A sudden knock shattered the air.
“Your Grace?” A servant’s voice came muffled through the door. “Forgive the intrusion, but you are needed.”
Greyson froze. Hazel jerked back as though waking from a dream, and color flooded her face. She straightened on the chaise, smoothing her skirts with frantic precision. He stood too quickly, forcing distance between them.
“One moment,” Greyson called.
Silence fell again, but it was no longer soft. It crackled now, taut and trembling with everything they had not done. Hazel stared at her lap, unable to meet his eyes. He couldn’t take his eyes off of her, captured by the way she bit her lip as if trying to subdue the memory of what almost happened.
He swallowed hard.
“Hazel,” he said quietly.
She looked up, and he saw the confusion, the longing, the fear of her own reaction. He felt all of it, too. But the moment had broken, and he could not rebuild it with a servant waiting beyond the door, no matter how desperately he wanted to.
“I… must go,” he said, forcing the words out evenly.
She nodded once, quickly. “Of course.”
But when he turned toward the door, he hesitated. He turned around only to see her lift her fingers to her wrists, to the place he had kissed. It nearly undid him.
He swallowed heavily, then turned around and stepped through the door, aware that little by little, they were changing, finding their way toward each other.
Would either of them be prepared for what they would find?
Chapter Fourteen
“Where is it?” Hazel muttered, rifling through a rather alarming stack of papers on Greyson’s writing table.
She had not meant to make a mess. Truly, she hadn’t. But after nearly slipping on an impressively detailed map of parliamentary districts and after discovering no fewer than three sealed envelopes labeledconfidential, she began to suspect that the Duke of Callbury’s study was organized in a manner entirely contrary to common sense.
Not that she had come here to audit his paperwork. She had come here with determination, with resolve, with aplan.And that was mostly because she found herself thinking unbearably about his fingers. The gentleness of Greyson’s attention followed her even after he had tended to her. What unsettled her the most was how he showed her that even the smallest hurt mattered.
To be touched was nothing. To betended to,however, and to be regarded with such concern, threatened a breach in all thecareful walls she had raised. His touch made her feel secure. It made her feel precious.
And she couldn’t allow that.
That was why she was looking for the blasted estate inventory.
She lifted another sheet. That was not it. Another.Stillnot it. Then she stumbled onto a sketch, which appeared to be Jasper’s handwriting and looked suspiciously like a caricature of Greyson with devil horns.
“Honestly,” she whispered, staring at it. “Why are men like this?”
Hazel pressed her lips together, shoved Jasper’s artistic contribution aside, and resumed digging with renewed vigor.
If she were to execute her grand, heart-saving scheme, she needed information; specifically, which of the duke’s rural properties was farthest from London, had reliable household staff, and was an acceptable distance for her to pretend this marriage remained perfectly pleasant while simultaneously safe from…him.
Hazel shoved another stack aside. This was his fault, or at least partially his fault.
The memory from the afternoon before kept returning without her permission: his hands steady around her waist as he caughther, his breath brushing her cheek, his thumb grazing her wrist as he removed the splinter, the warmth of his lips against her skin.
A shiver interrupted her rummaging.
Absolutely unacceptable.
Hazel straightened, drawing herself up as though facing a row of misbehaving school children. “This is a marriage of convenience,” she reminded the empty study sternly. “Convenience. Practicality. Order.”
But Greyson Thornhill had no respect for order, at least not when it came to her and certainly not when he decided without warning or reason to flirt with her, or tease her, or look at her as though she were something precious.
