“Good God, no!” Adeline exclaimed instinctively.
“Then share,” he said, eyes challenging.
Adeline looked away, pretending to follow the flight of a robin that bobbed along the garden, biting her lip. It was tempting. To allow herself the intimacy of getting to know Winston and letting him know her. It took such self-discipline not to tell him everything. To throw herself on his mercy.
“There is not so much to share.”
Winston arched an eyebrow. “A fiancé who is a dangerous man and may be hunting you through London’s streets? Not an everyday occurrence.”
Adeline looked back at him and saw something in his face. A shrewdness. The patience of a poet and a keen observer of human nature.
“Do you seek to…test me in some way?” she asked, suddenly suspicious but also desperate for a way to keep Winston at arm’s length.
“A test? What makes you think so?”
“I feel as though you are testing my story.”
“Is it a story? Or is it the truth?”
“You doubt me.”
“I didn’t.”
“But the implication is that you do now,” Adeline said, folding her arms beneath her breasts.
“When someone picks an argument to avoid answering questions about herself, I have to wonder,” Winston said.
Adeline laughed, stepping away and shaking her head.
“This is the same conversation we had when we first met. Do you remember?”
“Of course I do. I did not know you then.”
“Do you know me now?”
“Partially, but that is not enough,” Winston retorted. His arm shook where it held his weight, supported by the cane.
Adeline saw the tremor and went to his side, but Winston raised the cane, using it to keep her away.
“No!” he barked. “It is not easy for me to share such things as I have done. I do not like thinking I was tricked into doing so.”
Adeline felt as though her heart had been stamped on. The idyllic day had turned grey and morose. The pleasant conversation had become an argument, and the trust Winston had put in her to support him vanished. She wished for it back, knowing she could not have it without honesty. Knowing that honesty was the one thing she could not give.
“Do not be foolish,” Adeline said.
She stepped closer, pushing the cane aside and putting her shoulder beneath his arm once more. Winston allowed it.
“Cold philosophy unweaves the rainbow,” Adeline said.
“I have always been one for conquering mysteries by rule and line,” Winston admitted, drawing on the same quote of their shared favorite.
“Then stop unweaving,” Adeline told him.
“So, you are a rainbow that I am trying to unweave. Or an angel whose wings I want to clip?” Winston asked.
Oh, for a man like this! Who banters with quotes from a poet that few have read, and none seem to love as I do!
They made another slow circuit before returning indoors. Adeline saw Winston settled in the drawing room and left him with a book. She took up one of her own, barely glancing at the title, sitting in a window seat across the room, and trying to steady the quickness of her pulse. Her nostrils were full of Winston’s heady, spicy, musky scent.
