Loretta would have pulled away, but that such a motion would have her tumbling onto the ground, what felt like ten feet away! Instead, she tightened her muscles. She pinched her lips. He was manhandling her as she ought to have expected.
Only she couldn’t keep her gaze from the intensity of his eyes. Eyes, the color of the sky. Not on a summer day but on a day like to today, when a thin veil of clouds covered most of the blue. Cold blue.
Only they burned into her now.
“If you could only see what I do. If you could only see the world outside of that tower you’ve built around yourself.” He shook his head slightly, as though confused.
For a moment, she thought that he was going to attempt to kiss her. She turned her face away from him without waiting to find out. She’d not been kissed in ages. In years. Not on the mouth. Not by any person with romantic designs.
Prescott had never kissed her on the mouth.
Oh, he’d loved her. In his own way.
Loretta plucked at the repair that had been made to her glove, waiting for him to urge the horse onto the road once again.
“Are you going to dwell in it forever?” His voice grumbled and she felt hot breath near her ear.
She didn’t know what he was talking about. She didn’t know really.
“Are we going to this property or not?” She refused to answer his question, keeping her stare directed at the road ahead. She could not look at him. Her entire body thrummed with sensations she’d thought long dead, and they terrified her.
He remained still, and she wondered if he was like to turn around and take them back to Eden’s Court. Perhaps she should demand he do just that.
After a moment, he shifted in the seat beside her and then urged the animals to pull them back onto the road.
Loretta didn’t understand why the urge to cry bothered her now. She was not a girl! She was a woman past her fortieth year! She’d been married since the turn of the century for heaven’s sake.
But when it came to men. Especially one such as Mr. Thomas.
She was as naïve as a debutante.
As they drove the next several miles, Loretta realized that she should not have come. Mr. Thomas did not live by the same rules she adhered to. He disrupted the fragile equilibrium she’d managed to find.
She wished she could ask him to turn around. To take her back to Eden’s Court. To take her back home.
What had she been thinking?
When he turned down a long drive and jumped down from the vehicle to open a set of elegant iron gates, she had been determined to keep the inspection as short and efficient as possible. She’d not allow him to goad her again.
He must have obtained keys from the solicitor as he had no trouble unlocking and then removing a set of long, heavy chains.
It felt oddly stirring to watch him do for himself, what her own husband had always relied upon others to do. Mr. Thomas did not struggle with the heavy gate. No, his muscles rippled beneath his jacket as he hefted it out of the dirt almost effortlessly and then swung it to the side of the drive.
When he was finished, he removed his hat for just a moment and brushed one hand through his hair. But then he caught her watching him.
At the taunting gleam in his gaze, Loretta lifted her chin.
She wouldn’t cower but neither of them said a word to one another as he climbed back up beside her.
“Heyo.” He charged the horses forward.
They wound through thick trees, a forest, in fact. Not so dense, however, that she didn’t catch a glimpse of a lake hidden behind it. In a few places, she identified paths cut out, and occasional sculptures sat whimsically along the walks.
But none of that prepared her for the charm of the house itself. Although built in a Georgian style, the two-story manor lacked the symmetry often found in the sparse designs. Long windows lined one side, whereas, the opposite site was composed of smaller windows, indicating the two stories within. Bare vines climbed around the columns to the eaves above the main entrance, dangling over the U-shaped steps.
“Was built in 1801,” Mr. Findlay announced when he drew the curricle to a halt and then jumped off his side. “Been empty for near on a decade though.”
Loretta forgot about her annoyance with him, instead looking upward and spying small angel statues near some top windows, while he assisted her down to the cobbles.
