Keep touching her, whispered a wicked voice within.
“Perhaps I should not have asked.”
“No,” he bit out with more force than necessary. “You should not have done.”
But he was still holding her, somehow reluctant to sever the connection between them, however tenuous, however unlikely.
“Forgive me.” She tugged her hand from his and rose from the bench, slipping further into the darkness.
He rose, following her, swallowing more than one flavor of regret. “Clementine.”
She spun about in a swirl of dark skirts. Because he had been watching her earlier through dinner, he knew they were lush, vibrant red silk rather than the almost-ebony they appeared in the absence of shimmering gas lamps.
“You blame me for what happened,” she said.
It was not a question.
He did not bother with pretense. “Should I not?”
“You think poorly of me.”
Once again, her words were not query but statement. He found himself pondering them. Did he? It was undeniable that when he had arrived at the house party, he had. She was a meddler, the reason Anna had been forced to marry Huntly.
But now…
What the devil had gotten into him?
Now, the lines were blurring, becoming indistinct. Right and wrong no longer seemed finite. And the blame he had cast upon her did not seem entirely deserving. She was not a heartless wretch as he had once supposed. She had a sharp wit, Lady Clementine Hammond. She met him verbal thrust for parry.
For some reason, he very much did not want her to disappear deeper into the gardens thinking he believed the worst of her. Very well. The reason was because he…
Egads.
He cared about Lady Clementine Hammond’s opinion.
Likely because of the way his body reacted to hers, he reasoned. Her kisses. The wine he had drunk at dinner. The knock he had taken to the head in the wee hours of the morning when he had shifted too near to the headboard in his sleep… There had to be an explanation which made sense.
Somehow, he could find none.
“I do not think poorly of you, Clementine,” he admitted with great reluctance.
“Oh?” Her tone was cool, her posture, even in the sprightly silver gilt of the moon, defensive.
It was a fair question. Still, before his arrival, he had been persuaded that he did not like her at all. That she was a dreadful person. A purveyor of misery.
Now?
He swallowed. “I do not,” he repeated. “However, you asked your question and now I must have my turn. Why did you make certain to catch Lady Anna and Huntly alone?”
She stilled. “Our bargain was a question and an answer for the same.”
He supposed he had not answered her question. And the reason for that was plain.
“I believed myself in love with her,” he admitted. “Now…I am not as certain as I once was. The years have intervened.”
Shehad intervened, in more ways than one.
Though he kept that bit to himself.
