He had written more. She was certain of it. He had written more, and then he had crossed it out, or crumpled it and started again, until only these few safe words remained.
I was not myself.
No. He had been entirely himself. That was the problem.
Lillian set the note on her bedside table and lay back against her pillows, staring at the ceiling.
Sleep was long in coming.
Chapter Nine
"You sent her anote?"
Daniel looked up from his breakfast to find his sister standing in the doorway of the morning room, her expression hovering somewhere between disbelief and delight.
"Good morning, Rosanne."
"Do not try to avoid me." She swept into the room and took her customary seat across from him, her eyes never leaving his face. "The servants are talking, Daniel. Apparently you sat in your study until midnight, writing and rewriting something on your best stationery, and then you had it delivered to Hartfield by hand. Atmidnight."
"The servants should mind their own affairs."
"The servants have nothing better to do than observe our affairs. That is the nature of domestic service." Rosanne reached for the teapot, her movements precise and deliberate. "What did you write to her?"
"That is none of your concern."
"Everything about Lillian and you is my concern. I have been engineering this situation for weeks, Daniel. I have manufactured headaches, forgotten shawls and convenient absences. I have doneeverythingshort of locking you both in a closet together. The least you can do is tell me what you wrote in your dramatic midnight missive."
Daniel set down his fork. He had not slept well, had not slept at all, if he was being honest, and his patience was in short supply.
"I apologised."
"For what?"
"For my behaviour yesterday. I was not myself."
Rosanne's eyebrows rose. "That is what you wrote?I was not myself."
"Words to that effect."
"And nothing else?"
"What else should there have been?"
Rosanne stared at him for a long moment, her expression cycling through several emotions that Daniel could not quite identify. Then she let out a breath that was half sigh, half groan, and dropped her head into her hands.
"You are hopeless," she said, her voice muffled. "Absolutely, utterly, irredeemably hopeless."
"I beg your pardon?"
"You saved her life, Daniel. You threw yourself off a horse and into the path of a runaway cart to save her life. And then you stood in the entrance hall and told her you wereterrified,you, who never admits to feeling anything at all, and she looked at you like you had hung the moon and stars in the sky." Rosanne lifted her head, her eyes bright with frustration. "And your response is to send her a note that says'I was not myself'?"
"What would you have me say?"
"Something! Anything! Something that acknowledges what is happening between you!"
"Nothing is happening between us."
"Everythingis happening between you! Everyone can see it except, apparently, the two of you!" Rosanne pushed back from the table and rose, pacing the length of the room with an agitation that reminded Daniel uncomfortably of their mother. "She cares for you, Daniel. I do not know how or why, you have done everything in your power to be cold and distant and impossible, but she cares for you nonetheless. And you care for her. Do not bother denying it; I have seen the way you look at her. The way youwatchedher at the dinner. The way you nearly came undone when you thought she might be hurt."
