He looked away, his gaze fixed on nothing. “One of them, anyway.”
“But leaving the front was not a failure. You had no choice.” He shrugged, dismissing her protests and simply stared into the flames which had begun to eagerly lick at the log he’d placed on top.
“I know you think men move about with all the freedom in the world,” he said, his gaze fixed somewhere beyond her. “But some of us are bound as tightly as you—by duty, by mistakes. Responsibilities that close off the life we might have chosen instead.”
She felt like he was trying to tell her something more, something he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—say. But he’d fallen silent once again, hiding behind that barrier he’d erected before. In that moment, he wasn’t the easily amused gentleman who’d joked about so many other aspects of their journey.
She stared at his sharp profile, made more mysterious by the shadows and highlights dancing across his lean cheeks and jaw, thinking that he didn’t strike her as a common soldier. He seemed more like a major, or a general, even.
But he also seemed… so very hopeless.
Which didn’t really make sense. He had family. A sister. He had friends.
When she reached out a hand and tentatively touched his arm, she felt his muscles tense. It seemed that neither of them were breathing now, and yet somehow her heart raced wildly.
“You told me,” she began quietly, “that I already knew what kind of man you were. That I didn’t need to know all the little details to truly know you.”
He turned his head, watching her now with a curious stillness.
“Well,” she went on, encouraged by the look in his eyes, “I think… doing what’s right, being responsible… that’s part of who you are. And still, somehow, I feel your laughter. Like there’s music always playing somewhere inside you. It’s—” She hesitated, wincing at how it might sound. “There’s a kind of magic in that.”
The moment stretched, and suddenly she felt very foolish.
“Magic, eh?” A smile curved across his mouth—warm, not mocking. “I think perhaps it’s you who brings the magic, Ambrosia.”
She dropped her gaze to where her hand rested on his jacket. “You must think me silly. Presumptuous. As if I could possibly understand your life…”
And she did feel that way—like a girl from nowhere, pretending she had a right to dream big. What would the glittering world of London make of her? Of her hope, her lack of sophistication, her ideas?
“Not silly. Not presumptuous,” he said, and the low, certain weight of his voice pulled her gaze back to his. “You are… not at all what I expected.”
“What do you mean?” The words barely made it out, her breath catching.
“You could be angry. Bitter. Closed off. But instead you’ve chosen to see good in the world. You still hope. After everything…” He stopped, his eyes never leaving hers. “You are a very brave woman, Ambrosia.”
“No,” she whispered, shaking her head, plucking up one of the thinner twigs from beside the fire and twirling it between her fingers. “I’m not. I’m afraid of everything. I can’t even walk through a taproom on my own.” Snap! The twig was in two pieces, one in each hand. She chucked them into the fire, not quite sure why she felt like crying all of a sudden. “How am I going to survive London? I don’t know anyone. I don’t know the rules. I’ll say the wrong things, dress the wrong way?—”
“You won’t.”
“I’ll be alone,” she said, her voice cracking, “with only Mr. Dog to talk to. They’ll think I’m ridiculous. An unsophisticated nobody with wild ideas and no connections?—”
It was him who reached for her this time. “Never,” he said.
Then, slowly, gently, he touched just above her heart.
“Your courage isn’t loud, princesse. But it’s there. You’re making the journey. Moving forward. That’s where the magic is. Right here.”
The very air between them seemed to thicken, weighted with something unspoken. Did he feel it too? It was as though every restless yearning she had ever harbored, every long-starved desire, had gathered itself and fixed upon this one man.
She felt an unworldly pull to be closer to him, to part her lips…
“I promised I wouldn’t kiss you.” His gaze flicked to her lips and then back up to her eyes. “You said that if I did, you couldn’t travel alone with me. That we would have to part.”
Had she said that? In this particular moment, none of those concerns seemed to matter. “I…I?—”
A large pop from the fire broke the spell she’d fallen under.
Both of them turned back to stare into the flames.
