return journey to her feet. She muttered something that sounded suspiciously like a curse before fixing Gavin with a blinding smile. He didn’t trust blinding smiles.
“Er, yes. Good morning, Mr. Lioncroft.”
Without returning the greeting, he retrieved her gloves and swept past her into his office. He circled his desk, placed the gloves atop its neatly organized surface, and dropped into his chair.
Miss Pemberton hesitated only a moment before inching into the room.
“Close the door.”
“I don’t know if that’s a wise idea,” she mumbled.
“Of course it’s not,” he said briskly. “Neither was coming to see me unchaperoned. As that’s never stopped you before and I was hoping to catch you alone in any case, we may as well make the most of a fortuitous situation. Close the door.”
She did, and promptly plastered her back against it as if already planning her escape. “You were hoping to catch me alone?”
“As were you me, I daresay, or you wouldn’t be here now. Shall we spend a few more minutes informing each other of the obvious, or shall we cut directly to the point?”
“The point,” she agreed faintly, resting one hand on the doorknob. “I…don’t want to be missed.”
“No?” Gavin leaned back in his chair to study her. “No, I suppose not. Although, some would say a chit who steals away from her legal guardian should surelyexpectto be missed. Would you not agree?”
She blanched. “I…Legal guardian?”
