Cold-hearted wretch that he was, he likely savored them.
“Take the handkerchief, Lady Philippa,” he urged, his baritone cutting through the silence that had descended.
“I want nothing of yours, thank you.”
“You are weeping.”
“How indecorous of you to take note.”
“Pippa.”
“Mrs. Shaw,” she reminded, turning toward him at last.
He had moved to the edge of the bench upon which he sat, bringing his long legs despicably near to her skirts. Invading her territory just as he had commandeered her carriage.
He did not rescind the offering, merely held it there between them as if it were an olive branch. “Take the handkerchief, Mrs. Shaw.”
At last, he had called her by her married name. Not a victory, not when he was still so near, frowning at her. Smelling just as he once had, of musk and bay with a hint of lemon. Bringing back memories she had no wish to recall.
Memories she wouldnotrecall. Ruthlessly, she quashed recollections of whirling about a ballroom in his arms. Him smiling down at her. Slipping onto the moonlit terrace at a long-ago country house party.
“I am not weeping.” She blinked as another teardrop spilled from her eye, marking her for a liar.
Humming his disapproval, he slid forward. Wildly, she wondered what he meant to do. How she might escape him within the tight confines of her carriage. The handkerchief loomed nearer, then slid over her cheek as gently as a kiss, soaking up the tears.
Kindness? From the Duke of Northwich?
She jerked her head back with such force, she struck it on the carriage wall. She did not want his sympathy, his presence in her carriage, or his meddlesome interference in her life. She did not want him anywhere near her.
Ever again.
“I want you out of this carriage,” she told him.
But instead of heeding her, he pressed the monogrammed square into her hand. “Here you are. No need to bother with its return. I havemouchoirsaplenty.”
As if she would deign to use or keep his handkerchief. It burned her as if it were fashioned of flame. The square of fabric held the warmth of his body, and absorbing it now seemed somehow terribly intimate.
A betrayal.
“Your grief and shock is understandable,” he said softly.
More kindness. She did not want him to attempt to understand her. To act as if he possessed a heart when she knew he did not.
But then, that had been part of his charm, had it not? The pretense that he cared. Once a liar, forever a liar.
She crumpled the handkerchief in her clenched fist. “Do not pretend to commiserate, I beg you. I cannot bear more of your lies.”
* * *
Roland could not becertain which was more bitterly ironic, that Pippa believed himself to be a liar when she had been married to England’s most detestable dissembler, or that even as she sat across from him, exuding loathing, he longed to take her in his arms.
To give her comfort.
To promise her he would protect her, keep her safe.
To travel back in time to when he had been young and foolish and full of arrogance, thinking there would be no chance he could lose her. And to kick that young buck’s arse and open his eyes to the depths to which a man like George Shaw would sink. To this day, Shaw’s easy, flawless routing of him nettled like a bur beneath a horse’s saddle.
But it was a moot point. Roland could not offer her comfort, nor could he protect her from whatever danger her scoundrel of a husband had invited into her life. He most certainly could not go back to the innocent days of their courtship. There was no sign of them now, not in the raw agony of this moment, her enmity for him so glaringly apparent.Hell, the cool, harsh woman before him bore no resemblance to the smiling, carefree girl fresh from the schoolroom who had stolen his heart with such ease. One would never imagine they had once been at the cusp of a marriage.
