Aday passed.
And then another.
On the third day following the disastrous ball, Elizabeth woke from a fitful slumber in her guest chamber at Hamilton House and performed her morning ablutions before dressing in yet another ill-fitting borrowed gown from Hattie. Angel rolled onto her back and stretched, her mouth opening in a kittenish yawn.
She had spent every hour hidden inside her guest chamber, visited solely by Hattie and the maid who brought her tea and meals she left mostly untouched on their trays.
Each time Hattie appeared, Elizabeth asked her the same question.
“Is he still waiting?”
And on every occasion, the answer remained the same.
“He’s still waiting.”
Like her, Torrie hadn’t left Hamilton House either. He was here, beneath the same roof, waiting for her to agree to see him. His persistence was steadily chipping away at her resolve to keep him at bay. But it wasn’t just his refusal to leave without her.
It was also the small gifts he had delivered to her chamber at regular intervals. Books of poetry. Chicken livers for Angel. A plate of her favorite apple pudding, which she hadn’t even supposed he had noticed she favored. A small wooden half heart he must have carved himself. A sketch of Angel he had neatly inscribed withLady Razor Claws.
Elizabeth wasn’t sure which was worse, his quiet acceptance of her refusal to see him, or the gifts. The thoughtfulness inherent in them, each a reminder of what she had come to love about him: his caring, his charm, his sense of humor, the way he noticed and remembered everything about her.
“Oh Angel,” she murmured, returning to the bed where Angel remained comfortably curled and giving the cat’s belly a fond rub. “I’m afraid that I miss him.”
And that she still loved him.
That she would never stop loving him, regardless of what he had done with Lady Worthing. Her emotions were not like a water pump, turned off with ease.
“What shall I do?” she asked Angel miserably.
She could not carry on as she was, a guest in Hattie and Montrose’s town house, avoiding her husband indefinitely as she hid away in a chamber with no companion save her cat. And she was strong enough now, she thought, to at least face Torrie again without humiliating herself.
“I suppose you are right,” she told the cat. “I must see him.”
But oh, how difficult it would be to guard her heart as she knew she must. She would have to cling to her resolve and to the bitter memory of him alone in his study with Lady Worthing. Those undone buttons on his falls.
A knock sounded at the door, and she gave Angel another pet before straightening and marching across the chamber. No doubt, it was a servant bearing a breakfast tray, or perhaps even Hattie paying her routine morning call.
But when she opened the door to her chamber, it wasn’t a servant standing before her, holding a plate of chicken in his large, capable hands. Nor was it her hostess.
It was him.
And everything inside her reacted to his familiar, beloved form. His dark hair rakishly falling over his brow, his sensual lips unsmiling, his bold, green eyes even more vibrant than she had somehow recalled. They burned into her now, searching. Searing.
“Bess,” he said.
One word—her name. But there was such reverence in it, as if he spoke a prayer instead of a greeting. Her knees trembled.
“Why have you come?” she asked coolly, knowing she must not allow even a hint of her vulnerability where he was concerned to show.
He held out the plate of chicken. “Breakfast for Lady Razor Claws.”
She accepted the plate, their fingers brushing, and the same awareness she always felt whenever they touched washed over her like warm honey. It would seem that her body was a traitor.
“Thank you,” she said past numb lips, reaching for the door, intending to close it again and blot out the sight of him, so handsome, so forlorn, plum half circles beneath his eyes in a sign that sleep had proven as elusive for him as it had for her.
He flattened his palm on the door before she could pull it shut. “Wait. Please.”
She clutched the plate tightly. “What do you want?”
