She left her bedchamber, closing the door quietly behind herself, not wanting Joseph to hear her leaving just in case he was still awake.
She turned and nearly ran right into his chest.
His eyes bore down on her. Catriona overcame her surprise quickly, but her heartbeat steadily picked up speed the longer they stood there staring at each other.
He broke the silence first. “I was just coming to see you,” he said, sounding slightly tentative.
Catriona said nothing for a long moment, a voice in the back of her head telling her to just walk away. But while her mind said one thing, she went with her heart. “In the dark?”
“I know my way around well enough,” he told her.
Catriona said nothing in response. She counted the seconds and told herself that she would walk away if he said nothing by the time she made it to fifteen.
At eleven, he scratched the back of his head and asked, “Will you walk with me?”
Catriona didn’t hesitate to nod then hated herself a little for it. To redeem a bit of her pride, she handed the candle to Joseph and walked away. If they were going to walk, he would have to follow her lead.
He took the candle without protest and fell in step behind her. She didn’t have a destination in mind when she left her bedchamber so as she walked, she quickly tried to think of the best place to go. She settled on the library since she deemed it large enough for her to keep her space from him but close enough that they didn’t have to walk all the way downstairs.
Upon arriving at the library, she immediately made her way over to the closest bookshelf and pretended to look for a book.She tried not to focus on him as he set the candle down and approached her from behind. This was not what she’d wanted to happen. The library was supposed to be safe space where she could think straight, knowing that she could keep one side of the room while he kept to the other.
Catriona drifted away, needing the space so that she could think a little clearer. He trailed behind.
She went further still, eyes idly scanning the bookshelf, all too aware of Joseph following behind her. At last, she turned to face him, breath hitching in her throat when she saw just how close he was.
“Why are you following me?” she demanded to know.
“I’m waiting for you to face me,” he replied.
Catriona scowled. For some reason, she felt safer hiding behind that expression. “Why? What do you want from me?”
“I… want to apologize.”
She waited.
He blinked.
She raised a brow.
Joseph swallowed.
“You are quite terrible at this,” she observed.
He released a breath he’d clearly been holding. That was what she realized that he seemed on edge. Nothing like the collected, self-assured man she knew he was.
“I have been trying to think of the right words to say to you all evening,” he confessed. “And no matter what I come up with, I can’t think of the proper way of telling you how sorry I am for how I treated the situation earlier. I… I don’t want you to think that of me that way. And I didn’t mean what I said about regretting the marriage. The truth is that I think marrying you was one of the best decisions I have ever made.”
She didn’t dare show him how his words affected her, but her heart was doing impossible things in her chest. “You seemed rather convinced earlier.”
“I spoke out of anger,” he said, raking his fingers through his hair in obvious frustration. “The truth is that you are someone who is willing to defend Dorothea so fiercely. I wanted an adult figure for her, someone who would be able to provide female guidance that I did not think I could give to her. But you have gone above and beyond. You’ve shown her the kind of love and tenderness that was never expected of you, simply because it is in your nature. I could never regret marrying someone like that.”
She accepted his words with a nod, telling herself not to let them capture her heart completely. She had to remain levelheaded ifshe wanted to keep herself from slipping any further down the slope she was on.
“I don’t understand why you got so angry in the first place,” she said.
Joseph moved to stand next to the bookshelf, leaning against it with his arms crossed. “I could not bear for something to happen to her. I cannot lose anyone else.”
It should have been against her better judgment to touch him, but it felt natural, as if there was no other response she could have given. She brushed his arm gently. “She was never in any danger, Joseph. I never would have allowed it.”
