Only now was she able to take in his attire. “And what are you doing dressed like that?” She swept her arm up and down to indicate his entire person from slouch hat to plain workman’s clothes to dusty brown boots.
“Dressed like what?” he asked. As if he didn’t know.
“Like a…a…aman.”
He shifted his shoulder against the doorframe and crossed his arms over his chest. A blaze of something flashed behind his eyes. “Oh, I can assure you,” he said, usual sardonic smile coming to a curl about his mouth. “I am very much a man.”
Now that her body had begun heating up, it couldn’t seem to stop. Beads of sweat would be dripping down her face before long. But he couldn’t possibly know that—could he?—so she pressed on. “You know exactly what I mean. Why aren’t you dressed as your usual dukely self?” Before he could answer, she held up a staying hand. “Wait, what are you doing here at all?” A suspicion flared, and her eyes narrowed. “Are you following me?” Another suspicion reared its head. “Did Archie—or worse,Amelia—send you?”
Ravensworth snorted and shook his head. “I so happened to be at one of my country estates when I heard of the traveling theater company in the area.”
Now it was Delilah’s turn to snort. “Is there any county in England where you don’t own property?”
He didn’t miss a beat. “Cornwall.”
The flickering light from the caravan’s single lantern caught the line of his jaw, illuminating its strong line and day’s growth of golden stubble. She couldn’t help wondering if he knew of the effect it had on her.Most definitely.She’d never met a man more supremely aware of his effect on the world.
He cocked his head. “Aren’t you supposed to be spending the summer in Switzerland?”
Delilah drew herself up to her haughtiest height—even from her seated position on the short stool. “My whereabouts are none of your concern.”
It was worth a try, anyway.
Ravensworth nodded slowly, as if giving her words due consideration. “That is entirely true, but…”
Delilah waited, breath held, for him to finish the sentence. It was possible he was intentionally torturing her.
“But your whereabouts are your family’s concern.”
A point she couldn’t argue—not that she owed this man an explanation. But her family…
It was quite simply that Amelia, Archie, and Juliet were now all happily married and settled and starting families. She couldn’t always be hanging about—the unmarried spinster sister.
Delilah experienced the pang she always felt at the thought of Juliet—a pang of loss. Which was silly, really. Juliet hadn’t died. She was alive and well in the wilds of the Scottish Highlands.
Her younger cousin by a year, Juliet had come to live with her uncle, aunt, and Windermere cousins after her parents had perished in a carriage accident. Juliet had been part of Delilah’s life since before she’d begun forming memories. And since Juliet’s marriage to one of the most wonderful men on the entire planet, Lord Rory Macbeth—a marriage Delilah didn’t begrudge her cousin in the least—it simply felt that a sizeable portion of her heart held a void.
So, it only followed that after Juliet’s elopement in April an idea would spring to mind. It was quite simple, really.
She didn’t have to hang about.
She’d sought out the theater company that had been traveling through the area of Scotland where she and Juliet had been visiting and inquired about their summer schedule, which so happened to have them traveling south with the intention of arriving in London by fall.
It had been too perfect an opportunity and impossible to resist. From there, the invention of a Swiss friend and a yearning for some Alpine mountaineering had been a short hop. She’d joined Ye Olde Albion Players a few weeks later, thereby seizing the chance to run off for a summer. After all, just as her family had their own lives to lead, so, too, did she—a destiny to fulfill and her own happiness to pursue.
And she owed the man before her none of this explanation.
Yet…he didn’t seem to understand that. “You cannot stay here,LadyDelilah,” he said, smug, so certain of his rightness.
It was impossible to miss his emphasis onlady.
“Shh,” she hushed, peering around him to make sure no one was within listening distance. “I’m Lilah here.”
“Lilah,” he repeated. Something flashed behind his eyes. If she didn’t know better, she might think he liked that name for her.
And a responsive something flashed inside her, too—something that made deep, secret places slightly uncomfortable.
Something she’d felt before with this man, truth told. Something she always shoved to the side and ignored.
