Blast.
Patience, he reminded himself.
Then he’d gone and botched the rest of the conversation. When she’d asked why he would help her, he’d responded with the truth—quid pro quo—but it wasn’t the entire truth. Another truth lay deeper and closer to the heart of the matter. He didn’t like seeing this woman shouldering the burden of handling Montfort, alone. She would do anything for her family, that was clear, but that she was doing it alone, sat wrongly inside him.
She didn’t have to be alone.
That was what he should have told her this afternoon.
To his right appeared the conservatory. He stopped to take in its stone and glass magnificence illuminated from within like a water globe held to the light. Legend had it that his mother had personally overseen its construction, ensuring it attached to the south-facing wall of Gardencourt and was constructed of ground-to-roof glass with just enough stone and mortar to hold the panes in place.
Deeper inside, movement caught his eye.Isabel, lit like an actress on the stage, meandering and weaving through greenery and statuary. Her face wore an unguarded expression, as if she ambled through an enchanted forest and desired nothing more than to become lost in its mysteries.
She was transfixingly lovely, he could admit, but not in the way so many women wrapped themselves in the cold fortress of their beauty. This woman wasappealing, a warm humanity radiating from her that was rare. He’d spent too many years around people who had either forgotten or purposely discarded their humanity, who regarded it as weakness. This woman used it as a strength, as a guiding compass.
With a will of their own, his feet began moving, not toward his stark room in Rosebud Cottage, which somehow retained a wintery chill in the heat of summer and where he should be heading, but toward the warmth and the light.
Towardher.
He pulled open the iron and glass door and was instantly greeted by a rush of humid air and the particular earthy aroma of the conservatory. The door clicked shut behind him, and he began wending through all manner of plants. Orchids and gardenias and even a spiky American aloe, but mostly well-pruned orange, lemon, and lime trees that had doubled in size since last he’d seen them. All these plants and trees dated back to his mother, who had chosen them with an eye toward both practicality and beauty.
Even as his mind pulled toward memories of playing all manner of childhood games here, so too, was he very much in the present, all too aware that he drew nearer toher, his heart inserting an extra beat into its rhythm with every step he took. By the time he was within sight of her, his heart raced in his chest.
Just beyond a rangy camellia shrub, she tested the weight of a low-hanging orange in her ungloved palm, her cheeks flushed with humidity. Her eyes drifted shut as she leaned in and sniffed the fruit.
“You can take it if you like,” he found himself calling out.
Her eyes flew open, and she startled back, a sheepish smile on her lips, a laugh escaping her. Then her smile faltered, but not before it occurred to Percy that to smile had been her first instinct. She contained a light inside her that hadn’t yet been extinguished by whatever life—and Montfort—had thrown at her.
Percy wanted some of her light for himself. He had for days. And that wanting, no matter how he tried to avoid and outwit it only increased with every moment spent with her. For herein lay the trouble:
He did nothing by half measures. If he took a taste of her light, he wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d consumed it all.
“Are you sure?”
“You’re Lady Percival,” he replied, only half ironically. “Nothing at Gardencourt isn’t yours.”
Her head canted to the side, and a private, little smile curled about the corners of her mouth. She was considering his words, whether or not to enter the fiction with him. She plucked the fruit. “This place is bewitching.”
Percy moved closer, he couldn’t help himself. He twisted an orange off a branch. “For a child, it’s the most magical place in the world. At least once a day, I would escape my governess, the mighty Frau Gerta, and hide in here for hours at a time.”
“Were you a very naughty boy?”
Oh, how he liked the way she asked that question. “Frau Gerta certainly thought so. I could never make her understand that I was an explorer of the deepest, darkest jungles of Africa and Amazonia.”
“Ah, a misunderstood boy. On the hunt for gold, I presume?”
“Silver would do in a pinch.”
“Did you wrestle jaguars?”
“Pythons, too.”
“Fight off blood-thirsty piranhas?”
“I can show you the bite marks on my legs.”
This got a laugh from her, and Percy felt like the lad he once was, the one who would go to any lengths to pull a smile from a pretty girl.
