Close enough to touch, and yet completely unreachable.
And now, here she was, even more beautiful than his imperfect memory had recalled of her. And she was insisting on leaving.
“I beg your pardon?” he said, certain he couldn’t have heard her correctly.
“I,” she repeated in a tone that suggested she felt she was speaking to an idiot, “am going to the country. To stay with my cousins, Xander and Helen. And their children. I don’t know when I’ll be back.”
“What?” he said, because fuck manners; he’d asked politely, and she’d given him the same ridiculous answer.
Clio narrowed her eyes.
“I know you can hear me,” she said acidly. “Your injured ear only affects you if I speak directly into it.”
This brought him up short. He’d never heard someone reference his injury in the context of something hecoulddo, rather than something denied to him.
“It’s not that I didn’t hear you,” he said hastily. “It’s just that … It isn’t wise for you to leave London right now.”
“Why not?” she demanded, which was the precise question he didn’t want her to ask, given that he had spoken without having the faintest idea as to a reason.
He searched his brain.
“Ah, we are … We’re still newly married,” he said. “People might talk.”
Good Lord, he hated himself for even saying it.
Clio looked distinctly unimpressed.
“Oh, do you think they’ll say that you only married me because of a scandal and aren't actually madly in love with me?” she asked sardonically. “Oh dear. Oh no. How dreadful.”
It was rather hard to argue with that, but he was determined to try.
“I thought you wanted to wait for things to quiet down,” he ventured. He wasn’t certain why he was so desperate for an excuse—except, of course, for the parts of him that knew exactly why—but the idea of her leavingnowrankled.
Would he ever even see her again if she left now?
“I thought you didn’t care about whatbloody aristocrats—“It was, he was forced to admit, a fair imitation of his accent. “—thought about you.”
He tried to think of a way to both get what he wanted and avoid the impression that he was caving to Society’s pressure. Luckily, Clio kept talking, as he didn’t like his odds of solving this issue.
“Besides,” she said. “You have ignored me for a week. I can only assume that this means that you are no longer interested inmarital duties, or any heir that might result thereof. I am done wasting my days on idleness. I did not come here to ask your permission. I am merely informing you. Out of courtesy.”
Hector was still scrabbling for an answer. His expression must have given something away in his disinclination toward this plan, however, for Clio’s already tight mouth pressed tighter, enough that he could see a faint band of white around the outline of her plush lips.
“That is,” she said tightly, “unless you plan to renege on your promise.”
That struck him as hard as any hammer in the forge had ever struck metal to bend it into shape.
He wasn’t the kind of man who broke his promises. He didn’t have a whole hell of a lot to his honor, but he had that much. Besides which—that promise had beenrightto make. She deserved her freedom. What was more, she clearlyneededit.
But he rebelled against the idea of letting her go alone. If she went off without him, he feared that the thread binding them together, already so tenuous, would snap. And—God help him—he did not want that with a desperation that should have alarmed him.
But the alarm faded in lieu of triumph when hefinallyseized upon an idea.
“Of course, I have no objection to your going,” he said, which was only slightly a lie, and he figured it was worth it, given the way some of the tension went immediately out of her shoulders. “But I should accompany you. For safety.”
Her nose scrunched up. Lord, spare him from her wonderfully expressive face.
“I assure you,” she said, her tone suggesting that she was holding back far less polite words, “that I am perfectly capable of traveling on my own. You will recall that I have traveled extensively.”
