Finally, Viola’s thoughts became too loud, too shouty to easily push aside. And lying scandalously curled against Malcolm in no way helped to clarify her thinking.
With great reluctance, she pulled back.
“Better?” Malcolm asked.
Nodding, she slid off his lap and onto the sofa beside him.
He met her eyes, but the carefully blank expression in his own gave away nothing.
Viola blushed in earnest, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear. Worried that her eyes would betray her own longings, she looked around the room.
She had visited Thistle Muir once before, but at the time, she hadn’t thought of the parlor as Malcolm’s home.
As a place that would tell her a story of him.
Now . . . she studied the space with different eyes.
The room appeared well-loved . . . in the best sense of the word.
It shone in the rubbed nap of the fine Aubusson carpet.
In the foolscap piled and stacked atop a desk before one of the tall windows.
In the chippedcloisonnéon a sideboard, brimming with foxglove and peonies freshly cut from the garden.
In the worn leather footstool before the fireplace, a stack of loosely piled journals atop it—The Atheneaum, Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine,and even one dog-eared corner of what had to beThe Rabble Rouser.
The room rang with the laughter of a thousand conversations, with whispered late-night confidences and cozy discussions before the fire.
I could spend my life in a room like this, Viola thought.
It was a room not unlike her own parlor in the vicarage in Westacre, smelling of linseed oil and lavender.
And now that she knew Malcolm, she saw him everywhere.
The wingback chair before the hearth sagged in his shape. The literary journals, of course, were a nod to his well-read mind. Beside the desk, there was a bookshelf piled with leather-bound books, sometimes two-deep. The titles leapt across the room—Paradise Lost, The Rights of Man, Hamlet, Candide.
She rose from the sofa, one book lover eager to peruse the library of another.
“Could I offer ye some tea?” Malcolm’s voice came from behind her.
Viola startled and looked over her shoulder at him—standing so broad and bearded.
Goodness but he saturated the air of every space he inhabited.
“Tea?” she echoed.
“Aye, tea. I hear it’s all the rage with ye English.” He smiled, further obliterating her wits. “Ethan may be on the road to Aberdeen, and my housekeeper and maid may have their afternoon off today—Isla Liston is ‘great with child’ as the Bible describes it, and Mrs. McGregor is tending to her—but I can boil water for tea.”
Viola blinked at all the information.
No wonder the house felt so still. It was just herself and Malcolm within its walls.
Up to this point, they had skirted the bounds of propriety but hadn’t crossed them. Not until today. Until this moment.
Thank goodness no one knew she was here. If they were found together like this, she and Malcolm would likely have to marry.
Hmmm.
